You think a few militias would be able to stop a huge organized army, armed with fighter jets?
Iraqi fighter jets? Sorry, those birds barely fly.
Heck Iraq couldn't even defeat Iran, who's most advanced weapons were teenagers with AK-47s. And carriers? You are really paranoid, they'd have decades of infrastructure to develop before they could even build a Clemenceau equivalent carrier, and those have a tendancy to surrender at the slightest threat. Not to mention that you can't 'conquer' anyone with carriers and fighter jets, Iraq would need troop carriers and landing ships, all of which could be stopped by a single Seawolf (remember, you cancled the Army, not the Navy) while they trundled accross the Atlantic.
Meanwhile, if we spent the money on securing our presence in space, we could just aim a few large meteors at Bagdad, with the benefit that there would be no fallout to upset our Israeli friends...
A rather large amount of electric power in this country is provided by heavy oil plants -- which burn imported oil, at least in part.
Actually, it's not a "large amount" at all, check your figures. In fact, US reserves would last for a very long time if all we did was generate electricity at the rate we do today from them.
As far as pollution, it stinks, but even US coal fired plants produce less pollution per kilowatt than a car (even a economy car), again check your figs.
Further, most e-vehicles are much more efficient than gas powered ones, for instance it takes ~5 cents of electricity for me to go 30 miles on my e-bike.
But I agree with you about nuclear power, we should be generating at least %50 of US power from IFR style nuke plants. Hopefully progressives can break away from the greens on this issue and get some safe and clean nuke plants built! It is entirely ridiculous that the "green" opposition to nukes is forcing more coal plants to be built, which (in burning radioactive coal) release more rads into the environment than all the nuke plants (including Chernobyl!) combined!
4 miles is easy on an electric bike or scooter, take a patriotic risk to stop supporting oil fueled terrorism! Look at the E-go, for instance, it's big enough so drivers will see you.
Since I got it I drive my cars less than once/week instead of every day.
A co-worker has an electric scooter from EVDeals, which is also very fun to ride, nice cruising along at 20mph with the wind in your face and making almost no noise or smog.
If you need more speed, the Voloci electric motorbike is also very kewl. We can all stick it a little bit to Saddam and the Quaeda funding Saudis by going electric.
In fact I would say that folks who go electric should be applauded as patriots while the 12mpg SUVs with their "God Bless America" flags seem just a bit oxymoronic, if you know what I mean...
By Canada? Mexico? I think the National Gaurd could handle the mighty Mexican Army pretty well while we bribe the Canadians with real beer. In fact, I would say we could probably even defend Alaska and Hiwaii just fine with ~%5 military budget, esp. if we spent the other %12 building a dominant presense in space.
From where we could always drop big rocks on anyone who bothers us.
Since our defense increasingly depends on satellites, which can be pretty easily disposed of by a nation with a presence in space.
Not to mention that large rocks dropped from space have the power of expensive ICBMs without the fallout or the ability of "brilliant pebbles" or airborne lasers to do much about them.
The converse is that the nation that controls space won't really need much of an earth based military to defend itself from military action (though it will need one if it wants to "defend" itself by invading someone else).
Which is maybe why traditionaly military institutions & thinkers tend to view spending money on space exploration and development with some derision...
you are using some other definition of atom
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than the one used by physicists:
Negative, moving atomic particles around is not equivalent to making an atom no more than cooking an omelet makes you a chicken.
Atoms are of course made of sub-atomic particles, and are formed by "moving" sub-atomic particles, so this makes no sense. If you move a proton and an electron together, you have made a hydrogen atom. If you add a neutron, you have made a helium atom, refresh your knoledge of atomic theory, please.
You also seem to be building a false dichotomy between theory and fact: fact is, scientific theories describe facts (generally called observations). We see the fact that things fall when you drop them, and derive from that the theory of gravity. We see the fact that species exist and change over time and develop from that the theory of evolution.
Meanwhile predictions are made based on a theory to see if theories do in fact describe facts, if predictive experiments haven't been done, the theory is called a hypothesis.
But you seem to be using the term 'theory' in the way scientists use 'hypothesis', which makes your arguments regarding science rather illogical. We both have to agree something is a hammer before we can discuss hammers, so long as you keep insisting a hammer is a chicken, the process will lead to neither a well driven nail nor to a tasty omelette.
