Statistics is a tool. The statistics are being used by the state to make sure that neither the lottery jackpot nor the money being taken in grow to a huge number. In that use, the statistics are perfectly sound. Raise the payouts on lower level winners, you pay out more money.
Since the payouts go up, the system benefits low volume players too. A winner is a winner -- and during down weeks pays Joe Plumber just as much as Martha Deeppockets.
Even the number of winners stays the same. Every week that Martha buys 200000 tickets, she'll get, on average, the same number of winners, and those statistics apply to Joe, too.
The only difference is that the rate of payout exceeds the odds of winning, and that's by design. You can't call it "bad statistics" when the statistics are doing what they were intended to do.
Do you also object to the phenomenon of massive lottery play when the jackpots reach huge numbers? You know, the fact that many more people buy tickets (both "more people" and "more tickets") when Powerball reaches $200 million. This is nothing different. When the pot exceeds the pot odds, betting is good.
Spending $50 or $100 a week on lottery tickets costs money that could be spent on other things, and doesn't really have any noticeable affect on your odds of winning.
Are you trying to say that buying 100 $l lottery tickets has no better odds of winning than buying one? I think you are wrong. The math says so, too.
To make it easy, let's say each ticket has a 1/10 chance of winning. One ticket, your odds are 1:10. Two tickets, your chance of "not losing" (.9 times.9) are 81%, so winning is now not quite 2:10. Three tickets, 1-0.9^3, four tickets 1-0.9^4, etc. This number asymptotically approaches one. That's for one winner out of N.
What are the odds of winning twice out of N? If you only buy one ticket, ZERO. If you buy two tickets, then (0.1*0.1) or 1:100. It only gets better the more tickets you buy, and again, asymptotically approaches one.
So yes, buying more tickets increases the odds of winning overall.
Even spending $100,000 on tickets doesn't have a statistically significant effect really, except under the special circumstances that Massachusetts has created here.
The only reason Mass. rules has any effect at $100,000 is that it also has an effect at $1. If the payouts go up for every win, then even the $1 player benefits, just not as much as the $100,000 player.
No. But it does clearly "respect an establishment of religion," namely all branches of monotheism.
What a looney interpretation of the 1st Amendment, and of the english language.
The "respect" found in the 1st Amendment is not "showing respect for", it is "regarding" or "with respect to". The motto "In God We Trust" does not establish a religion, so it cannot be a law "respecting the establishment of religion".
I'm sorry but if you can't be bothered to read the 1st amendment
I'm sorry, but if you can't be bothered to understand the 1st Amendment, you can't expect anyone to give your opinion any weight.
iow, "In God We Trust" is both an establishment of deist religion,
Wrong.
and an establishment of monotheism,
Wrong.
and makes atheists, non-deists, and polytheists, second class citizens
Strike three.
Nothing in that motto forces anyone to believe or not believe anything other than that the object they hold has some extrinsic value that can be used in exchange for goods or services. Atheists are not forced to believe in God, nor are polytheists required to believe in a single God. Whatever requirement you think exists is a figment.
That motto labels anyone who doesn't believe in the monotheist deist god effectively un-american.
Strike four.
I would suggest you look up the history of the US and British system under which we lived prior to the revolution. The "establishment of religion" clause deals specifically with the Church of England and the requirements for subjects to be subject to that church as well as king and country. Nothing in the motto "In God We Trust" creates anything even remotely similar to the Church of England or the effects thereof, nor does the phrase "under God" in the Pledge. (Here's a simple solution to any problems you have with the latter: don't say it.)
I read the image captions. Although it looks like english, it lacks a few important details, and even with those it would be gibberish. I refer to the caption that talks about the 16-fold symmetry (which it does not have) and the "18 corner" line, which they eventually admit actually has 36 corners.
With that kind of writing, I didn't bother reading the body of the text.
I'll save the point that the object lacks any reasonable means of use as a protractor for a different day. Oh, why not now. If there is a plumb line required for use, and the plumb line needs to pass through the center of the device, then the center of the device would have had a hole from which to hang the plumb line. That way it is always passing through the center, and nobody would have had to try to align the plumb with the device and the slope being measured.
If we follow deniers, and they are right, we will get poor only when we run out of fossil fuels. Before we've burned all coal, we'll be in 22nd century
Strawman. Disbelief in AGW has nothing to do with belief or disbelief that we've reached maximum oil or that an economy relying on cheap oil is good or bad. One can be anti-oil and anti-AGW at the same time.
And the problem lies in point 2. If global warming is true, and we don't do a thing, we're fucked. If it is however not true, and we do try to prevent it, we probably would end up using renewable energy a bit earlier than strictly necessary.
