To be clear, by "genital mutilation" he means "male circumcision", which is incomparably less bad than female circumcision, which is what the term is generally reserved for.
Male circumcision = cutting off the foreskin, which is not a procedure I'm a fan of, but is still performed on the majority of Americans boys, and is fairly harmless, in addition to potentially reducing risk of AIDS. Female circumcision = cutting off the clitoris, and has been condemned as a human rights violation by the UN.
It may not be a strictly false statement on his part, but it's obviously a shady, misleading way of saying it. Now if Bill Gates had funded the lopping off of kid's penises, it would be an apt description, and analogous to female circumcision.
When we gave women access to contraception, and the ability to get an education and a decent job rather than simply being housewives and mothers, family size dropped to the replacement rate or below. In the US. In Canada. In Europe. And the same trend is very clear in developing countries. Women want to have a reasonable number of children. Population growth happens when women are disempowered.
Contrary to the Malthusian view that population will grow to the limit of however many kids can be fed, in fact parents choose to have enough kids to give them a high chance that several will survive to support them as they grow old.
Evidence shows tackling high death rates leads to smaller families and the stabilisation of national populations, according to its report, ‘The World at 7 Billion’.
...“In the poorest countries, where parents are often petrified that their children will die and leave them to fend for themselves, it’s understandable that they would choose to have larger families," [Brendan Cox] added.
...Save the Children points to the example of Botswana where three decades ago women had an average of six children. The average is now three, following long-term investment in healthcare which has helped to nearly halve child mortality.
Well-designed programs can bring down growth rates even in the poorest countries. Provided with information and voluntary access to birth-control methods, women have chosen to have fewer children in societies as diverse as Bangladesh, Iran, Mexico, Sri Lanka and Thailand.
...A trial by Harvard researchers in Lusaka, Zambia, found that only when women had greater autonomy to decide whether to use contraceptives did they have significantly fewer children....
Your argument rests on the dichotomy of things being either 0% effective or 100% effective. Some people might question that premise.
Yes, there is something inherent in an unacciated child that makes them dangerous to vaccinated children: whooping cough, measles, mumps, etc., because vaccines, while pretty effective at stopping these diseases, do not make every recipient 100% disease-proof.
My point is, you were asking the difference between MLB regulating something and the GOVERNMENT regulating something. Now suddenly you're insisting there's a big difference because one is the government and one isn't.
So I think you've answered your original question, yet you seem to think I'm promoting the position that there isn't a difference. My point was clearly that there IS a difference.
They can't get on a bus or a train, they have no choice but to drive.
I used to live out in the country and had to drive to get most anywhere.
Then I moved.
That's a choice I made. It might not be the right choice for everyone. There are trade-offs, and maybe they're making the best choice for themselves, but pretending it's not a choice is just wrong.
I borrowed a Kindle from work a few weeks ago and while I really like it, some hardcopy books are cheaper NEW from AMAZON than the Kindle ebooks. It may not be the norm, but it definitely exists, and sadly it exists with books I'd like to read.
It seems charging on peak is encouraging people to turn up the AC or turn down the heat a bit
Or not to run their washing machine, dryer, dish washer, etc. when demand is already pushing capacity.
You charge more when demand is higher because to meat demand, you bring in marginal production capacity (e.g. firing up less efficient power plants that produce energy at a higher cost).
In the case of network traffic, we can't just turn on another bunch of fiber when people are using a lot, so the speed each user gets drops. When we're not at capacity, using more doesn't have a significant cost, but when we're at capacity, using more means everyone else gets less. Eventually you have to build more lines or convince people to stop using as much during peak times. Raising prices for peak times does the latter, and is reasonable because the marginal cost of usage is higher.
It all comes down to supply and demand. Understanding just two lines on a graph can make the whole world make so much more sense.
Why ONLY if the Publisher agrees? They don't have that ability with physical goods - so screw them again.
Because the publishers is the supplier--EVERY term is dictated by the publishers, because the publisher has to CHOOSE to supply the books. Amazon's supposed to tell publishers the terms and then just pray they still have books to sell? Amazon is no that powerful yet.