Re:Marx stole the concept of the dialectic
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His dialectical method was more about thinking and how to reach a conclusion, rather than how matters progress in nature, thesis + antithesis = synthesis.
Well, don't forget that the synthesis becomes the new thesis, and the wheel turns on. But I think it applies more to how cultural ideals evolve than simply how one reachs a conclusion.
There is really no 'antithesis' in evolution, thus you couldn't use the dialectical method in evolution.
Right, well I was really pointing out that the dialectic can be a useful tool to understand and even predict how human ideas will evolove, not so much natural systems. I agree that it is usually a bad idea to use anthropomorphic metaphors when trying to describe evolution (or other complex scientific theories). A dialectical methodology is useful only when there is interaction between the two ideals or features. So it might be a useful way to look at predator prey relationships, or sexual selection, for instance, but not so useful for speciation due to land bridges or other external (to the system) natural events.
However, the term is perhaps perpetually tainted by Marx's pseudo-religious movement, such that to even mention it one is called a Marxist rather than a Hegelist, as most people actually seem to believe Marx's claims that his ideas were an extension and refinement of Hegel's rather than a corruption.
Marx stole the concept of the dialectic
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from Hegel, and unfortunately tainted a rather useful concept in the process.
For Hegel, the dialectic was the observeable process of societal change to a more complex state, which Marx misrepresented as a controllable process with a finite goal: the Worker's Paradise. Of course, if you are trying to get folks to follow you, it's best to promise them a better world will result from drinking your koolaid.
Which maybe is why Marxists don't like Evolution, since like Hegel's dialectic, Evolution is an ongoing process without an ideal ending, rather a road to Paradise.
PS, try reading the Manifesto and then reading Revelations sometime, the two are eerily similar...
Huh? Anti Matter Physics?
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Most interesting assertion, but, adding energy to a system increases its entropy, not its order.
Huh? Is that -2lot? The 2lot that works in an anti-matter universe? Here, in this universe, releasing energy from a system increases entropy & decreases order (a bush burned to ash), while adding energy to a system tends to decrease entropy and increase order (the growing bush before it burned).
Of course if one system releases so much energy that it overwhelms the ability of another system to absorb that energy, both systems can release their energy and decrease their order (the invisible flame thrower with which might Thor ignited the bush), but in both cases the release of energy accompanies the decrease in entropy and order as the systems burn to a lower energy state (ashes to ashes).
But if you are from an anti-matter universe, I can see how this whole debate would be very confusing to you...
By what cause did "natural selection" arise?
Different issue entirely, but I glad you are starting to see that it has nothing to do with 2lot in the normal matter universe, since yes we are getting a "free lunch" from the god formerly known as Ra. Organic molecules tend to organize themselves in the presence of a steady input of energy, so once we have the free lunch courtesy of the Sun, increasing order is entirely expected.
Of course, non of this speculation is a valid criticism of the theory of evolution, since evolution specifically deals with what happens after the first life has formed...
Once you have the first 2 life forms, small differences between the two lead one to do better in a slightly higher place and the other to do better in a slightly lower place, and so natural selection begins.
So what you are really asking when talking about thermodynamics is where does the energy needed to reverse entropy come from? The aswer is big, hot, and round, and has often been called a god in the past, but unlike the Xian god can be seen quite easily with the human eye.
Meanwhile, the origin of the first cell is interesting (and certainly there are plenty of researchers who aren't afraid of looking into that), but has nothing to do with evolution, since Evolution is the theory of what happened AFTER the first cell formed (which is why Darwin's book is called the Origin of the Species, not the Origin of Life.
The answer wasn't "Just Believe" it was
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"think about it"...
Easy enough: start with an ambush predator (on that lies in wait for prey, there are plenty of those), due to a slight mutation one comes along with a lighter or slightly raised patch on it's head, some fish swim in to check it out and are more easily caught, members of the species with the variation tend to catch more, and thus have more offspring. Many of the offspring have the raised patch, some a bit larger some a bit smaller.
The ones with a bit larger catch more and have more offspring, and so on, eventually you have something like an angler fish, no magic hand waving & no faith required, just small changes that confer small advantages that are selected for over millions of years...
Mutation, recombination, and selection
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No other source needed.
A system which isn't directed towards any goal teleologically goes nowhere.
This sentence anthropomorphizes a natural process: think about it, what is the "direction" of plate tectonics? The "direction" of planetary orbits?
