when you feel like it. If you disagree, just post why, doesn't matter to me, this is words on a screen, can't hurt much one way or the other. and by the way, I only use my screen name here, the only time I post anon is little one sentence stoopid funnies that don't mean much, never any flames or anything.
if any law infractions revolved around named human beings, and not this non person person they call a corporation. If we re adjusted the laws back to named humans are responsible for their actions, and if the fines came out of personal bank accounts of whomever issued the orders that resulted in the crimes committed, you'd see a lot more honesty with companies. And the government could mandate a price freeze as well on their products to go in conjunction with any fines, or they could actually institute a "three strikes and you are out" provision like they have with human beings, and in the case of corporations, just completely revoke their charters after a third conviction. But they don't do that too often, companies are allowed crime after crime after crime after crime, yet they still stay "in business".
You make Bill Gates pay a big chunk out of his pocket, then make him do 500 hours community service picking up trash next to the road,after a few months in lockup, like any regular guy would get for stealing those sorts of sums, you'd see changes in his company's predatory practices, and pronto. You give him a perpetual get out of jail free card, he'll keep using it. It's that simple.
There's a variety of techniques that could be used to make corporations more honest, but bottom line is, nearly all the legislators, judges, and people in the executive branch make the bulk of their money from being stock holders and/or being in ownership or management positions in corporations, they profit handsomely from this corporate insulation, so they will NOT write, vote for, or sign into law anything that could hurt them personally. They keep up the laws that benefit corporations, and they keep up that level of legal armor and shielding that corporations have, that private individuals don't have.
If YOU defraud someone, it comes out of your pocket and you can't "pass it on" as a cost of doing business. If you do it a few times, you will personally go to jail, some times even one time depending on the crime. Pass a bae check over 100$, it's a felony, you could serve time. a corporation defrauds thousands of people out of billions, or puts a competitor out of business using questionalb tacts, those corporate officers hardly ever see any jail time. It happens, but it's extremely rare. Corporations can just keep getting away with it, time after time, and when they are so huge as to be dominant market players, it never results in any significant changes to the corporation, other than they learn to obfuscate the bookeeping better, and THEN they figure out what new laws that would benefit them better, that might keep them from getting caught, etc, that need to be passed, and then they go to work on that with campaign contributions and lobbying, using money they half stole in the first place. It's a corrupt vicious cycle, organized gang activity basically, and gates and company are just one example of many.
The system is so broken and so corrupt there is little hope that it will get fixed any time soon. I doubt it will frankly. And there is so little difference between "government" and really really large international corporations that we should probably just end the illusion that there is.
...can people put into their clipboard, then go over there and click on the link, and have it uploaded to the malicious website and hose that turkey's box? Seems like if the dude is asking for bits and bytes, might as well give it to him!
That 6% figure of unemployment is just not true, not in any practical meaningful sense. They don't count people who have exhausted unemployment insurance benefits, those people are stricken from the official tally, and that's quite a large number now. There are perhaps millions of chronically un- or under- employed people out there now. And they DO count any part time job, no matter how meagre it is, into the "employed" figures, they make no distinctions there, which is quite misleading when you want to look at the economy as a whole. You work one day a week, it goes into the tally looking like a real full time job. that just don't compute. You hang out a shingle as a consultant, take a few jobs, but spend the bulk of your time still not working, it's still classed as if it was a full time job. And more and more even reported jobs, which can be classed as full-part time, are held by people who can't give them up, even though those jobs simply can't maintain any living level they might have held previously, and they can't find better, so they stick with it. That's why we have record mortgage defaults, and record bankruptcies, which are part of looking at the over all economic health. A lot of those folks are just constantly downsized, sometimes all the way into "no" job, and a lot of times into a less well-paying job or a less-hours worked job, but they started at a higher level. In the past, you workled your way up, now people are finding it harder to even maintain a level, and millions keep getting force-dropped down. Our economy has been going BACKWARDS for several years now,well, 20 years basically, and they try every way they can to make it look like it isn't. It's very common now for people to work long times in jobs with well under 40 hours a week, let alone any over-time pay, etc, like was true in years past, and any benefits have dropped as well, all things averaged out. Yet, wall street and government keep insisisting their methods are working, and the economy is getting better. But, you have balance of trade deficits, and levels of debt versus savings to look at, compared to years past,which again prove they are lying in general terms.
It's is NOT getting better, it's not even constant, the economy is retreating, it's getting worse.
Basically, you can double that unemployment figure, and maybe it's higher,and then break it down further by demographics,geography, race, etc. for example,in some urban areas it's already at 30% or so with younger black people, but those are just estimates, because they have no way to really know what they are, no adequate sampling methods exist.
They cook the books, and fail to keep any sort of accurate records, because it's impossible, AND because no way would they publically admit to double figures over-all, because it's a pychological and market driven level that they just can't deal with.
