"Only a clearly written federal shield law will give reporters and their anonymous sources the confidence they need to communicate outside of darkened parking garages."
Darkened parking garages? Please. How about just an office? Or a restaurant."
Yeah, because nobody would ever notice a reporter sitting down to dinner with a high ranking pentagon official. And nobody would take a second notice of a reporter coming in to CIA headquarters with an appointment scheduled with a senior manager. Nor would anyone notice the CIA manager walking into the Washington Posts' office and to meet with a reporter.
I hope and pray and work towards the end that the democrats take at least one house of congress this November -- hopefully the elections won't be stolen.
A lot of slashdotters think that the two American political parties are all but identical, but I don't buy it. If Kerry were president, I doubt we would be in Iraq right now, (and if Gore were president, I doubt we would ever have gone in), and there wouldn't have been so much death in New Orleans.
"According to a recent newspaper article, the new voting machines that will be used where I live will also print out paper stubs."
IIRC, these voting machines with stubs were recently used in the recent special general election for the congressional rep in California's district 50. I heard stories that there were reports of printer malfunctions during the election. Since Buby only lost by 7,195 votes, you don't need very many printers going offline in order to hide malfeseance. Also the results were announced before the absentee ballots were counted.
"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence" is a good meme to spread when you are maliciously manipulating an election.
Make some kind of open-source, secure voting system with an auditable paper trail? AFAICT, such a system would need:
A private, confidential paper receipt, for each vote, that has:
a voter-legible ballot that the voter verifies before leaving the vote,
a bar-code computer scannable version of the vote, and
some kind of code or a non-serial 'serial' number that will indicate any missing paper receipt, or blocks of paper reciepts. We don't want a true serial number so that the vote remains secret and no one can tell who voted for whom by the serial number. Perhaps hashes of hashes?
A secure, electronic, computer version of this receipt that has some kind of data integrity -- not just a tally of bits, but some binary sequence that has some kind of verifiable, tamper-evident integrity. Perhaps this digital ballot would have a hash stored in a seperate log.
This is just a preliminary brainstorm. Perhaps encoded into each vote's serial number would be a running tally? That would be one method of tamper-evidence -- by going through the votes, we should be able to tell where and when exactly the fraud happened. The tally should be consistent all the way through, and by the time the polls are closed, we have tallies for each booth.
The fourth result was a headline from ABC: "New Rig Brings Brazil Oil Self-Sufficiency".
The article says: "The start of production at the P-50 rig off Brazil's south Atlantic coast puts Brazil on track to produce as much oil as it consumes."
Hey folks -- take an honest listen for a moment. I don't want to come off as a new-age hippie, but honestly, the amazon rain forest has millions of poisonous bugs that we currently know nothing about. If you take a trip into the jungle and are a bug-watcher like I am, chances are you will see dozens of insects that currently aren't recognized by science.
The amazon jungle is full of life, and it's all practically poisonous plants and insects. Think about it -- the biggest predator in the jungle is man, and jaguars are a close second, coming in at about 70 pounds. All of the biomass in the jungle is bound up in plants and insects. There has been no downtime in the evolution of living things in the jungle for the past several million years. There is no winter, no dead non-metabolising topsoil -- animals and plants just eating and mating and reproducings generation after generation. The ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin says that the jungle is chemical warfare that has been going on for millions of years.
When I was on an excursion in the jungle of Ecuador, I decided to take a small hike during some downtime in the program. Foolishly I wore only sandals on my feet. Not 15 minutes down the trail, I felt dozens of ants biting my foot. Panicked, I reached down to brush them all off, but there was only three or four ants on my foot! When they bit into my skin, I didn't feel anything, but moments later, I would feel several bites in different places on my foot.
So my long-winded point is that there are millions of potential cancer cures out there, all kinds of medications and interesting chemicals. All of the chemical defenses plants and animals evolve work by interrupting or changing the normal cellular functioning of living organisms. The difference between medicine and poison is a question of dosage, as Plotkin paraphrased Paracelsus.
We really need to work hard to make sure that this incredible resource stays around for future research. I don't know specifically what you and I can do, but awareness is the first step.