You forget the third potential result: if "global warming" is true but AGW is not, then we will need to take increasingly drastic action as we attempt to solve a problem by removing something that is not a causal factor. What, returning the US to pre-2000 levels of energy use and CO2 emission didn't stop the warming? Then we must reduce even more, and tax CO2 emissions even more. It isn't a case of being "a bit poorer", it a case of destroying major economic systems as unforseen consequences of increasingly strict limits overrun common sense.
Please refer to the stories of Xerxes and the slaves whipping the waves to stop the tide for an analogy. There will never be a point that AGW proponents say "oops, we were wrong". It will ALWAYS be "you didn't conserve enough, it was too late, we were past the tipping point, etc..."
It is however completely inconsistent to be alarmist and against nuclear energy.
This is true. If you truly believe AGW exists, then being against using the known technology to reduce what you think is causing that AGW disingenuous. However, you can disbelieve AGW and still think that switching to nuclear power is necessary for continued existance.
See, you don't know shit. I know that because your statement is a provable lie.
No, it isn't. It isn't a statement of fact, so it cannot be a lie. It was a question. The question was, what measurements WOULD you view as disproof of the hypothesis that human artifacts were the cause of global warming. Would "15 years of no statistically significant warming, but continuously rising CO2 levels" be sufficient?
I will point out that your claim that "it's [for some unknown antecedant of "it"] raised over.11 C per decade" doesn't prove the hypothesis, only that there may be a correlation.
Get your head out of your ass and start...
reading the posting you are replying to before knee-jerk defending a theory. And realize that telling someone to "get your head out of your ass" isn't recognizable science in any form and is no way to have a civilized debate.
This is exactly the kind of malarky analysis that takes place in "climate science" these days.
"I admit I call them deniers, but it's ok for me to be insulting because I'm right and they are wrong, nyah nyah so there."
I just looked at the article. It seems to be saying that the earth system is much larger than any laboratory experiment and perhaps there is a difference between the earth and a beaker of water in the lab. I think that's a pretty fair statement. Whether the feedback issues that are raised are significant, well, I'll let the deniers argue with the alarmists over that issue.
As for the term "deniers", sorry. That's untrue. The evidence isn't being denied. It's the INTERPRETATION of that evidence that is debated. Or at least trying to be debated. Most pro AGW "alarmists" refuse to debate anything because they claim the issue is decided and there is no need for any further debate. Sorta like there was no need to debate the geocentric/heliocentric evidence.
Ultimately a human is hard-wired with a specific risk tolerance, all you do by adding safety features is make them behave in a manner that will bring the risk tolerance back to where they are the most comfortable.
Which leads to the behaviours that the parent talked about. Those who "tolerate risk" more than others will revert to risky behaviours when the perceived risk is reduced. If you have anti-lock brakes, you will tend to assume that the dangers are less and the risks are similarly reduced. This leads to more risky behaviour because it takes more risk to return to your "most comfortable" levels.
In other words, nuts who would go 80 MPH except they don't feel safe about it on wet pavement will start going 80 MPH on wet pavement again because the ABS has reduced the risks to where they are once again comfortable taking them.
This totally ignores those who are totally ignorant about the levels of risk associated with any activity, who see "safety equipment" as an excuse to exceed truly safe operating limits.
I can tell you, it was a remarkable experience driving my new full-time all-wheel Subaru when I first got it. I assumed it would handle better in the snow than my old front-wheel drive car. Nope. I realized partway into a slide towards the outside of a curve that my new 4wd car had two wheels in back that weren't just following along for the ride, they were actively pushing me towards disaster, while in my front drive car the front wheels would pull me around the curve and the back would go where the front lead. Anyone who didn't find that out on a relatively uncrowded low-snow road would be in a world of hurt, and maybe take others with him, because he trusts the AWD to keep him safe instead of good driving.
Until someone opens up a cellphone store just outside the security line... all those phones in the store sitting with bluetooth on and never quite making it past security, the average queue time will skyrocket.
Or until Security Theater (also known as Theater Securite' Abominable, or TSA) realizes that anyone with a cell phone turned on in the line can take surreptitious photos and videos of the screening process and therefore all cellphones must be turned off while in the security line... just as they must already be off while in customs and immigration areas.
Did it really take this kind of measurement to realize that travellers with kids might need a special line? This is in Finnland, wasn't it? Are the Finnish TSA really as dumb as the USA ones?
Yes, however this research indicates one reason why getting a knight off his horse was considered a "good thing" by his enemies.
The standard way of getting a knight off his horse wasn't to politely ask him to dismount, it was to knock him off.