You mean the solar trough method, ya, I've seen those, big ones on the web anyway, then there's heliostats, which are sorta like focusing towers. I was thinking of building one of those from an old 3 meter dish that's in the junk yard here. hmm. good for stationary plants of course.
Stirlings, I've seen the tiny little kit motors, but never anything full size. I imagine they exist though.
...someone would point this out. I was going to if you hadn't thanks. YES, it is exactly the camels nose under the tent they need for official censorship. it's sneaky as all get out, but there it is.
I am also disappointed no one noticed another alternative for those unused channels, ie, make them avaialble for much lower power community TV. Right now any sort of television is expensive, especially from licensing and regulations and whatnot. The main problem with over the air TV and radio is not lack of spectrum, or transmitters and tech to pull off low power broadcasts,it's because the FCC (and local governments)is/are such dinks about it, if they can't make money off of it, they ain't real interested. Even a commercial shortwave station costs beau coup a month for a "license", and there's tons of spectrum available there. You could put up a decent side band low watt transmitter, that still got good range, for under 2 grand maybe,a good one, yet the last I looked it costs 1200 clams a MONTH for a license. (I might be wrong on that, that's what I remember though, I know it's expensive).
Anyway, the point is moot, it's clear that only the big guys will be able to use the spectrum much, except for guerrila ad-hoc mesh networks and guys taking a chance with their low power pirate rigs. They may SAY this new spectrum will be for wireless broadband, but they haven't PROMISED to not charge for it, or to not censor it like they do now. I think even giving them authority over it is a bad idea, but that happened so long ago it's a moot point now, no need to re argue that one.
Bottom line, if the government gives, they can take back or charge or control, and given the politcal climate nowadays, who wants to bet they will be benevolent/fair about it?
... for road vehicles anyway, not for off road or like my work equipment.
I always thought you could solve the "range" problem with pure electrics quite easily, with a tow behind combo generator/fuel tank/ cargo trailer. Seems a natural, a lot of folks tow trailers on trips, and for just normal day to day commuting, cars like the EV1 were perfectly *fine*.
Eventually we'll have better engine choices. I am just tired of pistons. Ya they work, ya they got torque, but the physics with them is so limiting and 18th century.
And you KNOW they got much cooler stuff over to like area 51 places, the meanies, won't share! They probably GOT my flying car using electro gravitics and are probably GROWING my amazon hot babe robots -scratch- CYBORGS!
I need these tools for..uhh... research, ya, that-t-t-t's the ticket...re-search.....
....from the point of view of the non voting stock talking to the voting stock --> "dump management, they are bozos and have ruined the company, do it now, then let's see if there's anything left to salvage". The voting stock dudes got to be WAY past wondering that, too. Of course, I have no idea who the voting stock dudes are, either, or what they hope to get from this, no way is IBM gonna pay them a nickle, and it's quite unlikely they will win in court anyway.
I wonder IF they just dropped all the stupid lawsuit nonsense, and got back to work, could they actually come up with some product now, anything that was any good? And even if they did, would anyone use it, let alone pay for it or pay for service?
I just can't see anyone wanting to do business with them, but I guess in some places they still do. Makes ya wonder though...
...changing my name to Rastus, so I can practice saying "yas, massah, we's be shufflin off now to do yo' biddin".
Yep, it's getting that bad.
Of all the crap out there, that one that REALLY gets me is random "courtesy checkpoints". That is THE most heinous thing going, out of a boatload of heinous stuff goping dowen. It just bugs me that it's going on and getting worse. I mean, it's right out of a grade B old ww2 nazi war movie.
"well, sir, it appears from our records you only paid 120% of your gross income in taxes last year, I'm afraid we'll have to fine you and put you into the special "person of interest" surveilled tax class, at 150%"
"But, but, that's insane!"
"ARE YOU THREATENING ME, YOUR GOVERNMNET HOMELAND SECURITY TAX ADJUSTER? GUARDS, DETAIN THIS MAN, TAKE HIM TO THE RE EDUCATION CAMP FOR DISSIDENTS!"
I have a friend of mine, Roy at Four Winds Energy,(great guy and company, shameless plug for him there) who's doing a bang up business with solar and wind, and a large part of it now is installing water pumping stations for farmers livestock using the alternatives. Some of them are finally coming around, as are hundreds of thousands of non farmers, just folks who can see beyond the FUD and just go "do it" with the alternatives. I've said this before but I'll repeat it. Alternatives WILL get better in the future,this is true, and what is also true is that like with computers in the early 80s, we need many more people to invest time, effort, cash into them NOW if we want to speed up the process. We could literally put back to work millions if we went mass production on a national scale with the various alternatives. It's another place we could "generate" an entire new critical industry, just when we need MORE jobs and MORE energy. Seems like a win/win to me. Wind in particular lends itself to being much cheaper from economies of scale, it's no more complicated than- say- building a vacuum cleaner. Mine has a housing, a prop, a small circuit board, and some wirez coming out of it, it mounts on a normal 2" steel pole. Ain't nothing to it really. You can go in any auto store and get a generic delco alternator for like 50$, building the main deal on a wind genny can be just as cheap once it went from them building hundreds to thousands to millions. Solar is nice because we already got one buhzillion roofs out there sitting baking in the sun all the time. this stuff is all doable, that and make appliances and BUILDINGS better, just doubling insulation standards in new construction would be like finding another arctic circl whopper oil field, just from energy savings on heating and collong costs. R-18 or 22 sucks, it's way too low for a "standard" in construction.