My understanding is that Brazil already uses ethanol with almost half its fleet, and is closing in on self-sufficiency as far as their energy needs. They do this by using sugar cane as a source of ethanol instead of corn, because sugar cane gives a higher yield of ethanol than corn.
Could the US grow enough sugar cane in its more tropical parts? Aren't there other crops besides corn and sugar cane which are oily enough to produce ethanol economically? Say, switch grass or hemp?
Say you give the new wonder drug to one guy, and five minutes later he drops dead. Did it have anything to do with the drug? How would you know? I wouldn't want to be the next person injected with that drug.
You have to give the drug to several people at once. That susses out all the different variables that could seem like an effect of the drug. Maybe one person with heart troubles has a heart attack and dies, but no one else does. In that case, it probably was something with that particular person, and not a problem with the drug. If three people have heart attacks, however, then you there might be a problem with the drug.
In fact, to have a scientifically valid experiment, you need two groups, the experimental group and the control group. The experimental group gets the drug, and the control group a placebo. Membership of the groups must be completely randomized, and administration and receipt of the drug must be double-blind: the doctor doesn't know whether they're giving a drug or a placebo, nor does the patient know what they are getting. That way, we not only know if the drug is relatively safe, we also know if it actually *works*.
They are being posted as recuiting tools, but for what percentage of the population will this work for? What about the rest of the populations, mothers, children and mature men? Might it not turn more people against war *along with* recruiting some bloodthirsty young men?
I just surfed on over to Ogrish.com and found this headline and linked video:
Army of Ansar Alsunnah Attacks an Iraqi National Guard Recruitment Center
Friday, July 28 2006
The Army of Ansar Alsunnah, an Iraqi Insurgency group, released a 19 minute video showing a raid on an Iraqi National Guard Recruitment center. The video shows the group capturing members of the Iraqi center and then executing them on the streets. The video then ends with the militants entering the building and destroying the recruiment center with explosives.
What is the criteria by which we call something a 'single' structure? If it's stuff bound by gravity, doesn't gravitational force equally attract everything in the universe? Do we consider stuff bound to itself by one of the other primary forces a single entity?
" Early economies used just about anything that was scarse and of value to the local economy."
That's true. Early economies did use scarce, valuable things as a form of currency. In some places it was seashells, other other places, beans, in other places, tobacco leaves. The problem is, your sea shells are worthless when you travel to a coastal fishing village and want to trade with them. ( And don't think that trade was rare before modern transportation. People traveled extensively on foot and horseback). The one constant of value throughout the entire world and history is gold, silver, and gems. The reason is because everyone, everywhere, think it is valuable because of its effects on the human nervous system, which all people share.
Native American empires were obsessed with gold, just like every other empire on the planet. When the Spanish conquered the Aztecs, Maya, and Inca, they looted thousands of tons of gold from royal storehouses. The Incan subjects in the Amazon paid their taxes in gold that they panned from the rivers. In places where gold wasn't readily available, like Ohio, precious, shiny metal like copper and beautiful gemstones like obsidian and rainbow flint were the objects of value, and they are found in gravesites and mounds all over the midwest.
The intrisic value of precious metal and stones are the pleasurable and captivating effects they have on the human nervous system. It's the sort of the same thing that pleasure drugs like herion exhibit on the nervous system. When people look at shiny, pretty things, opioids are released in their brain and they get a little high. It's not that society decided and ordained "Gold is valuable!" It's that everyone who comes across a piece of it is captivated by its color and glow, and wants to hang onto it. This is why all over the world, throughout time, on every continent and in every kingdom, gold, silver, and precious stones have been the ultimate medium of value. If society had decided to arbitrarily place value on it, we should find some place on Earth where people didn't care about gold. But no such place exists. Gold is literally the gold standard, everywhere.
OK, keep in mind that 1984 was *fiction*. It was not a prediction, prophecy, fate or destiny. If the society we live in isn't a complete duplicate of 1984, that doesn't mean that we don't have less freedom, or that the government isn't spying on us without proper oversight, or even illegally. We could come into a police state that bears little resemblance of 1984.
What you should be looking at is how actual, real dictators came to power and how real police states were formed.