Likewise, evolution doesn't have a "goal" and it's not "directed", rather life survives by being flexible, and that flexibility takes new forms. Forms that survive well in the new conditions make lots of copies of themselves, while forms that don't change or change in a way that doesn't work so well don't make lots of copies, and disappear.
By the way, Gould most certainly did "touch on this" in fact devoted a good deal of Wonderful Life to describing where new genetic information comes from.
Yeah, too bad we can't prove Macro-Gravity either
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Until scientists orbit a Moon sized object around an Earth sized object in the lab, there is no way to prove that Macrogravity is not really caused by the invisible hand of the Lord Jesus Christ!
While one can test microgravity by dropping an apple from a suitably leaning tower, science only draws it's conclusions about macrogravity from observation and forensic evidence, just like Macroevolution. But all good Xians know that this "evidence" the anti-religion scientists put forth is really put there by the dark one to fool us!
We must stop these anti-religious scientists from teaching our children to distrust the invisible hand of Christ and so commit all sorts of immoral acts I can't even begin to type, with their subversive theory of MacroGravity!
their jobs are actual improvements over their rural standards of living.
But one of course had to define how far back one is going to measure these 'rural standards of living', which often were better for average peasents before industrial farming methods (see Scott's "Weapons of the Weak" for a good description of how the coming of modern farming practices often reduces the living standards of average peasants.
Of course, after labor has been replaced by tractors and small land owners have been kicked off their family plots, their living standards are often quite bad, and working for barely under subsistance wages in a factory may be a marginal improvement, in an 'out of the frying pan into the fire' sort of way (Scott goes into that as well, pointing out the similarites to the Highland Clearences in the dawn of the Industrial Revolution
If mine is a "quasi-pastoral view of underdevelopment" fine, no matter how many syllables you throw at me, I still say that if it would be exploitation to treat an American that way, it is exploitation to treat a Malay that way. Call me simple minded if you like.
I find it hard to believe that there are large externalities associated with spinning cotton into fiber.
While the environmental impacts of more chemically intensive industries are often much easier to measure, making cheap jeans has a negative impact as well:
Denim jeans are made from cotton - the world's most popular fibre, which still provides as much yarn as all the 'modern' artificial fibres put together. Cotton crops cover 34 million hectares of the surface of the earth and use 25% of all the world's pesticides. An estimated one million cases of pesticide poisoning and 20,000 deaths per year are attributable to cotton.
if you did, you might see that my post was in response to CEOs who make absurdly more than their employees, not CEOs who make a reasonable amount more than their employees.
Hey, some managers do add alot of value, but generally it is the ones who could jump in and code (or whatever the main business of the corp. is) if needed, and the best ones do jump in when needed. Of course, such folks tend to not be comfortable making 500x times more than their top producing employees.
With a bit of maturity you might have realized that a while ago instead of playing the childish game of asking if the CEO could do your specific job.
Yeah right, and with a bit of maturity you might realise that folks who don't understand the guts of the business they are leading can't make intelligent decisions about that business. IOW, this country is overun with MBAs who think it's "mature" to believe they can lead without knowledge of the nuts and bolts (or 1s and 0s)...
Guess I'm not up on the latest revisionist version of the Civil War, all those poor, innocent southerners who lost their god given right to own another human being, how tragic...
I think a better place to put the blame is on activist judges who (in the late 1800s through the 1930s) took the 14thA and the Commerce clause far beyond the letter and the intent. A practice which is still common today, even among (especially among?) conservative "strict constructionist" justices...
The equal-protection clause shields only against purposeful discrimination: a disparate impact, even upon members of a racial minority, . . . does not violate equal protection. . . . [W]e have regularly required more of an equal-protection claimant than a showing that state action has a harsher effect on him or her than on others.
as a nation in our words about human rights and environmental protection.
Sure you can get goods cheaper if you buy from countries where its ok to make workers work for subsistence (or below) level wages, and allow factories to dump raw sewage.
A simple solution would be to only let nations sell here if they pay workers the US minimum wage, enforce the US minimum workplace laws, and obey US environmental regs.
For the tech industry, offshore programmers could undersell US programmers only if the same workplace regs. regarding humane workplace conditions, overtime, etc. were followed. This would level the playing field to one of raw skill rather than how much more abuse one country's programmers are willing to take.
because the workers put up with murderous (literally) working conditions, the factories dump raw sewage, employ children, etc.