I've got a few PV panels and the rest of the rig for my solar installation(it's mounted on my RV now since we moved and got a small house), a small wind genny, and two fuel gennys,one a 120 VAC output and one just a 12 VDC. So even if the grid completely poofs I have *some* power available and it's *paid off*, I own it. And I'm at the bottom of the economic food chain in the US income-wise, so if I can do it, almost anyone can to some degree, we just need to get the interest up to a critical threshold, like what happened with computers. Look around now, 20 years ago hardly anyone owned a personal computer, now its ridiculous common. We CAN change if we can bypass big government and big energy FUD that we got to "study it" for another 50 years. We done did studied it since the 60's, time to build a lot of them, IMO. Let's get it on, time to act, not think about acting.
In california it's taking off,look at the example in the article, because they got burned, bad, relying on government and big business to be honest and fair and to watch out for the poor peepuls, phooie, they BURNED the folks out in cal, so you have more awareness there of the importance of backups, and diverse sources.
And de centralised power is better for national security! A few more million points of production spread out over the USA makes it much less likely that if any large plants go out from attack/damage/political & economic shenanigans that it will have as bad an effect.
As to selling it, sure! If you have more than what you can use, you SHOULD be able to market it into the grid, or offer it in other ways. The exisitng energy industry has been fighting this for decades now, they do NOT want competition. They got mandated the lock-in generations ago,and they wanted to keep it. It's changing but they fought it constantly and still are whenever they can
Now ME if I had a surplus of electricity or burnable gas, I'd use it for more projects/businesses, I wouldn't just sell it, that's just selling off raw materials in a sense, and it's usually a better deal to just keep converting until you have a better, more profitable pr
it really just depends. One, you don't have to use manure, you can use a variety of any biomass that will anerobically digest, which is hmm, all of it. One idea I heard of was from jaque cousteau, his was to use kelp, because of it's incredibly fast growing nature and the make-up of kelp makes it ideal for digesting. It seems industrial hemp would be ideal, too, it's cellulose production per acre/year is amazing, and it doesn't require that much fertiliser, you could get by just plowing under 1/2 the plants every year for that, then re apply the slurry as well. If you could see in meat space how much quite useable burnable gas you get from even a small amount you'd see it's very practical and economic. The deal is, the big energy companies CAN'T send you a bill for it,because you can own it, so no way will this be pushed officially by the government or it's controllers, big industry, that much. They *dig* having you pay forever into their monopoly, both with cash and with mindshare. It's the same with solar, with wind generation, etc.
Second,to get back to some farm savings, although the nitrogen level % remains the same in the manure and water slurry after digestion, it is in a more available form to plants than normal aerobic digestion or composting (farmers just shoot this stuff back on the fields now, with conveyor spreaders or flail spreaders). I have read it is as high as 600% better with anerobic digestion, so you get significant savings on fertilizer (which is a HUGE cost now and going up because artificial fertiliser is made from natural gas), which is what's done with the slurry after it has exhausted methane production potential. And last, it is "relatively" cheap to build these things,and they are incredibly scalable, there's a size and technique to fit any size operation, from joe water buffalo rice farmer on up. There are hundreds of thousands of them around the planet now,of various sizes,just not much in the US, so here it's stayed mostly "experimental",and they have to "study it", etc, that's all, any place else it's just normal, and sunlight is an excellent conversion tool for getting solar energy into various useful products. It's very productive sunlight is,a great energy conversion tool, especially with living plants, and it's the only practical fusion generator we have, and it's "free and open source", the government or industry can't charge you for it directly. They will play act at supporting it, that's about it, it doesn't lend itself to monopoly control, so they spread a lot of economic FUD around it.