Yes, things are pretty good right now. No, that doesn't mean that it will stay that way, or continue to get better. Yes, we still need to work hard and remain vigilent to make sure that things continue to get better. America is not a magical place where all is good and must be that way. The same evil personality types that became dictators and created hell on earth in other countries exist here, and they are working mercilessly and without conscience to gain ever more power.
Right now, the Republicans in congress are preventing the democrats in congress from even having a room to hold hearings.
The patriot act was passed with very little debate because, in the short time after Sept 11th, no lawmaker could afford to look like (s)he didn't want to do anything. The country was "under attack" and the president was immensely popular.
If the Democrats win the house, Representative John Conyers will get to hold hearings with witnesses *under oath* about intelligence failures before 9/11, intelligence preparations before the Iraq war, and allegations of voter fraud in Florida and Ohio.
If you really want to find out what Bush and Cheney are up to, you will have to vote democrat this fall.
In short, yes,
Currently the democrats are doing what they have to in order to politically survive until 2006 and 2008. With the republicans in control of both houses of congress and the white house, the democrats have *almost absolutely no power whatsoever*. They can't get their bills onto the floor, they can't get rooms for hearings, etc.
All I'm saying is that when I picked up the GI Joe and had him playing with Barbie, they were still GI Joe and Barbie. They didn't have the plasticity of identity that the stick or cardboard box or modelling clay has. When I played hotwheels, they were still cars, even if they were flying cars or talking cars. When I played with He-man, he was still a fantasy barbarian. If I wanted robots, I got out the transformers.
Apprently all the other slashdotters here grew up playing with toys and imagining scenarios that had no input whatsoever from the toys that were in front of them. They would play transformers with GI Joe figures and play 4-dimensional chess on risk boards. Sheesh!;)
"If you go into things with the mindset that someone is out to screw you just because they're trying to earn a living, you'll never get anywhere in life."
I'm not saying that they are trying to screw you. All I'm saying is that you can't have absolute trust that the other person has your best interests in mind. You are the only person who can have your best interests in mind.
He does have to make a living, sure. That's no problem. He makes a living by selling stocks and mutual funds. Maybe he says this stock, maybe he says that mutual fund. But chances are his answer will not be "stocks and mutual funds aren't right for you right now. Go to a bank and buy a CD". Stocks are a *long-term* investment. Like, a 20-50 year investment. If this guy is a college kid, stocks are probably wrong for him.
My point is, just don't go the the first financial advisor you find in the phone book and say, "This is all my money, what should I do with it?" It's like going to a car dealership and asking the salesperson, "Is it the right time to buy a car? Should I buy a car from you today?" With a salesperson, the answer is always "yes, you need to buy today, right now, from me".
You are right. You can't go through life thinking everyone is out to rob you blind. But, you can't go to the other extreme and trust everyone. I would advice this guy to talk to several people, even lots of people if he can. Stop by a bank, talk to a few financial advisors, ask slashdot, talk to parents and parents of friends ( I don't recommend asking friends at this point -- they have no experience and no failures), and *then* make a decision.
First off, I have to say that you probably do have greater imaginative power than I do.
If you have a look at a cardboard refridgerator box, you will notice that there is nothing about it that indicates that it is a refridgerator box. It is a box, but it is a *refridgerator* box in name only, not in function. At one time, it may have had a refridgerator in it, or it may have even had a washing machine in it. Maybe it never contained any appliance at all (despite whatever it was originally manufactured for). It is more generic, and therefore has greater possibility in my weakly imaginative mind. The castle playset was sometimes the Hotwheels carwash, but more often then not the shoebox with some holes cut in it was a better all-purpose building in Hotwheels land.
Take your Risk example. It's very creative and clever what you and your friends did with the boards. How much more possiliby do you invite if you got rid of the boards altogether? If you got rid of every Risk element? Why, then you have potential for anything and everything.
If I have to imagine that the robots legs can do the splits when it's obviously physically impossible, why should I do all that work? The robot has legs, they look like legs, they move *somewhat* like legs, but only up to a point. It's the uncanny valley phenomenon. Obviously they were designed with the intention to be as much like real legs as possible, but they fail miserably when it comes to actually getting around or kicking bad guys. If it takes all that imaginative work to overcome the robot's malfunctional legs, why not just get rid of the stupid robot altogether? By contrast, the stick has limitless possibility. It wasn't built to be a rifle, therefore it doesn't fail to live up to my expectations. Likewise as the sword or magical staff. It's not an obvious contradiction to my imagination. It can't fail in its role because it *has* no pre-defined role.