At that point, his ability to jog wasn't an issue, it was more an issue of him flopping around on the ground like a turtle on his back until his squire could come help him stand up again.
It was a "good thing" to knock him off not because he'd be hard pressed to run after you, it was because he'd be hard pressed to run away from you. Or swing a sharp cutty thing at you, for that matter.
The one that contains the words "to encourage such institutions to help meet the credit needs of the local communities in which they are chartered consistent with the safe and sound operation of such institutions."?
You do understand how such laws are enforced, don't you? Compliance isn't based upon an individual review of each and every loan application, approved and denied, to see if the bank is obeying the laws regarding redlining and other credit practices the CRA was designed to stop. Compliance is based on statistics. X% of your customers live in a certain region, X% of your loans should be coming from that region. There is no review to see if the loans were denied for unsafe or unsound operations, they are simply tallied up and counted against the bank when it comes time for the CRA review.
So, your numbers are sagging from certain neighborhoods. What do you do? You need to approve loans that would otherwise be denied. You may even need to try to SELL loans in that area just to get the numbers up, if there aren't enough qualified applicants.
That's how government regulation works. Statistics. Oregon schools are currently being raked over the coals for Title IX compliance because some of them have a higher percentage of boys competing in athletics than girls. This proves, in government-land, that Title IX is not being complied with. It cannot be that fewer girls want to play sports, it must be that the schools are not giving them equal opportunity. Nobody actually went to the schools and asked the students if they had the opportunity, it would be too hard. So we assume that equal opportunity would result in equal numbers and that there are no other factors in play. Just like the banking regulators assume that CRA compliance would result in "equal numbers" and no other factors are in play.
You would put words in my mouth, which means that you have no interest in hearing what someone else says, you wish only to put up your own words and then bat them around.
and do I have to only bring up one point in a discussion, or will you allow me to make multiple points,
I replied specifically and directly to your claim that government employees do not pay income taxes. Make all the other points you want, if they are as ridiculous as the one I first replied to, I will point that out, too.
especially given that this thread is under attack and my comments are being bombarded here with people, who clearly do not like the implications of my questions?
The only "clearly" here is that the people responding to you do not believe your fictions, such as your "fact" that government employees don't pay income taxes, or the howler that they are courted by hoards of lobbyists. The thread isn't under attack, your basic assumptions are, because they are patent nonsense.
except that government cannot PROVIDE for the needy, because it does not PRODUCE anything.
Such as this one. It is basically irrelevant whether or not they "produce" anything, because the public is demanding that they provide for the needy, and they are doing it the only way they can -- by taxing wage earners, including government workers.
- there should be no programs to manage.
That is a different issue altogether. There ARE programs to manage, and the public is demanding MORE and MORE from those programs, so they will expand, just as Microsoft would expand its production system should there be a demand for more and more copies of Windows 7.
Are you not entertained?
No, I, personally, am bored and tired of trying to explain things to you. Continue as you desire.
You're entitled to your opinions, but not your facts.
Yes, and I assumed you would try to deny me my facts.
The ACORN debacle is IMHO, a distracting argument for the problem at hand.
That's why it was mentioned in passing and not part of the main argument.
My citation brings up three facts regarding the wars, the banks, and who was at the helm at the time.
Two wars, both of which were approved by the congress at the time, under the control of people quite antithetical to the President you blamed the problem on. Also continuing under another President who campaigned under a slogan of "Anyone but Bush", who spent the first two years with a collegial congress who could have implemented solutions but chose not to, despite telling us what those solutions were and promising them to us prior to the election. You commented on who the President was when the banks failed, but not on who the President was when the legislation was created that was the cause of that failure, or that the President you blame for the problem was stonewalled by the same antithetical forces that he could not simply override and fix the problem unilaterally.
So, yes, some facts are more relevant than others. A fact that you failed to mention is that there were 365 days in the calendar in 2009. This is a fact similar to yours.
I don't believe that there is a method to be able to address your concerns.
I don't believe that you understand what my "concerns" are, so your inability to understand what the resolution would be is understandable.
and the fact that government workers can get that money on top of their so called 'after-tax' salaries, just shows how profitable it is to work for the government,...
And the fact that Microsoft employees can get that money on top of their so called "after tax salaries" just shows how profitable it is to work for Microsoft.
Hmmm, seems like an identical situation. Got some other reason to claim that government workers don't pay income taxes?