Remember, farming has always been profitable and useful,well, from obvious reasons, food is kinda nice, even before modern techniques were invented, so it's quite do-able. Look at giant forests, grow all on their own, no high tech anything needed for them to grow, just water, dirt, sunlight, air, done. They are just huge biological manufacturing plants, quite sophisticated really, and that's all any farm is, a biological factory, and there's various ways to cut costs and remain profitable, ONCE you as joe big farmer STOP being brainwashed by monsanto and the energy companies and the equipment companies and the banks. You have to break that mindset of "dependence" first before you can wrap your brane around "how to do it" better. That first step is just too much for most people to get over. It's not really their fault, it's how they were taught, and what the "approved" techniques are as taught at ag colleges and in industry orgs. There are VERY few independent farmers around, the vast majority are really just coporate sub contractors and have to follow these corporation rules. The guy I work for owns three large farms, he is controlled by his suppliers and marketing org down to an obscene picky little level like you wouldn't believe on how to run his farm, or he can't market, and that's the biggest problems farmers have now, and they get trapped into it, go along, or go broke. Once in and in debt, they are trapped, it's almost like a form of serfdom on a large scale. It's a hard
some of the growth industries in the US now are defence related, and the "justice system".
Jobs in the future for kids now inside the US will be soldier, prostitute, house maid, gardener--and that car wash example. About like that it appears. Tongue in cheek but it's roughly true, too.
They got all these kids now faked out they will be a sports star or a rock star or something, or some other job along those lines. It's pretty sad when those are the best paid jobs to strive for from societal brainwashing. It's obviously the most interest that the vast majority have. You can fill a stadium -or multiple stadiums and venues really- with 50,000 people any given weekend near any medium or large US city to watch some game or get entertained with some various music, but you're *lucky* to get 500 people to a political conference even occassionally. Ya, I just invented the numbers, but I think you can see the point.
IF "globalism" as they push it now was so successful, then WHY are we now the worlds largest debtor nation, when a bit over 20 years ago when all this big push started we were the largest creditor nation? If it was supposed to make the nation all this loot and be successful, where's the beef? They keep claiming it's working, and the numbers keep proving them wrong, so they say we need MORE of their schemes to make it work. It's nuts. There's the big lie staring at us, along with we now have the highest incidence of mortgage defaults since the great depression, personal bankruptcy is at record highs,pension funds in both private and government are in the most serious problem levels, and so on. Can't even think about the ponzi scheme social insecurity is, that's gone for most practical purposes.
Nuts, it's a series of big lies. This "new and improved" system is designed to transfer even more wealth to the upper 1% of the population that is already the richest and most powerful, and it has to come from someplace, and that someplace is the US middle class, because that's the only other place it exists in the fist place, it's the last place they can steal it from, so there ya go.
... with you on it never really was run the way it was supposed to be run. And it usually de-evolves into an oligarchy,most true,and I think it's happening,the goal being two class society run as technofeudalism, the new aristocracy running the show with just advanced tech and comforts.
The WORDS back then were very good though, certainly one of ther better attempts at humans organizing some sort of government. The failures were obvious, slavery being the most notable example.
I am hoping that something like the FreeState project can suceed, get at least one state in the union back to a more-true constitutional bent, and to serve as a catalyst to other states. There are some other efforts being made in other states, starting with electing a constitutionalist as the chief executive in the governors office. Jesse Ventura blew it when he got in,just blew it, sad to say. One that stands out is Richard Mack running in utah, he has the first coalition of some third parties (libertarians, constitutionalists, I think some other parties) and other independents and break away R's and D's effort that seems to have a fair chance of success. I don't agree with allhe thinks (hard to get any two humans to 100% agree obviously), but he comes pretty dang close. Who knows, he might get in. Utah is especially hit hard by the federal government, for a variety of reasons, so he has a chance. I don't live there but am shipping him a few clams for his campaign soon, because I think it's really important to get the ball rolling on breaking this stranglehold on our government "as a whole".
Have you ever read about the "northwoods" documents? Worth a google if you've never seen them. Goes along with your example of the Luisitania (and also the sinking of the Maine), and allowing the japanese to attack at pearl, and not meeting them out to sea instead. And we just lately have been getting confirmation with the release of the LBJ tapes about the "tonkin gulf" attacks being a complete sham. it was thought, but not proven, until just lately this was the case.
Too bad it seems to take decades and generations to find out the truth, my hope is that by primarily using the internet, truths can come out faster and they'll have a harder time spinning them into oblivion.
9-11 has enough rat-smell to it to make the nearest cheese factory guys real nervous...
Illegal aliens get SSNs and pay taxes and can now get social security. The requirements for positive identification are very low compared to native born, or legal immigrants. Why, I don't know, but they are only required to have a paper from their consulate called a matricular card, which isn't verified, it's just isued to them on demand. It's like if you wanted to go get new ID and just walked in and said "Hi, I'm so and so, gimmee". It's nuts but there ya go. They have opened US soc sec offices down in mexico already, just this year. Here's a link to that.(it passed, the numbers are much worse than what ron paul alludes to in his warning speech, there's a lot more stuff about it on google). And they pay sales taxes as well, always have. and they use public services that mean increased property taxes, really nailojg people on low or fixed income (retirees) who own their own homes. What HAS happened though, is that while the blue collar jobs were being exported, they opened the floodgates to the illegals, putting a double whammy on what blue collar jobs remained, driving down wages while increasing demand for the lowest priced housing. Another double whammy. And now they are doing the same deal with white collar jobs, which they promised to us were going to be the replacement for the blue collar jobs they allowed to be exported. did you know companies get a corporate income tax break for relocating overseas? that to me was always the most insane, that and not insisiting on reciprocal level excise taxes at the border, fair is fair, you charge us x-percentage, we could match it exactly, but they don't do that, so it's certainly not "free trade" although they call it that. I call it "scam trade".