I don't understand your argument about the blank page book versus fan fiction. If you write a story and call it Star Wars fan fiction, but it has no Force, no Empire, no light sabers, Jedis, wookies, spaceships, stars, or wars, in what sense is it even Star Wars fan fiction? It would be just as if you had started with the blank pages. What is the myth that an unwritten story has more possibility than fan fiction?
First thing, don't carry any credit card debt. The rape you with interest rates and fees. If you can't pay off your card every month, don't use a card. I've diligently paid off my card every month for 10 years and have never paid interest. I have some friends, however, who are incapable of doing this. Not that I'm better than them; it's just that people are different.
Secondly, there is good debt and bad debt. A student loan is good debt. A mortgage is good debt. A car loan can be good debt. An education, a house, and typically a car are good investments and are worth the interest you will pay on the loan. Credit card debt, financing for a wide screen TV, etc. is bad debt. It's just a sinkhole for money.
You will hear a lot of people who will advise you to pay off all your debts before you invest anything. I actually advise you do keep modest debt and do modest savings. In my case, I got a lot of student loans which I locked into a 3% interest rate. I could have paid back most of my student loans, but instead I chose to put the money in an IRA. I have a car loan at 5% interest rate, which I could pay off, but instead I put the money in an IRA. Why is this? It's because I have no problem making sure that I make my car payments every month -- I don't want my car reposessed -- but I do have a problem sending money into savings every month. Think about it -- most people are able to pay their bills every month -- there are immediate repercussions if you don't. But, when people have extra money, they have a hard time putting it into savings. If you have all your debts paid off and you have extra money, most people will splurge it.
In a year and a half, my car loan will be paid off. I will also have a substantial chunk of change in the IRA. I don't know if I would have been able to save that big of a chunk if I had paid off all of my debts years ago -- the temptation to travel somewhere or buy something really expensive ( c'mon -- when would I ever have this much money again) would have been too great. That's just me, though -- maybe you are different.
I don't advise you to live like a monk, but also don't live like a party boy. Have a decent social live in school. Don't avoid going out on the weekend to save money ( but you could avoid a ski weekend or spring break in cancun). Human beings are social, emotional animals, and close friends and good buddies are an absolute *necessity* for mental and *physical* health. A network of people will also be invaluable when it comes time to get a job, find a new one, or decompress after dealing with a bad boss. We are social animals and friends are your greatest asset. Also keep in mind that marriage is a legal contract that merges your two finances, so taking the time to pick the good significant other is a wise investment of your time and finances.
Finally, as far as what specfically to invest in, here is my strategy: have enough liquidity to get you to the next investment. First off, start with savings. Build up enough in your savings account ( seperate from your checking account) that you could go a few months if you lose your job. The savings account really has a poor rate of return, but you are just creating a cushion here. Once you have enough for a couple of months, start buying CDs from a bank. These have a guaranteed return, but have a penalty if you withdrawal early, so you can't rely on them during joblessness. Buy one-month, then a three-month, then six-month, then a year, so that you have money maturing at those intervals. One you have a steady set of maturing funds, you can afford to keep the money in the CD longer, so you get a better rate.
Finally, then invest in *mutual funds* with money that *you won't need for years*. Mutual funds are a long-term investment, and you might lose money if you have to pull it out in five or even 10 years.
Don't buy individual stocks; you don't have the expertise or time to understand how well an individual company is doing -- nor should you. Leave it to the professional mu
Slashdot Mirror
"Only a clearly written federal shield law will give reporters and their anonymous sources the confidence they need to communicate outside of darkened parking garages."
Darkened parking garages? Please. How about just an office? Or a restaurant."
Yeah, because nobody would ever notice a reporter sitting down to dinner with a high ranking pentagon official. And nobody would take a second notice of a reporter coming in to CIA headquarters with an appointment scheduled with a senior manager. Nor would anyone notice the CIA manager walking into the Washington Posts' office and to meet with a reporter.