Yet the question remains: the only industry that is growing in size, power, spending it can afford and does not have to balance its books is government industry,
Any industry that had as much demand for increased services as the government has would be growing at the same rate.
and you are saying that you don't want to take that seriously,
Who said that? We just aren't taking YOU seriously when you make assinine statements like "government workers don't pay income taxes" and "the workers are famous, they are swamped by armies of lobbyists". Tell that to the DMV person at the counter the next time you renew your driver's license. Or the census worker who stops by your door when you refuse to return your census paperwork. Or the letter carrier. The only thing I don't know, in this case, is which one will punch your lights out first.
In reality it is much better to stop paying SS to all those grandmother right now, this very second, and save the currency,...
Ahhh, now I know. You want the grandmothers to be first in line to clean your clock. Yes, promise people a retirement program, take money from them for all their working lives, and then refuse to give anything back to them when they need it. You're a swell fellow, yes, you are.
The rest of us, who are not working for a government (and are really insulted by that idea in itself actually) can ask ourselves a question: with all this posturing and talk about some individual millionaires on the part of government workers, how come the government is the only growing industry left and it happens to be also the one that is in power and doesn't have to balance its books at the end of the day to stay in power?
This has nothing to do with your alleged failure of government employees to pay taxes.
The answer to your question is simple. The growth of the government is based on the increasing demands of the public upon that government to provide for their personal needs. As in, "I cannot find a job, government, so I expect you to pay me for not working until I can find one". Or "there are no jobs, government, so I want you to dump hundreds of billions of dollars into 'shovel ready' projects that result in jobs that cost a couple hundred thousand dollars to create, each." Or "I'm sick and didn't buy insurance when I wasn't, so now I can't afford to pay the hospital, so government, you do it for me." Or "I decided to have five children even though I couldn't afford it, and now I need you, government, to feed them free school lunches (even in the summer) and breakfast, too, and entertain my kindergarden aged child all day instead of just half a day."
Or "I knew there was going to be a balloon payment on my ARM, but I didn't care, and now I cannot afford to pay my morgage so I want a government subsidy to help me." Or "I chose to live out in the country because I like the empty space, but I want broadband access to the Internets, government, so build me some infrastructure so I can read/. all day." Or "I had a baby and don't know who the father is and nobody will pay me to sit at home all day, so government, I want you to pay me...".
The answer to why they don't have to balance the books is easy, too. Just raise the debt ceiling and all will be wonderful again. We can't cut the spending on things people demand, even though it isn't the job of the government to do it. People expect it. It takes government employees to manage the programs.
You want the welfare, AND you expect the people working for the government who manage the welfare programs to work for free, too? What a novel and interesting concept. Do you have a newsletter I can subscribe to?
It cannot be said that a private worker does not pay taxes to government, because government did not have that money already.
It is irrelevant who has the money to start with. A government employee gets a salary, part of which is paid to the government in taxes, just as a private sector employee does. How much is withheld depends on the dependents and other status filed on the same W4 for both employees. It is an identical situation: if the money being withheld for taxes was not withheld, it could be paid to the employee.
Now, if you seriously want to argue that government employees do not pay taxes, then you must also deduct the amount that is called "income tax" from their salary when complaining about how large the government employee salaries are. You cannot honestly argue both ways -- "look at how large their salaries are" and "they don't pay taxes!".
The government workers do not pay income taxes, because it is clear that it's just one government department shuffling money to another...
Except for the fact that the money goes through a private citizen first, you would be correct. You do understand, I hope, that the money withheld from a government employee's salary is just like every other worker's withholding. I.e., an estimate of the amount of taxes that will be owed at the end of the year. And that by proper estate planning and other actions the amount withheld can be returned to the employee as a "tax refund" when he files his taxes. That's another example of why your lie that government employees don't pay taxes is a lie.
The CRA forced banks to punk FannieMae and FreddieMac really well.
There, fixed that for you.
Trying to tip this out of Geo Bush's barrel is an argument that is difficult to win.
Winning any argument with someone who has their fingers in their ears shouting "Bad Bad Bush Hates Bush We Does" is difficult. Once the facts are on the table, though, reason can win.
But bringing up Acorn reveals your bias.
ACORN is a fact. If the facts appear biased, the problem is in your mirror, not with the facts.
Slashdot Mirror
2. Wait for bad statistics to become really bad
Statistics is a tool. The statistics are being used by the state to make sure that neither the lottery jackpot nor the money being taken in grow to a huge number. In that use, the statistics are perfectly sound. Raise the payouts on lower level winners, you pay out more money.
Since the payouts go up, the system benefits low volume players too. A winner is a winner -- and during down weeks pays Joe Plumber just as much as Martha Deeppockets.
Even the number of winners stays the same. Every week that Martha buys 200000 tickets, she'll get, on average, the same number of winners, and those statistics apply to Joe, too.