The reason we had such an explosion in illegals coming over from central america was because of NAFTA, we put millions of poor campesinos out of work on their small farms when our corporate farms dumped on them. whoops. The amount of blue collar manufacturing jobs cshipped to mexico was not any where near enough to compensate for the other millions put out of work. It was nuts, way too fast, lopsided, no thought to social stability or where people were going to work, here OR there. And a LOT of people back then warned that this would happen, heck, I was one of them, exactly what I said and wrote back then happened. Sucks, because I know what's coming next, a really BORKED middle class inside the US, inevitable now.
All that will happen with this scheme is the dilution of the US's middle class's average worth, it will go down. And, well, it has, you can see it now, looking at *all* the stats. Just look at the real obvious biggee, since all this globalization started we have gone from being the worlds largest creditor nation-we had enough extra and surplus money handy to be able to loan and invest and just give it away around the world, to now we are the worlds largest debtor nation, only staying afloat from foreigners buying up our mortgages and government paper, and their phony buck has dropped in value severely. It's cuckoo,and happened within the last 20 years,exactly corresponding to their mass globalization efforts and transference of our economy, and they got the nads to call that a "success". Phooie. When I was a kid, one just normal mid level blue collar job could support a large family, home ownership, a nice car, vacation, a pension, benefits,put the kids through school, etc, now that is almost entirely gone, it take two such jobs to accomplish the same thing, and the prices are getting worse, so....it will destroy families. After two jobs you've run out of adults to work in a household. It causes a ton of stress, economics are a prime reason for family problems, divorce, etc. sucks. Kids suffer from this bad.
I think the really large powers-that-be are doing it on purpose,from a LOT of other references and research, again, way to long for a single post, they really don't like power sharing with a large successful middle class, they much pre
..., after the events of 9-11, the new reichstag fire,and in essence, it is not much different from the "enabling act". It was passed under the clear threat-the stick part of the traditional carrot and the stick- of harm to the various politicians, notably by anthrax sent through the mail by some no questions asked any-order-followed mercenary goons to various polticians, and to the news media, to scare them into compliance,and subsequentially terrorizing washington and the rest of the US into the bargain. What a deal-not.. That was just obvious as all get out. Let's don't forget little details like that. The goons sure don't,they love the details, and then they count on short term memories and misdirections, they like to change the subject when the going gets embarassing for them.
Datum 2. If you watch politics for enough decades, you will *notice* it doesn't really matter which R or D is in the white house, or controls congress, they play good cop/ bad cop back and forth with their various constituencies, but you always get more or less the same results, more whopper government, more bogus laws, more freedoms stripped, higher taxes, more debt,more reallystrange foreign wars that you find out years later were based on lies and were scam wars,and more destruction of the backbone of the US, the productive middle class. Again, pretty obvious. When people say they voted for their idea of the lesser of two evils, they are admitting to being scared, tricked, or just didn't really care enough to NOT vote for one of those evils. Pitiful really. they didn't want to "waste their vote", even though the only 'wasted' vote is one not cast.
Of course, none of that matters now because...
#3 the elections are now officially hijacked, what little remnants of honest voting used to exist are now gone, you'll "elect" who THEY want to be in there, and THOSE guys get told what to do from international very large power and money interests. We were WARNED this would happen, and we ignored it.
#4 the only rational plan is something completely & radically different from "politics as we know it", because the old ways of doing things WILL GIVE YOU THE SAME OLD WAYS. IT ALWAYS HAPPENS. It CAN'T give you anything BUT that, it's basic math. NOTHING will change, you will always get the same results if you copy what you just did.
I think we'll run out of cheap for civilians liquid petroleum productrs well before 30 years, it will be so expensive in terms of BTUS to get more BTUs only the worlds ultra rich and some governments will use it. They will force-switch us peons back to coal, and build more nukes, along with mass adoption of technologies like wind generators, etc. There's hundreds of years of coal left, heck, just one field in utah has enough for the entire planet for centuries, and humans will wind up burning all of it,along with extracting petroleum from tar sands, etc, probably using solar heat in the deserts for extraction, and sea water for the carrier for the slurry. You'll see interest in air pollution drop when fuel costs become 75% of peoples budgets, given everything has to be still manufactured and transported, using SOMETHING for the energy source. and I think that point could come within 15 years or so. Peak oil in all the significant fields outside of the middle east has ALREADY occurred.