So in many ways, trade protections are the flip side of human rights: should folks be able to sell stuff here cheap they make while abusing their workers and destroying the environment?
IOW, how about if we said: you can sell us whatever you want, so long as you pay your workers at least the US minimum wage and obey the same environmental regs. companies on US soil do?
uhh, sorry it's taking soooo loooong boss, the XML is conflicting with the SQL while the servers are having an election to determine the PDC, so meanwhile I'm trying to code a PHP hack to restart mod Perl so it will work properly with Apache 2. So that wysiwyg editor you promised the client yesterday could take as long as a month to get fully Section 508 compliant.
But hey, isn't it cool how the code I'm writing looks like an ascii picture of Brittney Spears nekkid?
O by the way, how is that raise you promised me a month ago coming along??
I remember the notes that I took on electrodynamics, quantum devices and other math-rich subjects... there is no way to convert them to text, ever.
Nor will you be able to for awhile, of course. Diagrams, formulae, etc. are stored as graphics. But the metadata text labels you place on those graphics can be converted, & allow you to search and catagorize those graphics.
In general, students won't benefit from the tablet PC.
O yeah right, I can't imagine any way for anyone to benefit from any technological advance. We really should go back to stamping ideograms on clay tablets, everything since then has cost much more than it has been worth.
It will be useful (because it is - these areas are already served [teklogix.com] by existing wireless terminals).
Nope, you're right, college students will never want something like this, they like carrying around 50lb packs, spending $100-$500 per semester on books, and keeping all their notes on dead trees.
Despite the fact that you have to keep your notes in a binder (heaven forbid) they're easier to manage, review, and use when they're on paper.
Huh? If the handwriting rec. works, you could search, edit, digitize and store your notes!
I have a closet full of notebooks full of notes from college, man I wish I had all those in digital format!
Further, I'm not sure how the M$ software works ITR, but the Wacom software we use allows one to annotate a pic or a presentation, like a PDF or Powerpoint, and save the annotations with the file! Very nice for students, esp. if their text books are also in digital format that works with the annotation SW.
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You think a few militias would be able to stop a huge organized army, armed with fighter jets?
Iraqi fighter jets? Sorry, those birds barely fly.
Heck Iraq couldn't even defeat Iran, who's most advanced weapons were teenagers with AK-47s. And carriers? You are really paranoid, they'd have decades of infrastructure to develop before they could even build a Clemenceau equivalent carrier, and those have a tendancy to surrender at the slightest threat. Not to mention that you can't 'conquer' anyone with carriers and fighter jets, Iraq would need troop carriers and landing ships, all of which could be stopped by a single Seawolf (remember, you cancled the Army, not the Navy) while they trundled accross the Atlantic.
Meanwhile, if we spent the money on securing our presence in space, we could just aim a few large meteors at Bagdad, with the benefit that there would be no fallout to upset our Israeli friends...
You have not begun to drink until you have tried Jamaica Red!
Humboldt's Hemp Ale is pretty irie, too...
A rather large amount of electric power in this country is provided by heavy oil plants -- which burn imported oil, at least in part.
Actually, it's not a "large amount" at all, check your figures. In fact, US reserves would last for a very long time if all we did was generate electricity at the rate we do today from them.
As far as pollution, it stinks, but even US coal fired plants produce less pollution per kilowatt than a car (even a economy car), again check your figs.
Further, most e-vehicles are much more efficient than gas powered ones, for instance it takes ~5 cents of electricity for me to go 30 miles on my e-bike.
But I agree with you about nuclear power, we should be generating at least %50 of US power from IFR style nuke plants. Hopefully progressives can break away from the greens on this issue and get some safe and clean nuke plants built! It is entirely ridiculous that the "green" opposition to nukes is forcing more coal plants to be built, which (in burning radioactive coal) release more rads into the environment than all the nuke plants (including Chernobyl!) combined!
4 miles is easy on an electric bike or scooter, take a patriotic risk to stop supporting oil fueled terrorism! Look at the E-go, for instance, it's big enough so drivers will see you.
Since I got it I drive my cars less than once/week instead of every day.
A co-worker has an electric scooter from EVDeals, which is also very fun to ride, nice cruising along at 20mph with the wind in your face and making almost no noise or smog.