The only difference is that the rate of payout exceeds the odds of winning, and that's by design. You can't call it "bad statistics" when the statistics are doing what they were intended to do.
Do you also object to the phenomenon of massive lottery play when the jackpots reach huge numbers? You know, the fact that many more people buy tickets (both "more people" and "more tickets") when Powerball reaches $200 million. This is nothing different. When the pot exceeds the pot odds, betting is good.
Spending $50 or $100 a week on lottery tickets costs money that could be spent on other things, and doesn't really have any noticeable affect on your odds of winning.
Are you trying to say that buying 100 $l lottery tickets has no better odds of winning than buying one? I think you are wrong. The math says so, too.
To make it easy, let's say each ticket has a 1/10 chance of winning. One ticket, your odds are 1:10. Two tickets, your chance of "not losing" ( .9 times .9) are 81%, so winning is now not quite 2:10. Three tickets, 1-0.9^3, four tickets 1-0.9^4, etc. This number asymptotically approaches one. That's for one winner out of N.
What are the odds of winning twice out of N? If you only buy one ticket, ZERO. If you buy two tickets, then (0.1*0.1) or 1:100. It only gets better the more tickets you buy, and again, asymptotically approaches one.
So yes, buying more tickets increases the odds of winning overall.
Even spending $100,000 on tickets doesn't have a statistically significant effect really, except under the special circumstances that Massachusetts has created here.
The only reason Mass. rules has any effect at $100,000 is that it also has an effect at $1. If the payouts go up for every win, then even the $1 player benefits, just not as much as the $100,000 player.
No. But it does clearly "respect an establishment of religion," namely all branches of monotheism.
What a looney interpretation of the 1st Amendment, and of the english language.
The "respect" found in the 1st Amendment is not "showing respect for", it is "regarding" or "with respect to". The motto "In God We Trust" does not establish a religion, so it cannot be a law "respecting the establishment of religion".
I'm sorry but if you can't be bothered to read the 1st amendment
I'm sorry, but if you can't be bothered to understand the 1st Amendment, you can't expect anyone to give your opinion any weight.
iow, "In God We Trust" is both an establishment of deist religion,
Wrong.
and an establishment of monotheism,
Wrong.
and makes atheists, non-deists, and polytheists, second class citizens
Strike three.
Nothing in that motto forces anyone to believe or not believe anything other than that the object they hold has some extrinsic value that can be used in exchange for goods or services. Atheists are not forced to believe in God, nor are polytheists required to believe in a single God. Whatever requirement you think exists is a figment.
That motto labels anyone who doesn't believe in the monotheist deist god effectively un-american.
Strike four.
I would suggest you look up the history of the US and British system under which we lived prior to the revolution. The "establishment of religion" clause deals specifically with the Church of England and the requirements for subjects to be subject to that church as well as king and country. Nothing in the motto "In God We Trust" creates anything even remotely similar to the Church of England or the effects thereof, nor does the phrase "under God" in the Pledge. (Here's a simple solution to any problems you have with the latter: don't say it.)
Perhaps you haven't noticed, but the US House has an official chaplain, and the first continental congress was opened with a prayer by Reverend Jacob Duché Rector of Christ Church of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. If the founders had thought that simply saying "In God We Trust" was unacceptable, they wouldn't have done that.
Wait, what? What do you think the two S in SSN mean?
"Social" and "security".
That has nothing to do with the promise that the SSN would never be used as a nation ID, which is the promise already broken.
The next promise to go will be the "security" part.
It will always be "social". I guess. Kinda like a government-run Facebook or MySpace. More like MySpace, since it will be suckier.
There's nothing wrong with using a SSN as an identification.
Other than the fact that my Social Security Card says quite clearly on the front "not to be used for identification", you would be right. Maybe.
I read the fine pdf.
I read the image captions. Although it looks like english, it lacks a few important details, and even with those it would be gibberish. I refer to the caption that talks about the 16-fold symmetry (which it does not have) and the "18 corner" line, which they eventually admit actually has 36 corners.
With that kind of writing, I didn't bother reading the body of the text.
I'll save the point that the object lacks any reasonable means of use as a protractor for a different day. Oh, why not now. If there is a plumb line required for use, and the plumb line needs to pass through the center of the device, then the center of the device would have had a hole from which to hang the plumb line. That way it is always passing through the center, and nobody would have had to try to align the plumb with the device and the slope being measured.
If we follow deniers, and they are right, we will get poor only when we run out of fossil fuels. Before we've burned all coal, we'll be in 22nd century
Strawman. Disbelief in AGW has nothing to do with belief or disbelief that we've reached maximum oil or that an economy relying on cheap oil is good or bad. One can be anti-oil and anti-AGW at the same time.