... pretty much control everything unless you are living extremely primitive out in the wild someplace. Mod-erne life as we know it is totally enmeshed in it, so ya, open source is going to be an even more powerful aspect to all our lives in the future. Even non computerised "life" interacts with computerised life, if you think about it. All our goods and services are getting more and more dependent on it, it's critical part of it now. and it sure didn't take very long, either, we went from just a few computers on the planet to now there are untold billions of them, everywhere, doing so many things it's amazing, especially to people who have watched it completely happen.
Prices have dropped, technology quality and diversity have risen dramatically, and isn't this what we wanted, anyway, that eventually smart machines would take over all the mundane, leaving the humans to REALLY expand and explore, both inside themselves and out into space? Looking at it in that aspect, it seems to be the goal, automate and computerize to the extenet that we no longer have to struggle to just live, it's a great emancipator, part deux. So, the closer we can get to "free" with computers and software, the better, IMO.
I'm an old timey protester, started off with civil rights and the environment, then womens rights, then anti war and anti slavery-draft.
You get beat, gassed, arrested,, now they taser you, and they got microwave beam weapons coming, there exists sonic nausea indusing weapons, and other sorts of mass torture goodies to use on you, along with surveillance and tracking that is sophisticated enough you won't know it if it's used on you, no matter how leet you think you are. and that's just the grade B stuff they use against you, the grade a stuff is phony arrests, manufactured evidence, then crooked judges and incarceration.
Seen that, too. sucks.
And in some cases the goons and their mercenaries kill people, AND get away with it.
Think on that a bit....real hard, just think on that.
I have SEEN with my own eyeballs disgusting goon cops dressed as protesters STARTING violence at demos, I busted several of them myself, followed them because I smelt a rat with their actions, some doofuses we never saw before, then all of a sudden up front in the demo, whip out rocks,they bean some uniformed cop, get the charge-reaction, then they split and melted away. Too suspicious for me, followed them as covertly as I could. I then took it on myself to keep track of people stating violence, the rock throwers, etc, and followed them back after the riots started, they would sneak away, and go "check in" with their bosses/cop handlers way back a few blocks away. I saw this several times, it's a pattern with them.
I also know personally a few guys, some ex cops, some ex military, who either did this stuff, or they were approached in a recruitment effort to go be part of these teams. One guy I know had the smarts and bravery to say NO to them, he was a high ranking cop, the federal government tried to recruit him into an alphabet soup agency for the *express* purpose of infiltrating and being a violence - starter. He just said no thanks, but it freaked him out, being an honest guy and all. He really dislikes uncle sugar now, from that, and other things he saw over the years. And I know some military guys who, when they were younger and brainwashed -their words, not mine-- did much worse than what we are seeing coming out of iraq, both outside the country in other nations and INSIDE the US, where it is quite completely illegal. And I mean some ultra *nasty* stuff. And so on and so forth, I have accumulated *quite* the large amount of anecdotal over the years, being a political activist and researcher. the bottomline is, in around 75% of the cases of "9ncidents" out there, roughly speaking, it's some aspect of the government who pulled it of, then they blame someone lese for it. I'll include the OKC bombing attacks in that as well, that was government inside job. 9-11 I *think* was just they let it go down, they knew it was coming, they are using it as a reichstagg fire like event. My opinion might change on that though, given more evidence.
The bottom line is, the man is NOT impressed by any large scale non violent protest, they will NOT change one single iota of any heinous laws, questionable actions, or stop doing anything apparently illegal. It is almost a complete waste of time.
MLK and passive non violence. Yes, this was somewhat effective,BACK THEN, I will grant that,it was really only non violent for the protesters, on the other side they were as violent as they felt like. But there wasn't any significant change until after the goons shot him (yes, he was probably assassinated by government "contractors"), until after around 68 when it became apparent that all the returning black combat vets were not going to remain "passive", having been first screwed via institutionalised discrimination, THEN screwed by being poor and not having daddy get them out of the draft by buying them a cushy guard spot or being placed in some school with a 2S deferrment, to go fight some redakalus war for profit against other people of color. Starting in 67, then in 68, then into the early
"In a widely quoted study, Baruch Lev of the Brookings Institution reported that in 1982, 62% of the market value of companies in the S & P 500 Index could be attributed to tangible assets, and only 38% to intangibles. By 1992, Lev noted, the ratio had essentially reversed: 32% of the assets for S & P companies were tangible, while 68% were intangible. A follow-up study by Brookings in 1998 reported that the asset ratio had shifted even more, with 85% of assets intangible, and only 15% tangible."
And I am assuming it might even be a more worse situation now, tangibles versus intangibles. 15% tangibles, this is what our economic leaders and government brought us, aren't we proud?