If you need more speed, the Voloci electric motorbike is also very kewl. We can all stick it a little bit to Saddam and the Quaeda funding Saudis by going electric.
In fact I would say that folks who go electric should be applauded as patriots while the 12mpg SUVs with their "God Bless America" flags seem just a bit oxymoronic, if you know what I mean...
(be) invaded?"
By Canada? Mexico? I think the National Gaurd could handle the mighty Mexican Army pretty well while we bribe the Canadians with real beer. In fact, I would say we could probably even defend Alaska and Hiwaii just fine with ~%5 military budget, esp. if we spent the other %12 building a dominant presense in space.
From where we could always drop big rocks on anyone who bothers us.
"defense" is wasted $.
Since our defense increasingly depends on satellites, which can be pretty easily disposed of by a nation with a presence in space.
Not to mention that large rocks dropped from space have the power of expensive ICBMs without the fallout or the ability of "brilliant pebbles" or airborne lasers to do much about them.
The converse is that the nation that controls space won't really need much of an earth based military to defend itself from military action (though it will need one if it wants to "defend" itself by invading someone else).
Which is maybe why traditionaly military institutions & thinkers tend to view spending money on space exploration and development with some derision...
than the one used by physicists:
Negative, moving atomic particles around is not equivalent to making an atom no more than cooking an omelet makes you a chicken.
Atoms are of course made of sub-atomic particles, and are formed by "moving" sub-atomic particles, so this makes no sense. If you move a proton and an electron together, you have made a hydrogen atom. If you add a neutron, you have made a helium atom, refresh your knoledge of atomic theory, please.
You also seem to be building a false dichotomy between theory and fact: fact is, scientific theories describe facts (generally called observations). We see the fact that things fall when you drop them, and derive from that the theory of gravity. We see the fact that species exist and change over time and develop from that the theory of evolution.
Meanwhile predictions are made based on a theory to see if theories do in fact describe facts, if predictive experiments haven't been done, the theory is called a hypothesis.
But you seem to be using the term 'theory' in the way scientists use 'hypothesis', which makes your arguments regarding science rather illogical. We both have to agree something is a hammer before we can discuss hammers, so long as you keep insisting a hammer is a chicken, the process will lead to neither a well driven nail nor to a tasty omelette.
His dialectical method was more about thinking and how to reach a conclusion, rather than how matters progress in nature, thesis + antithesis = synthesis.
Well, don't forget that the synthesis becomes the new thesis, and the wheel turns on. But I think it applies more to how cultural ideals evolve than simply how one reachs a conclusion.
There is really no 'antithesis' in evolution, thus you couldn't use the dialectical method in evolution.
Right, well I was really pointing out that the dialectic can be a useful tool to understand and even predict how human ideas will evolove, not so much natural systems. I agree that it is usually a bad idea to use anthropomorphic metaphors when trying to describe evolution (or other complex scientific theories). A dialectical methodology is useful only when there is interaction between the two ideals or features. So it might be a useful way to look at predator prey relationships, or sexual selection, for instance, but not so useful for speciation due to land bridges or other external (to the system) natural events.
However, the term is perhaps perpetually tainted by Marx's pseudo-religious movement, such that to even mention it one is called a Marxist rather than a Hegelist, as most people actually seem to believe Marx's claims that his ideas were an extension and refinement of Hegel's rather than a corruption.
from Hegel, and unfortunately tainted a rather useful concept in the process.
For Hegel, the dialectic was the observeable process of societal change to a more complex state, which Marx misrepresented as a controllable process with a finite goal: the Worker's Paradise. Of course, if you are trying to get folks to follow you, it's best to promise them a better world will result from drinking your koolaid.
Which maybe is why Marxists don't like Evolution, since like Hegel's dialectic, Evolution is an ongoing process without an ideal ending, rather a road to Paradise.
PS, try reading the Manifesto and then reading Revelations sometime, the two are eerily similar...
Most interesting assertion, but, adding energy to a system increases its entropy, not its order.
Huh? Is that -2lot? The 2lot that works in an anti-matter universe? Here, in this universe, releasing energy from a system increases entropy & decreases order (a bush burned to ash), while adding energy to a system tends to decrease entropy and increase order (the growing bush before it burned).
Of course if one system releases so much energy that it overwhelms the ability of another system to absorb that energy, both systems can release their energy and decrease their order (the invisible flame thrower with which might Thor ignited the bush), but in both cases the release of energy accompanies the decrease in entropy and order as the systems burn to a lower energy state (ashes to ashes).