And the problem lies in point 2. If global warming is true, and we don't do a thing, we're fucked. If it is however not true, and we do try to prevent it, we probably would end up using renewable energy a bit earlier than strictly necessary.
You forget the third potential result: if "global warming" is true but AGW is not, then we will need to take increasingly drastic action as we attempt to solve a problem by removing something that is not a causal factor. What, returning the US to pre-2000 levels of energy use and CO2 emission didn't stop the warming? Then we must reduce even more, and tax CO2 emissions even more. It isn't a case of being "a bit poorer", it a case of destroying major economic systems as unforseen consequences of increasingly strict limits overrun common sense.
Please refer to the stories of Xerxes and the slaves whipping the waves to stop the tide for an analogy. There will never be a point that AGW proponents say "oops, we were wrong". It will ALWAYS be "you didn't conserve enough, it was too late, we were past the tipping point, etc..."
It is however completely inconsistent to be alarmist and against nuclear energy.
This is true. If you truly believe AGW exists, then being against using the known technology to reduce what you think is causing that AGW disingenuous. However, you can disbelieve AGW and still think that switching to nuclear power is necessary for continued existance.
See, you don't know shit. I know that because your statement is a provable lie.
No, it isn't. It isn't a statement of fact, so it cannot be a lie. It was a question. The question was, what measurements WOULD you view as disproof of the hypothesis that human artifacts were the cause of global warming. Would "15 years of no statistically significant warming, but continuously rising CO2 levels" be sufficient?
I will point out that your claim that "it's [for some unknown antecedant of "it"] raised over .11 C per decade" doesn't prove the hypothesis, only that there may be a correlation.
Get your head out of your ass and start ...
reading the posting you are replying to before knee-jerk defending a theory. And realize that telling someone to "get your head out of your ass" isn't recognizable science in any form and is no way to have a civilized debate.
"I admit I call them deniers, but it's ok for me to be insulting because I'm right and they are wrong, nyah nyah so there."
I just looked at the article. It seems to be saying that the earth system is much larger than any laboratory experiment and perhaps there is a difference between the earth and a beaker of water in the lab. I think that's a pretty fair statement. Whether the feedback issues that are raised are significant, well, I'll let the deniers argue with the alarmists over that issue.
As for the term "deniers", sorry. That's untrue. The evidence isn't being denied. It's the INTERPRETATION of that evidence that is debated. Or at least trying to be debated. Most pro AGW "alarmists" refuse to debate anything because they claim the issue is decided and there is no need for any further debate. Sorta like there was no need to debate the geocentric/heliocentric evidence.
RedHat, please fork ksplice today.
I'd rather watch them fork poshsplice or gingersplice... I'm assuming that ksplice is the new name for kfed after he joined the splice girls...
Ultimately a human is hard-wired with a specific risk tolerance, all you do by adding safety features is make them behave in a manner that will bring the risk tolerance back to where they are the most comfortable.
Which leads to the behaviours that the parent talked about. Those who "tolerate risk" more than others will revert to risky behaviours when the perceived risk is reduced. If you have anti-lock brakes, you will tend to assume that the dangers are less and the risks are similarly reduced. This leads to more risky behaviour because it takes more risk to return to your "most comfortable" levels.
In other words, nuts who would go 80 MPH except they don't feel safe about it on wet pavement will start going 80 MPH on wet pavement again because the ABS has reduced the risks to where they are once again comfortable taking them.
This totally ignores those who are totally ignorant about the levels of risk associated with any activity, who see "safety equipment" as an excuse to exceed truly safe operating limits.
I can tell you, it was a remarkable experience driving my new full-time all-wheel Subaru when I first got it. I assumed it would handle better in the snow than my old front-wheel drive car. Nope. I realized partway into a slide towards the outside of a curve that my new 4wd car had two wheels in back that weren't just following along for the ride, they were actively pushing me towards disaster, while in my front drive car the front wheels would pull me around the curve and the back would go where the front lead. Anyone who didn't find that out on a relatively uncrowded low-snow road would be in a world of hurt, and maybe take others with him, because he trusts the AWD to keep him safe instead of good driving.
Or until Security Theater (also known as Theater Securite' Abominable, or TSA) realizes that anyone with a cell phone turned on in the line can take surreptitious photos and videos of the screening process and therefore all cellphones must be turned off while in the security line... just as they must already be off while in customs and immigration areas.
Did it really take this kind of measurement to realize that travellers with kids might need a special line? This is in Finnland, wasn't it? Are the Finnish TSA really as dumb as the USA ones?