But RIGHT THERE he misses the boat. The US economy is in trouble PRECISELY because we live in a tangible world, and we gave away our ability to produce tangible assets! We decided tangibles were worthless! We placed an artificiality of extreme "worth" to intangibles, that completely skewed centuries of understanding of what was "worth" more, or what constituted "wealth". WHAT is worth more, which is "produced wealth", which is a "more valuable" asset to own, a nice JPEG of a turkey dinner with all the fixin's, or a REAL turkey dinner?
He's correct in the article on outsourcing, but he missed what was more valuable, and that was the outsourcing and destruction of domestic manufacturing. And you could see the further results in the great dot bomb fiasco, when some web page about something was somehow going to be worth X-amount more than THE REAL THING, AND keep going up in value! That was the real bottom line disaster in the economy, substituting real stuff for pie in the sky and intangibles, swapping snake oil for your basket of produce, buying the sizzle, not the steak.
And the proof resides in the hard numbers of balance of trade stats, in the old way of measuring unemployment, not the new way that takes off the rolls those who have exhausted unemployment "insurance",the cost of living indices they had to adjust to keep people from freaking out and so to nothave to pay entitlement COLAS as required by law, the historically high levels of personal and corporate bankruptcy, the levels of non -savings, personal and corporate and governmental debt, pensions funds (and social security)that are almost universally in serious hotwater, and so on.
We let our government and high level casino traders trade us the magic beans for the cow. It was and continues to be quite a lamer move.
Open source and free software (and perhaps an overhaul of intangible patenting to be sure) will go to place intangibles back to their proper place, as some of the, and JUST "some of the",tools to do the real work. Just having a "tool industry" based on intangibles or servicing intangibles, won't produce a single thing, you need to *use* the tools to make the real stuff, to perform the real service that the real stuff needs. Intangibles have a place in economy, no one would argue against that, but putting them at the top? Basing your national economy on them? Nuts! Crazy! Someone ate their branes! No way, seriously misguided. Until there's some sort of 2$ replicator, in meatworld space, tangibles will always rule, both as tools and as products, and whomever has world mastery of them will rule, too, it's that simple, and we *gave it away* for basically free.
Now all the economic shills, err I mean most learned pundits are trying to explain how nice these magic beans are, how nutritious and filling, how we'll all get rich quick with more magic beans, and will insist you keep trading for more magic beans, and it's pretty funny how many adults still don't see the fairy tale for what it is.
... or more accurately, I don't see a preponderence of anti - gun sentiment, or anti self defense. On the contrary, I think on most geek/tech places I have seen, including slashdot, a libertarian philosophy seems to be of above the average "norm" of sorts, and pro gun, pro self defense, pro second amendment is quite well represented. Like, I've never felt any sort of overt huge anti-bias here whenever the discussion revolved around guns or self defense, and have contributed several times to such discussions and it's been mostly well received. A few exceptions, but that's to be expected with a forum of this size*.
Of course,to be fair, it is offset by geography, I've noticed that places that have "more" private gun ownership tend to more or less support it more, as opposed to nations and posters there-from, who's respective countries disallow or severely restrict private gun ownership. That shows that most likely it's also a learned cultural thing, and also, if it is illegal in some posters nation,and depending on the nation, they might not want to post pro gun ownership thoughts, for some obvious reasons....
It's hard to be "pro" freedom, and be "anti" effective self defense or be anti "tools", which when you get down to it, is all a firearm is, a tool. Geeks usually value freedom, the right to chose, and the right to use tools of choice.
*side issue but it's interesting, and I've wondered before but never found out.. I wonder-does anyone know-what IS the largest active forum on the web? Is this it?
... but you can already get smart programmable thermostats for cheap at home improvement stores, like 40 clams or something, probably do what you need. Heck, I haven't looked for awhile, but bet they have some with ethernet or at least serial interface of some kind, you might be able to hook them up that way. At worst you would have to install the thing up there, then wired to the fan itself. Hmm, doing it at night or in the winter might be more comfy than at 140 F....
I done did my share of hot attic crawlin, and factory/shop ceiling and attic cable pullin...
I also know there are a variety of "smart" automated homes websites out there.
Looks like a few possibilities on the first page there.
Also, there's low tech, ever see those roof turbines you can get? No motors, just vanes that spin, partially from wind, partially from just the heat wants to rise. Straight up is better than sideways for losing heat, all things else being equal. They work OK, put enough of them in, you'll get some exhaust action. What you have to remember though, is you not only want to exhaust heat, but you want to suck cooler air in somehow. If you go to a powered vent, perhaps pull the incoming air from the shadiest/coolest side of the house down close to the ground with some cheap ductwork.
Ya know what would be *nice*? One of those stirling motors using the waste heat to generate electricity. Maybe even stick all your apartments hot water heaters up there, zee-ro hot water energy bills for a lot of the year.
Sometimes in the summer it's wicked hot(aww heckk, it's already hit over 90 here in georgia, it's always hot in the summer), and I'm thinking "dang, wish there was way to store all this free heat up and use it next winter" and I'm thinking all this expensive high tech geothermal computerised doodads, then I get slapped back to reality and see the "stored solar" wood pile over by the well house, and go "yep, got it, check!"