I hope and pray and work towards the end that the democrats take at least one house of congress this November -- hopefully the elections won't be stolen.
A lot of slashdotters think that the two American political parties are all but identical, but I don't buy it. If Kerry were president, I doubt we would be in Iraq right now, (and if Gore were president, I doubt we would ever have gone in), and there wouldn't have been so much death in New Orleans.
"According to a recent newspaper article, the new voting machines that will be used where I live will also print out paper stubs."
IIRC, these voting machines with stubs were recently used in the recent special general election for the congressional rep in California's district 50. I heard stories that there were reports of printer malfunctions during the election. Since Buby only lost by 7,195 votes, you don't need very many printers going offline in order to hide malfeseance. Also the results were announced before the absentee ballots were counted.
"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence" is a good meme to spread when you are maliciously manipulating an election.
- A private, confidential paper receipt, for each vote, that has:
- a voter-legible ballot that the voter verifies before leaving the vote,
-
a bar-code computer scannable version of the vote, and
- some kind of code or a non-serial 'serial' number that will indicate any missing paper receipt, or blocks of paper reciepts. We don't want a true serial number so that the vote remains secret and no one can tell who voted for whom by the serial number. Perhaps hashes of hashes?
- A secure, electronic, computer version of this receipt that has some kind of data integrity -- not just a tally of bits, but some binary sequence that has some kind of verifiable, tamper-evident integrity. Perhaps this digital ballot would have a hash stored in a seperate log.
This is just a preliminary brainstorm. Perhaps encoded into each vote's serial number would be a running tally? That would be one method of tamper-evidence -- by going through the votes, we should be able to tell where and when exactly the fraud happened. The tally should be consistent all the way through, and by the time the polls are closed, we have tallies for each booth.Thanks, figment. Googling was a good idea.
The fourth result was a headline from ABC: "New Rig Brings Brazil Oil Self-Sufficiency".
The article says: "The start of production at the P-50 rig off Brazil's south Atlantic coast puts Brazil on track to produce as much oil as it consumes."
Thank you.
Hey folks -- take an honest listen for a moment. I don't want to come off as a new-age hippie, but honestly, the amazon rain forest has millions of poisonous bugs that we currently know nothing about. If you take a trip into the jungle and are a bug-watcher like I am, chances are you will see dozens of insects that currently aren't recognized by science.
The amazon jungle is full of life, and it's all practically poisonous plants and insects. Think about it -- the biggest predator in the jungle is man, and jaguars are a close second, coming in at about 70 pounds. All of the biomass in the jungle is bound up in plants and insects. There has been no downtime in the evolution of living things in the jungle for the past several million years. There is no winter, no dead non-metabolising topsoil -- animals and plants just eating and mating and reproducings generation after generation. The ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin says that the jungle is chemical warfare that has been going on for millions of years.
When I was on an excursion in the jungle of Ecuador, I decided to take a small hike during some downtime in the program. Foolishly I wore only sandals on my feet. Not 15 minutes down the trail, I felt dozens of ants biting my foot. Panicked, I reached down to brush them all off, but there was only three or four ants on my foot! When they bit into my skin, I didn't feel anything, but moments later, I would feel several bites in different places on my foot.
So my long-winded point is that there are millions of potential cancer cures out there, all kinds of medications and interesting chemicals. All of the chemical defenses plants and animals evolve work by interrupting or changing the normal cellular functioning of living organisms. The difference between medicine and poison is a question of dosage, as Plotkin paraphrased Paracelsus. We really need to work hard to make sure that this incredible resource stays around for future research. I don't know specifically what you and I can do, but awareness is the first step.
My understanding is that Brazil already uses ethanol with almost half its fleet, and is closing in on self-sufficiency as far as their energy needs. They do this by using sugar cane as a source of ethanol instead of corn, because sugar cane gives a higher yield of ethanol than corn.
Could the US grow enough sugar cane in its more tropical parts? Aren't there other crops besides corn and sugar cane which are oily enough to produce ethanol economically? Say, switch grass or hemp?