But if you are from an anti-matter universe, I can see how this whole debate would be very confusing to you...
By what cause did "natural selection" arise?
Different issue entirely, but I glad you are starting to see that it has nothing to do with 2lot in the normal matter universe, since yes we are getting a "free lunch" from the god formerly known as Ra. Organic molecules tend to organize themselves in the presence of a steady input of energy, so once we have the free lunch courtesy of the Sun, increasing order is entirely expected.
Of course, non of this speculation is a valid criticism of the theory of evolution, since evolution specifically deals with what happens after the first life has formed...
Once you have the first 2 life forms, small differences between the two lead one to do better in a slightly higher place and the other to do better in a slightly lower place, and so natural selection begins.
My favorite example of a mutation producing new information involves a Japanese bacterium that suffered a frame shift mutation that just happened to allow it to metabolize nylon waste.
Well, not so good if you like to wear nylon, but good for the bugs who can now eat it...
understand the difference between a closed system and an open system, they have no fear..
More==>
The numerical calculation of entropy changes accompanying physical and chemical changes are very well understood and are the basis of the mathematical determination of free energy, emf characteristics of voltaic cells, equilibrium constants, refrigeration cycles, steam turbine operating parameters, and a host of other parameters. The creationist position would necessarily discard the entire mathematical framework of thermodynamics and would provide no basis for the engineering design of turbines, refrigeration units, industrial pumps, etc. It would do away with the well-developed mathematical relationships of physical chemistry, including the effect of temperature and pressure on equilibrium constants and phase changes.
So what you are really asking when talking about thermodynamics is where does the energy needed to reverse entropy come from? The aswer is big, hot, and round, and has often been called a god in the past, but unlike the Xian god can be seen quite easily with the human eye.
Meanwhile, the origin of the first cell is interesting (and certainly there are plenty of researchers who aren't afraid of looking into that), but has nothing to do with evolution, since Evolution is the theory of what happened AFTER the first cell formed (which is why Darwin's book is called the Origin of the Species, not the Origin of Life.
"think about it"...
Easy enough: start with an ambush predator (on that lies in wait for prey, there are plenty of those), due to a slight mutation one comes along with a lighter or slightly raised patch on it's head, some fish swim in to check it out and are more easily caught, members of the species with the variation tend to catch more, and thus have more offspring. Many of the offspring have the raised patch, some a bit larger some a bit smaller.
The ones with a bit larger catch more and have more offspring, and so on, eventually you have something like an angler fish, no magic hand waving & no faith required, just small changes that confer small advantages that are selected for over millions of years...
No other source needed.
A system which isn't directed towards any goal teleologically goes nowhere.
This sentence anthropomorphizes a natural process: think about it, what is the "direction" of plate tectonics? The "direction" of planetary orbits?
Likewise, evolution doesn't have a "goal" and it's not "directed", rather life survives by being flexible, and that flexibility takes new forms. Forms that survive well in the new conditions make lots of copies of themselves, while forms that don't change or change in a way that doesn't work so well don't make lots of copies, and disappear.
By the way, Gould most certainly did "touch on this" in fact devoted a good deal of Wonderful Life to describing where new genetic information comes from.
Until scientists orbit a Moon sized object around an Earth sized object in the lab, there is no way to prove that Macrogravity is not really caused by the invisible hand of the Lord Jesus Christ!
While one can test microgravity by dropping an apple from a suitably leaning tower, science only draws it's conclusions about macrogravity from observation and forensic evidence, just like Macroevolution. But all good Xians know that this "evidence" the anti-religion scientists put forth is really put there by the dark one to fool us!
We must stop these anti-religious scientists from teaching our children to distrust the invisible hand of Christ and so commit all sorts of immoral acts I can't even begin to type, with their subversive theory of MacroGravity!
But one of course had to define how far back one is going to measure these 'rural standards of living', which often were better for average peasents before industrial farming methods (see Scott's "Weapons of the Weak" for a good description of how the coming of modern farming practices often reduces the living standards of average peasants.