Yes, however this research indicates one reason why getting a knight off his horse was considered a "good thing" by his enemies.
The standard way of getting a knight off his horse wasn't to politely ask him to dismount, it was to knock him off.
At that point, his ability to jog wasn't an issue, it was more an issue of him flopping around on the ground like a turtle on his back until his squire could come help him stand up again.
It was a "good thing" to knock him off not because he'd be hard pressed to run after you, it was because he'd be hard pressed to run away from you. Or swing a sharp cutty thing at you, for that matter.
Please. Pluto prefers the term "Gravitationally Challenged Planet"
If Pluto wants to make something of it, it knows where to find us. I dare it to come complain about what we call it...
So, if Pluto isn't a planet, then what orbits it can't be moons, right? Moonoids? Moonsters? Moonites? Moonies? Moonenites?
The one that contains the words "to encourage such institutions to help meet the credit needs of the local communities in which they are chartered consistent with the safe and sound operation of such institutions."?
You do understand how such laws are enforced, don't you? Compliance isn't based upon an individual review of each and every loan application, approved and denied, to see if the bank is obeying the laws regarding redlining and other credit practices the CRA was designed to stop. Compliance is based on statistics. X% of your customers live in a certain region, X% of your loans should be coming from that region. There is no review to see if the loans were denied for unsafe or unsound operations, they are simply tallied up and counted against the bank when it comes time for the CRA review.
So, your numbers are sagging from certain neighborhoods. What do you do? You need to approve loans that would otherwise be denied. You may even need to try to SELL loans in that area just to get the numbers up, if there aren't enough qualified applicants.
That's how government regulation works. Statistics. Oregon schools are currently being raked over the coals for Title IX compliance because some of them have a higher percentage of boys competing in athletics than girls. This proves, in government-land, that Title IX is not being complied with. It cannot be that fewer girls want to play sports, it must be that the schools are not giving them equal opportunity. Nobody actually went to the schools and asked the students if they had the opportunity, it would be too hard. So we assume that equal opportunity would result in equal numbers and that there are no other factors in play. Just like the banking regulators assume that CRA compliance would result in "equal numbers" and no other factors are in play.
You would cite ...
You would put words in my mouth, which means that you have no interest in hearing what someone else says, you wish only to put up your own words and then bat them around.
Bye.
Worse? By what measure are things worse?
Umm, unemployment? You know, the number that the stimulus package was supposed to stop from going above 9%?
and do I have to only bring up one point in a discussion, or will you allow me to make multiple points,
I replied specifically and directly to your claim that government employees do not pay income taxes. Make all the other points you want, if they are as ridiculous as the one I first replied to, I will point that out, too.
especially given that this thread is under attack and my comments are being bombarded here with people, who clearly do not like the implications of my questions?
The only "clearly" here is that the people responding to you do not believe your fictions, such as your "fact" that government employees don't pay income taxes, or the howler that they are courted by hoards of lobbyists. The thread isn't under attack, your basic assumptions are, because they are patent nonsense.
except that government cannot PROVIDE for the needy, because it does not PRODUCE anything.
Such as this one. It is basically irrelevant whether or not they "produce" anything, because the public is demanding that they provide for the needy, and they are doing it the only way they can -- by taxing wage earners, including government workers.
- there should be no programs to manage.
That is a different issue altogether. There ARE programs to manage, and the public is demanding MORE and MORE from those programs, so they will expand, just as Microsoft would expand its production system should there be a demand for more and more copies of Windows 7.
Are you not entertained?
No, I, personally, am bored and tired of trying to explain things to you. Continue as you desire.
You're entitled to your opinions, but not your facts.
Yes, and I assumed you would try to deny me my facts.
The ACORN debacle is IMHO, a distracting argument for the problem at hand.
That's why it was mentioned in passing and not part of the main argument.
My citation brings up three facts regarding the wars, the banks, and who was at the helm at the time.
Two wars, both of which were approved by the congress at the time, under the control of people quite antithetical to the President you blamed the problem on. Also continuing under another President who campaigned under a slogan of "Anyone but Bush", who spent the first two years with a collegial congress who could have implemented solutions but chose not to, despite telling us what those solutions were and promising them to us prior to the election. You commented on who the President was when the banks failed, but not on who the President was when the legislation was created that was the cause of that failure, or that the President you blame for the problem was stonewalled by the same antithetical forces that he could not simply override and fix the problem unilaterally.
So, yes, some facts are more relevant than others. A fact that you failed to mention is that there were 365 days in the calendar in 2009. This is a fact similar to yours.
I don't believe that there is a method to be able to address your concerns.