I completely agree that science and technology always has been and always will be the solution. Waste will be reduced, alternative energy sources will be tapped more efficiently, and rare materials recycled more thoroughly. Hopefully we'll get there without too much pain, though I'm more than a little worried.
Shipping people off to off-Earth colonies, however, are not going to be a solution (and I'm skeptical about using extra-planetary resources). The human population is currently measured in billions and annual growth in the high tens of millions. Somehow I doubt ships of emigrants will be measured in those units in any even slightly-relevant timeframe. We may populate other planets, but not by launching ships carrying a billion people. Emigration from Earth will not put a dent in the world population. I'd count on a transferral of consciousness into computers long before I counted on mass emigration.
I think he might be using the term 'most people' as an ironic understatement. That is the definition. 'Most people'==everybody who uses the term correctly. And we use that definition/term because it's quite useful in modelling. Production/utilization of coal/oil/uranium/water/etc. accelerates for some time, peaks, and then drops. These commodities are finite and are not durable good. The oil is input to the economy, not capital like a factory. If we slow the building of factories, the economy continues to grow, so long as we don't decommission any. If we slow the input of oil/coal/uranium/water/whatever (because we hit peak production and have to shift to marginal sources), we need to substitute something else (or increase efficiency at a faster rate than input drops) or the economy will slow (and demand for alternatives will rise--tell me this isn't useless to know).
Actually, your point about nuclear demonstrates a small error in the above definition. 'Peak' refers more to the peak of production potential (or something along those lines). We could be producing less nuclear fuel by choice, but not because the speed at which nuclear fuel can be mined and refined has declined.
Mail it to the ACLU. I may not have a lawyer on retainer, but every July 4 I send money to these guys to deal with this stuff for me, and I'm sure they'd be happy to oblige.
You must be someone with a huge amount of capital and/or someone who runs a large corporation if you feel you actually have recourse to change laws.
A huge amount of capital helps chiefly because it lets you convince people to agree with you and act on it. Is your position that I should be able to change laws without anyone else agreeing with my view? 'Cause that seems to be what you're implicitly suggesting and, for what it's worth, that sort of government is called a dictatorship.
(And, no, politicians can't be "bought" by lobbyists because the politicians are taking bribes for themselves--it's because politicians are taking money that can be used to convince people to re-elect the politician. It's always about convincing other people. Money just helps spread the message.)
I never really knew people to be pot smokers. I didn't go to parties in high school or college, or hang out with my peers much at all. So while I'm sure I knew a lot of people who smoked pot, the first person I knew as a heavy pot user was a guy I knew online who, upon starting pot use, became a stereotypical stoner. He'd been occasionally annoying, but a reasonably interesting person, but after starting using pot, that pretty much was the only thing he wanted to talk about, plus the occasional conspiracy/rant. (As I said, I only knew him online, but I had a friend who knew him well in real life and she confirms my perceptions.)
Later, though, I moved into a student co-op at UT-Austin. Suddenly I'm hanging out with college students outside of class and a number of them smoked pot frequently--some every day. Completely different results! These people were very smart, responsible, academically successful students, mostly upper-division and several of them in grad school. They didn't go to class high (except maybe the theatre grad student, but that's art), they didn't sit around staring at their fingers (usually it was hard to tell that they were high), and they had aspirations beyond smoking pot. And they're not just thinking about their aspirations. Pot smokers I knew who have graduated went on to work for a law firm (and then came back for grad school), went to grad school for engineering a Berkeley (despite job offers from an engineering firm where he had interned), or work in their field. They're useful, contributing members of society who happen to smoke pot in their off time.
So, yes, my perception of pot smokers has shifted from 'kind of dumb' (when I didn't know any people as pot smokers) to 'pot user often equals stoner = useless person' to 'not significantly more likely to be useless than anyone else'.
(Of course, my sample population is biased. There are co-ops where the culture was very much one of useless stoners. I got one where the culture favored being motivated, responsible, hard-working, and intelligent.)