Say you give the new wonder drug to one guy, and five minutes later he drops dead. Did it have anything to do with the drug? How would you know? I wouldn't want to be the next person injected with that drug.
You have to give the drug to several people at once. That susses out all the different variables that could seem like an effect of the drug. Maybe one person with heart troubles has a heart attack and dies, but no one else does. In that case, it probably was something with that particular person, and not a problem with the drug. If three people have heart attacks, however, then you there might be a problem with the drug.
In fact, to have a scientifically valid experiment, you need two groups, the experimental group and the control group. The experimental group gets the drug, and the control group a placebo. Membership of the groups must be completely randomized, and administration and receipt of the drug must be double-blind: the doctor doesn't know whether they're giving a drug or a placebo, nor does the patient know what they are getting. That way, we not only know if the drug is relatively safe, we also know if it actually *works*.
Sean Connery, is that you?
"It seems to me like theyre doing the cyber equivalent to nasa that isrealis are doing to lebanese civillian centers."
It seems to me to be kind of the same idea... The bombs and military equipment that the Israelis are using are primarily American manufactured.
They are being posted as recuiting tools, but for what percentage of the population will this work for? What about the rest of the populations, mothers, children and mature men? Might it not turn more people against war *along with* recruiting some bloodthirsty young men?
I just surfed on over to Ogrish.com and found this headline and linked video:
Army of Ansar Alsunnah Attacks an Iraqi National Guard Recruitment Center
Friday, July 28 2006
The Army of Ansar Alsunnah, an Iraqi Insurgency group, released a 19 minute video showing a raid on an Iraqi National Guard Recruitment center. The video shows the group capturing members of the Iraqi center and then executing them on the streets. The video then ends with the militants entering the building and destroying the recruiment center with explosives.
Wow.
What is the criteria by which we call something a 'single' structure? If it's stuff bound by gravity, doesn't gravitational force equally attract everything in the universe? Do we consider stuff bound to itself by one of the other primary forces a single entity?
" Early economies used just about anything that was scarse and of value to the local economy."
That's true. Early economies did use scarce, valuable things as a form of currency. In some places it was seashells, other other places, beans, in other places, tobacco leaves. The problem is, your sea shells are worthless when you travel to a coastal fishing village and want to trade with them. ( And don't think that trade was rare before modern transportation. People traveled extensively on foot and horseback). The one constant of value throughout the entire world and history is gold, silver, and gems. The reason is because everyone, everywhere, think it is valuable because of its effects on the human nervous system, which all people share.
Native American empires were obsessed with gold, just like every other empire on the planet. When the Spanish conquered the Aztecs, Maya, and Inca, they looted thousands of tons of gold from royal storehouses. The Incan subjects in the Amazon paid their taxes in gold that they panned from the rivers. In places where gold wasn't readily available, like Ohio, precious, shiny metal like copper and beautiful gemstones like obsidian and rainbow flint were the objects of value, and they are found in gravesites and mounds all over the midwest.
The intrisic value of precious metal and stones are the pleasurable and captivating effects they have on the human nervous system. It's the sort of the same thing that pleasure drugs like herion exhibit on the nervous system. When people look at shiny, pretty things, opioids are released in their brain and they get a little high. It's not that society decided and ordained "Gold is valuable!" It's that everyone who comes across a piece of it is captivated by its color and glow, and wants to hang onto it. This is why all over the world, throughout time, on every continent and in every kingdom, gold, silver, and precious stones have been the ultimate medium of value. If society had decided to arbitrarily place value on it, we should find some place on Earth where people didn't care about gold. But no such place exists. Gold is literally the gold standard, everywhere.
OK, keep in mind that 1984 was *fiction*. It was not a prediction, prophecy, fate or destiny. If the society we live in isn't a complete duplicate of 1984, that doesn't mean that we don't have less freedom, or that the government isn't spying on us without proper oversight, or even illegally. We could come into a police state that bears little resemblance of 1984.
What you should be looking at is how actual, real dictators came to power and how real police states were formed. Yes, things are pretty good right now. No, that doesn't mean that it will stay that way, or continue to get better. Yes, we still need to work hard and remain vigilent to make sure that things continue to get better. America is not a magical place where all is good and must be that way. The same evil personality types that became dictators and created hell on earth in other countries exist here, and they are working mercilessly and without conscience to gain ever more power.