Of course, after labor has been replaced by tractors and small land owners have been kicked off their family plots, their living standards are often quite bad, and working for barely under subsistance wages in a factory may be a marginal improvement, in an 'out of the frying pan into the fire' sort of way (Scott goes into that as well, pointing out the similarites to the Highland Clearences in the dawn of the Industrial Revolution
If mine is a "quasi-pastoral view of underdevelopment" fine, no matter how many syllables you throw at me, I still say that if it would be exploitation to treat an American that way, it is exploitation to treat a Malay that way. Call me simple minded if you like.
I find it hard to believe that there are large externalities associated with spinning cotton into fiber.
While the environmental impacts of more chemically intensive industries are often much easier to measure, making cheap jeans has a negative impact as well:
And then there is the synthetic indigo dye that makes 'em blue...
if you did, you might see that my post was in response to CEOs who make absurdly more than their employees, not CEOs who make a reasonable amount more than their employees.
Hey, some managers do add alot of value, but generally it is the ones who could jump in and code (or whatever the main business of the corp. is) if needed, and the best ones do jump in when needed. Of course, such folks tend to not be comfortable making 500x times more than their top producing employees.
With a bit of maturity you might have realized that a while ago instead of playing the childish game of asking if the CEO could do your specific job.
Yeah right, and with a bit of maturity you might realise that folks who don't understand the guts of the business they are leading can't make intelligent decisions about that business. IOW, this country is overun with MBAs who think it's "mature" to believe they can lead without knowledge of the nuts and bolts (or 1s and 0s)...
Guess I'm not up on the latest revisionist version of the Civil War, all those poor, innocent southerners who lost their god given right to own another human being, how tragic...
I think a better place to put the blame is on activist judges who (in the late 1800s through the 1930s) took the 14thA and the Commerce clause far beyond the letter and the intent. A practice which is still common today, even among (especially among?) conservative "strict constructionist" justices...
Justice Thomas
You would probably get more geeks on board if you called it a SIG.
as a nation in our words about human rights and environmental protection.
Sure you can get goods cheaper if you buy from countries where its ok to make workers work for subsistence (or below) level wages, and allow factories to dump raw sewage.
A simple solution would be to only let nations sell here if they pay workers the US minimum wage, enforce the US minimum workplace laws, and obey US environmental regs.
For the tech industry, offshore programmers could undersell US programmers only if the same workplace regs. regarding humane workplace conditions, overtime, etc. were followed. This would level the playing field to one of raw skill rather than how much more abuse one country's programmers are willing to take.
because the workers put up with murderous (literally) working conditions, the factories dump raw sewage, employ children, etc.
So in many ways, trade protections are the flip side of human rights: should folks be able to sell stuff here cheap they make while abusing their workers and destroying the environment?
IOW, how about if we said: you can sell us whatever you want, so long as you pay your workers at least the US minimum wage and obey the same environmental regs. companies on US soil do?
And if he can't, why is he making 500x as much as you are? Is: really a good reason?
But hey, isn't it cool how the code I'm writing looks like an ascii picture of Brittney Spears nekkid?
O by the way, how is that raise you promised me a month ago coming along??
I remember the notes that I took on electrodynamics, quantum devices and other math-rich subjects... there is no way to convert them to text, ever.
Nor will you be able to for awhile, of course. Diagrams, formulae, etc. are stored as graphics. But the metadata text labels you place on those graphics can be converted, & allow you to search and catagorize those graphics.
In general, students won't benefit from the tablet PC.
O yeah right, I can't imagine any way for anyone to benefit from any technological advance. We really should go back to stamping ideograms on clay tablets, everything since then has cost much more than it has been worth.
It will be useful (because it is - these areas are already served [teklogix.com] by existing wireless terminals).
O yeah, no campus anywhere has thought of setting up a wireless network, and no one has ever released curricular materials for free... O and don't forget they can't be made to run linux while selling for less than $800.
Nope, you're right, college students will never want something like this, they like carrying around 50lb packs, spending $100-$500 per semester on books, and keeping all their notes on dead trees.
Despite the fact that you have to keep your notes in a binder (heaven forbid) they're easier to manage, review, and use when they're on paper.
Huh? If the handwriting rec. works, you could search, edit, digitize and store your notes! I have a closet full of notebooks full of notes from college, man I wish I had all those in digital format!
Further, I'm not sure how the M$ software works ITR, but the Wacom software we use allows one to annotate a pic or a presentation, like a PDF or Powerpoint, and save the annotations with the file! Very nice for students, esp. if their text books are also in digital format that works with the annotation SW.