Using a bank, using a debit card, using a credit card, and banking over the internet all represent some levels of risk, but we use them because it's easier.
Debit and credit cards have considerably less risk than the alternative. If your cash is lost/stolen, it's gone. If your credit card or debit card is lost/stolen, you lose a little time dealing with the issue, but you face no financial liability.
Slashdot Mirror
To be clear, by "genital mutilation" he means "male circumcision", which is incomparably less bad than female circumcision, which is what the term is generally reserved for.
Male circumcision = cutting off the foreskin, which is not a procedure I'm a fan of, but is still performed on the majority of Americans boys, and is fairly harmless, in addition to potentially reducing risk of AIDS. Female circumcision = cutting off the clitoris, and has been condemned as a human rights violation by the UN.
It may not be a strictly false statement on his part, but it's obviously a shady, misleading way of saying it. Now if Bill Gates had funded the lopping off of kid's penises, it would be an apt description, and analogous to female circumcision.
The law that "Citizens United" is is the First Amendment. It may be a bad interpretation, but I'm personally a fan of the law itself.
News flash. Women want to have children
When we gave women access to contraception, and the ability to get an education and a decent job rather than simply being housewives and mothers, family size dropped to the replacement rate or below. In the US. In Canada. In Europe. And the same trend is very clear in developing countries. Women want to have a reasonable number of children. Population growth happens when women are disempowered.
(Bill Gates/Gates Foundation) (Also relevant: Bill Gates' TED Talk)
(Trust.org reporting on Save The Children's report)
(The Solution To Global Population Growth is Saving Children) (Contains two talks by Hans Rosling using stats to show this. Look at the first video starting at 6:30 if you're impatient)
He's not talking about rote memorization of content. He's talking about learning to organizing and track your tasks.
And just what do you think the business of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration might be?
My point is, you were asking the difference between MLB regulating something and the GOVERNMENT regulating something. Now suddenly you're insisting there's a big difference because one is the government and one isn't.
So I think you've answered your original question, yet you seem to think I'm promoting the position that there isn't a difference. My point was clearly that there IS a difference.
I used to live out in the country and had to drive to get most anywhere.
Then I moved.
That's a choice I made. It might not be the right choice for everyone. There are trade-offs, and maybe they're making the best choice for themselves, but pretending it's not a choice is just wrong.
Seriously? What do you think is the difference between an apartment complex banning pets and the COUNTRY banning pets? Do you think there is none?
Is that meant to be ironic? This was standard practice until a few years ago and I still come across it from time to time.
An Abundance of Katherines by John Green: Hardcover, Bargain Price from Amazon: $6.56; New Paperback: $2.99; Kindle: $7.99
Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Lavithan: Amazon Paperback: $8.99; Kindle: $10.99
I borrowed a Kindle from work a few weeks ago and while I really like it, some hardcopy books are cheaper NEW from AMAZON than the Kindle ebooks. It may not be the norm, but it definitely exists, and sadly it exists with books I'd like to read.
Or not to run their washing machine, dryer, dish washer, etc. when demand is already pushing capacity.
You charge more when demand is higher because to meat demand, you bring in marginal production capacity (e.g. firing up less efficient power plants that produce energy at a higher cost).
In the case of network traffic, we can't just turn on another bunch of fiber when people are using a lot, so the speed each user gets drops. When we're not at capacity, using more doesn't have a significant cost, but when we're at capacity, using more means everyone else gets less. Eventually you have to build more lines or convince people to stop using as much during peak times. Raising prices for peak times does the latter, and is reasonable because the marginal cost of usage is higher.
It all comes down to supply and demand. Understanding just two lines on a graph can make the whole world make so much more sense.
Because the publishers is the supplier--EVERY term is dictated by the publishers, because the publisher has to CHOOSE to supply the books. Amazon's supposed to tell publishers the terms and then just pray they still have books to sell? Amazon is no that powerful yet.
Hey, good job on the troll.
I completely agree that science and technology always has been and always will be the solution. Waste will be reduced, alternative energy sources will be tapped more efficiently, and rare materials recycled more thoroughly. Hopefully we'll get there without too much pain, though I'm more than a little worried.