Right now, the Republicans in congress are preventing the democrats in congress from even having a room to hold hearings.
The patriot act was passed with very little debate because, in the short time after Sept 11th, no lawmaker could afford to look like (s)he didn't want to do anything. The country was "under attack" and the president was immensely popular.
If the Democrats win the house, Representative John Conyers will get to hold hearings with witnesses *under oath* about intelligence failures before 9/11, intelligence preparations before the Iraq war, and allegations of voter fraud in Florida and Ohio. If you really want to find out what Bush and Cheney are up to, you will have to vote democrat this fall.
In short, yes, Currently the democrats are doing what they have to in order to politically survive until 2006 and 2008. With the republicans in control of both houses of congress and the white house, the democrats have *almost absolutely no power whatsoever*. They can't get their bills onto the floor, they can't get rooms for hearings, etc.
Besides peaches being a source of cyanide, also note that the only source of ricin, one of the most deadly poisons known to man, is castor beans.
"As a Brit, (a nation with arguably some of the best sarcasm/irony in comedy),..."
Yes, some of the best sarcasm and irony in comedy, but when it comes to party-pooping, being a wet towel, and snootiness, nobody beats the British!
"So if these MECO are for real, then gravitational collapse canot result in a singularity, which is nice, right? Then how about the big bang?"
The universe came from a small MECO?
All I'm saying is that when I picked up the GI Joe and had him playing with Barbie, they were still GI Joe and Barbie. They didn't have the plasticity of identity that the stick or cardboard box or modelling clay has. When I played hotwheels, they were still cars, even if they were flying cars or talking cars. When I played with He-man, he was still a fantasy barbarian. If I wanted robots, I got out the transformers.
;)
Apprently all the other slashdotters here grew up playing with toys and imagining scenarios that had no input whatsoever from the toys that were in front of them. They would play transformers with GI Joe figures and play 4-dimensional chess on risk boards. Sheesh!
" It will look like freeze-dried coffee in a little bag."
Okay... but what about the flavor ?
"If you go into things with the mindset that someone is out to screw you just because they're trying to earn a living, you'll never get anywhere in life."
I'm not saying that they are trying to screw you. All I'm saying is that you can't have absolute trust that the other person has your best interests in mind. You are the only person who can have your best interests in mind.
He does have to make a living, sure. That's no problem. He makes a living by selling stocks and mutual funds. Maybe he says this stock, maybe he says that mutual fund. But chances are his answer will not be "stocks and mutual funds aren't right for you right now. Go to a bank and buy a CD". Stocks are a *long-term* investment. Like, a 20-50 year investment. If this guy is a college kid, stocks are probably wrong for him.
My point is, just don't go the the first financial advisor you find in the phone book and say, "This is all my money, what should I do with it?" It's like going to a car dealership and asking the salesperson, "Is it the right time to buy a car? Should I buy a car from you today?" With a salesperson, the answer is always "yes, you need to buy today, right now, from me".
You are right. You can't go through life thinking everyone is out to rob you blind. But, you can't go to the other extreme and trust everyone. I would advice this guy to talk to several people, even lots of people if he can. Stop by a bank, talk to a few financial advisors, ask slashdot, talk to parents and parents of friends ( I don't recommend asking friends at this point -- they have no experience and no failures), and *then* make a decision.
First off, I have to say that you probably do have greater imaginative power than I do.
If you have a look at a cardboard refridgerator box, you will notice that there is nothing about it that indicates that it is a refridgerator box. It is a box, but it is a *refridgerator* box in name only, not in function. At one time, it may have had a refridgerator in it, or it may have even had a washing machine in it. Maybe it never contained any appliance at all (despite whatever it was originally manufactured for). It is more generic, and therefore has greater possibility in my weakly imaginative mind. The castle playset was sometimes the Hotwheels carwash, but more often then not the shoebox with some holes cut in it was a better all-purpose building in Hotwheels land. Take your Risk example. It's very creative and clever what you and your friends did with the boards. How much more possiliby do you invite if you got rid of the boards altogether? If you got rid of every Risk element? Why, then you have potential for anything and everything.