I don't believe that you understand what my "concerns" are, so your inability to understand what the resolution would be is understandable.
and the fact that government workers can get that money on top of their so called 'after-tax' salaries, just shows how profitable it is to work for the government,...
And the fact that Microsoft employees can get that money on top of their so called "after tax salaries" just shows how profitable it is to work for Microsoft.
Hmmm, seems like an identical situation. Got some other reason to claim that government workers don't pay income taxes?
Yet the question remains: the only industry that is growing in size, power, spending it can afford and does not have to balance its books is government industry,
Any industry that had as much demand for increased services as the government has would be growing at the same rate.
and you are saying that you don't want to take that seriously,
Who said that? We just aren't taking YOU seriously when you make assinine statements like "government workers don't pay income taxes" and "the workers are famous, they are swamped by armies of lobbyists". Tell that to the DMV person at the counter the next time you renew your driver's license. Or the census worker who stops by your door when you refuse to return your census paperwork. Or the letter carrier. The only thing I don't know, in this case, is which one will punch your lights out first.
In reality it is much better to stop paying SS to all those grandmother right now, this very second, and save the currency, ...
Ahhh, now I know. You want the grandmothers to be first in line to clean your clock. Yes, promise people a retirement program, take money from them for all their working lives, and then refuse to give anything back to them when they need it. You're a swell fellow, yes, you are.
The rest of us, who are not working for a government (and are really insulted by that idea in itself actually) can ask ourselves a question: with all this posturing and talk about some individual millionaires on the part of government workers, how come the government is the only growing industry left and it happens to be also the one that is in power and doesn't have to balance its books at the end of the day to stay in power?
This has nothing to do with your alleged failure of government employees to pay taxes.
The answer to your question is simple. The growth of the government is based on the increasing demands of the public upon that government to provide for their personal needs. As in, "I cannot find a job, government, so I expect you to pay me for not working until I can find one". Or "there are no jobs, government, so I want you to dump hundreds of billions of dollars into 'shovel ready' projects that result in jobs that cost a couple hundred thousand dollars to create, each." Or "I'm sick and didn't buy insurance when I wasn't, so now I can't afford to pay the hospital, so government, you do it for me." Or "I decided to have five children even though I couldn't afford it, and now I need you, government, to feed them free school lunches (even in the summer) and breakfast, too, and entertain my kindergarden aged child all day instead of just half a day." Or "I knew there was going to be a balloon payment on my ARM, but I didn't care, and now I cannot afford to pay my morgage so I want a government subsidy to help me." Or "I chose to live out in the country because I like the empty space, but I want broadband access to the Internets, government, so build me some infrastructure so I can read /. all day." Or "I had a baby and don't know who the father is and nobody will pay me to sit at home all day, so government, I want you to pay me...".
The answer to why they don't have to balance the books is easy, too. Just raise the debt ceiling and all will be wonderful again. We can't cut the spending on things people demand, even though it isn't the job of the government to do it. People expect it. It takes government employees to manage the programs.
You want the welfare, AND you expect the people working for the government who manage the welfare programs to work for free, too? What a novel and interesting concept. Do you have a newsletter I can subscribe to?
It cannot be said that a private worker does not pay taxes to government, because government did not have that money already.
It is irrelevant who has the money to start with. A government employee gets a salary, part of which is paid to the government in taxes, just as a private sector employee does. How much is withheld depends on the dependents and other status filed on the same W4 for both employees. It is an identical situation: if the money being withheld for taxes was not withheld, it could be paid to the employee.
Now, if you seriously want to argue that government employees do not pay taxes, then you must also deduct the amount that is called "income tax" from their salary when complaining about how large the government employee salaries are. You cannot honestly argue both ways -- "look at how large their salaries are" and "they don't pay taxes!".
The government workers do not pay income taxes, because it is clear that it's just one government department shuffling money to another...
Except for the fact that the money goes through a private citizen first, you would be correct. You do understand, I hope, that the money withheld from a government employee's salary is just like every other worker's withholding. I.e., an estimate of the amount of taxes that will be owed at the end of the year. And that by proper estate planning and other actions the amount withheld can be returned to the employee as a "tax refund" when he files his taxes. That's another example of why your lie that government employees don't pay taxes is a lie.
The CRA forced banks to punk FannieMae and FreddieMac really well.
There, fixed that for you.
Trying to tip this out of Geo Bush's barrel is an argument that is difficult to win.
Winning any argument with someone who has their fingers in their ears shouting "Bad Bad Bush Hates Bush We Does" is difficult. Once the facts are on the table, though, reason can win.
But bringing up Acorn reveals your bias.
ACORN is a fact. If the facts appear biased, the problem is in your mirror, not with the facts.