Shipping people off to off-Earth colonies, however, are not going to be a solution (and I'm skeptical about using extra-planetary resources). The human population is currently measured in billions and annual growth in the high tens of millions. Somehow I doubt ships of emigrants will be measured in those units in any even slightly-relevant timeframe. We may populate other planets, but not by launching ships carrying a billion people. Emigration from Earth will not put a dent in the world population. I'd count on a transferral of consciousness into computers long before I counted on mass emigration.
I think he might be using the term 'most people' as an ironic understatement. That is the definition. 'Most people'==everybody who uses the term correctly. And we use that definition/term because it's quite useful in modelling. Production/utilization of coal/oil/uranium/water/etc. accelerates for some time, peaks, and then drops. These commodities are finite and are not durable good. The oil is input to the economy, not capital like a factory. If we slow the building of factories, the economy continues to grow, so long as we don't decommission any. If we slow the input of oil/coal/uranium/water/whatever (because we hit peak production and have to shift to marginal sources), we need to substitute something else (or increase efficiency at a faster rate than input drops) or the economy will slow (and demand for alternatives will rise--tell me this isn't useless to know).
Actually, your point about nuclear demonstrates a small error in the above definition. 'Peak' refers more to the peak of production potential (or something along those lines). We could be producing less nuclear fuel by choice, but not because the speed at which nuclear fuel can be mined and refined has declined.
acpi -tf
See also: DR Congo.
Mail it to the ACLU. I may not have a lawyer on retainer, but every July 4 I send money to these guys to deal with this stuff for me, and I'm sure they'd be happy to oblige.
A huge amount of capital helps chiefly because it lets you convince people to agree with you and act on it. Is your position that I should be able to change laws without anyone else agreeing with my view? 'Cause that seems to be what you're implicitly suggesting and, for what it's worth, that sort of government is called a dictatorship.
(And, no, politicians can't be "bought" by lobbyists because the politicians are taking bribes for themselves--it's because politicians are taking money that can be used to convince people to re-elect the politician. It's always about convincing other people. Money just helps spread the message.)
If your children are as stupid as Carl Sagan, I think you're darn lucky.
I never really knew people to be pot smokers. I didn't go to parties in high school or college, or hang out with my peers much at all. So while I'm sure I knew a lot of people who smoked pot, the first person I knew as a heavy pot user was a guy I knew online who, upon starting pot use, became a stereotypical stoner. He'd been occasionally annoying, but a reasonably interesting person, but after starting using pot, that pretty much was the only thing he wanted to talk about, plus the occasional conspiracy/rant. (As I said, I only knew him online, but I had a friend who knew him well in real life and she confirms my perceptions.)
Later, though, I moved into a student co-op at UT-Austin. Suddenly I'm hanging out with college students outside of class and a number of them smoked pot frequently--some every day. Completely different results! These people were very smart, responsible, academically successful students, mostly upper-division and several of them in grad school. They didn't go to class high (except maybe the theatre grad student, but that's art), they didn't sit around staring at their fingers (usually it was hard to tell that they were high), and they had aspirations beyond smoking pot. And they're not just thinking about their aspirations. Pot smokers I knew who have graduated went on to work for a law firm (and then came back for grad school), went to grad school for engineering a Berkeley (despite job offers from an engineering firm where he had interned), or work in their field. They're useful, contributing members of society who happen to smoke pot in their off time.
So, yes, my perception of pot smokers has shifted from 'kind of dumb' (when I didn't know any people as pot smokers) to 'pot user often equals stoner = useless person' to 'not significantly more likely to be useless than anyone else'.
(Of course, my sample population is biased. There are co-ops where the culture was very much one of useless stoners. I got one where the culture favored being motivated, responsible, hard-working, and intelligent.)
Debit and credit cards have considerably less risk than the alternative. If your cash is lost/stolen, it's gone. If your credit card or debit card is lost/stolen, you lose a little time dealing with the issue, but you face no financial liability.
Do you like reading math books?
It gives you legal rights in recognizing moral rights.