If I have to imagine that the robots legs can do the splits when it's obviously physically impossible, why should I do all that work? The robot has legs, they look like legs, they move *somewhat* like legs, but only up to a point. It's the uncanny valley phenomenon. Obviously they were designed with the intention to be as much like real legs as possible, but they fail miserably when it comes to actually getting around or kicking bad guys. If it takes all that imaginative work to overcome the robot's malfunctional legs, why not just get rid of the stupid robot altogether? By contrast, the stick has limitless possibility. It wasn't built to be a rifle, therefore it doesn't fail to live up to my expectations. Likewise as the sword or magical staff. It's not an obvious contradiction to my imagination. It can't fail in its role because it *has* no pre-defined role.
I don't understand your argument about the blank page book versus fan fiction. If you write a story and call it Star Wars fan fiction, but it has no Force, no Empire, no light sabers, Jedis, wookies, spaceships, stars, or wars, in what sense is it even Star Wars fan fiction? It would be just as if you had started with the blank pages. What is the myth that an unwritten story has more possibility than fan fiction?
First thing, don't carry any credit card debt. The rape you with interest rates and fees. If you can't pay off your card every month, don't use a card. I've diligently paid off my card every month for 10 years and have never paid interest. I have some friends, however, who are incapable of doing this. Not that I'm better than them; it's just that people are different.
Secondly, there is good debt and bad debt. A student loan is good debt. A mortgage is good debt. A car loan can be good debt. An education, a house, and typically a car are good investments and are worth the interest you will pay on the loan. Credit card debt, financing for a wide screen TV, etc. is bad debt. It's just a sinkhole for money.
You will hear a lot of people who will advise you to pay off all your debts before you invest anything. I actually advise you do keep modest debt and do modest savings. In my case, I got a lot of student loans which I locked into a 3% interest rate. I could have paid back most of my student loans, but instead I chose to put the money in an IRA. I have a car loan at 5% interest rate, which I could pay off, but instead I put the money in an IRA. Why is this? It's because I have no problem making sure that I make my car payments every month -- I don't want my car reposessed -- but I do have a problem sending money into savings every month. Think about it -- most people are able to pay their bills every month -- there are immediate repercussions if you don't. But, when people have extra money, they have a hard time putting it into savings. If you have all your debts paid off and you have extra money, most people will splurge it.
In a year and a half, my car loan will be paid off. I will also have a substantial chunk of change in the IRA. I don't know if I would have been able to save that big of a chunk if I had paid off all of my debts years ago -- the temptation to travel somewhere or buy something really expensive ( c'mon -- when would I ever have this much money again) would have been too great. That's just me, though -- maybe you are different.
I don't advise you to live like a monk, but also don't live like a party boy. Have a decent social live in school. Don't avoid going out on the weekend to save money ( but you could avoid a ski weekend or spring break in cancun). Human beings are social, emotional animals, and close friends and good buddies are an absolute *necessity* for mental and *physical* health. A network of people will also be invaluable when it comes time to get a job, find a new one, or decompress after dealing with a bad boss. We are social animals and friends are your greatest asset. Also keep in mind that marriage is a legal contract that merges your two finances, so taking the time to pick the good significant other is a wise investment of your time and finances.
Finally, as far as what specfically to invest in, here is my strategy: have enough liquidity to get you to the next investment. First off, start with savings. Build up enough in your savings account ( seperate from your checking account) that you could go a few months if you lose your job. The savings account really has a poor rate of return, but you are just creating a cushion here. Once you have enough for a couple of months, start buying CDs from a bank. These have a guaranteed return, but have a penalty if you withdrawal early, so you can't rely on them during joblessness. Buy one-month, then a three-month, then six-month, then a year, so that you have money maturing at those intervals. One you have a steady set of maturing funds, you can afford to keep the money in the CD longer, so you get a better rate.
Finally, then invest in *mutual funds* with money that *you won't need for years*. Mutual funds are a long-term investment, and you might lose money if you have to pull it out in five or even 10 years.
Don't buy individual stocks; you don't have the expertise or time to understand how well an individual company is doing -- nor should you. Leave it to the professional mu