You forgotten that a large part of the digits represented by the money supply is FUTURE debt, it's not based on past productivity of any kind. That's why they are called "notes" and not "certificates".
I understand a lot more about money, what it is, how it comes about, etc, than what you give me "credit" for, pun intended. I also know the difference between "wealth" and "money" and how you can't inflate or deflate wealth(short of physical destruction of course), but you can with "money", and also use the same money to dictate how society progrresses, instead of allowing society to dictate how wealth production progresses, so that money can be used to represent the actual produced wealth. Wealth - as opposed to money - can only come into true existence in one of three ways; it can be extracted from the earth in terms of raw resources, it can be grown, or it can be reassembled/manufactured using any sort of combination of the previous two. All other forms of human endeavor are examples of wealth transference, or re-arrangement, but they don't represent *creation* of wealth. And when your representation of produced wealth is not based on actual true created wealth, it's called "fiat", it's ersatz, and it only represents what someone tells you it represents, taken to an extreme when -say- a government just dictates that it is worth such and such. You can get away with that for awhile, but not forever.
Most examples in man's past history indicate once that is attempted, it invariably leads to the diminishing of the money, no matter how many digits of the example are "placed into circulation", or what sorts of arcane formulae are attempted to regulate it, which in our nation is primarily done through mortgages/loans starting with the central bank, who "loan" money that they create, then demand "interest" on it, or they "promise" future payments of the same sort of ersatz created digits sometime in the future, by placing their citizenry into future bondage, ie, they sell government paper or bonds or debt notes, sometimes called bills. They claim ownership over you and your future labor, you automatically owe them a "debt" because they say so, they are bigger than you, more organized, more ruthless, and have more guns and mercenaries than you do. And that's really it. You've been not only conned, you've been conquered, and even babies born today are born into what is in essence, conquered serfdom, those babies future labor, their created wealth or service to a created wealth, is already promised-by "law", to a huge degree now to the conquerers, to do with what they feel like, at some vague point in the future.
It's complicated, but simpler if you can always differentiate between wealth and representations of wealth that are not based on a one to one example, because the representations can be so hugely altered as to worth., or what they can be re-traded for, for a real produced piece of wealth-some product, or a service to that wealth.
IF our money supply reflected produced wealth,on ANY sort of one to one honest arrangement, I would be getting *more* in the terms of goods and services with todays buck then what I got decades ago, not less, because, well, I can't. I only get a fraction of what it should be, because they inflated it by loaning it to themselves in the future, and it's sheer lunancy to think it can be maintained forever. It's been "inflated", inflated beyond even where it should be by the accumulation of millions of people working and creating true wealth in the intervening years. That's why when I was a teen I could get 5 mickey D's and a shake and a fry and get a nickle back from my dollar, and today, well, not even close.
One of my other points (and I know I wasn't clear on it, my bad) was that, all considerations of what the digits represent put aside,to get back to these taxes, the government (the combination of fed/state/local) has already taxed 100% of the money in circulation. It's been taxed, and re-taxed, and re-re-re taxed. That's only one of the reasons why it's
Slashdot Mirror
when you feel like it. If you disagree, just post why, doesn't matter to me, this is words on a screen, can't hurt much one way or the other.
and by the way, I only use my screen name here, the only time I post anon is little one sentence stoopid funnies that don't mean much, never any flames or anything.
if any law infractions revolved around named human beings, and not this non person person they call a corporation. If we re adjusted the laws back to named humans are responsible for their actions, and if the fines came out of personal bank accounts of whomever issued the orders that resulted in the crimes committed, you'd see a lot more honesty with companies. And the government could mandate a price freeze as well on their products to go in conjunction with any fines, or they could actually institute a "three strikes and you are out" provision like they have with human beings, and in the case of corporations, just completely revoke their charters after a third conviction. But they don't do that too often, companies are allowed crime after crime after crime after crime, yet they still stay "in business".
You make Bill Gates pay a big chunk out of his pocket, then make him do 500 hours community service picking up trash next to the road,after a few months in lockup, like any regular guy would get for stealing those sorts of sums, you'd see changes in his company's predatory practices, and pronto. You give him a perpetual get out of jail free card, he'll keep using it. It's that simple.
There's a variety of techniques that could be used to make corporations more honest, but bottom line is, nearly all the legislators, judges, and people in the executive branch make the bulk of their money from being stock holders and/or being in ownership or management positions in corporations, they profit handsomely from this corporate insulation, so they will NOT write, vote for, or sign into law anything that could hurt them personally. They keep up the laws that benefit corporations, and they keep up that level of legal armor and shielding that corporations have, that private individuals don't have.
If YOU defraud someone, it comes out of your pocket and you can't "pass it on" as a cost of doing business. If you do it a few times, you will personally go to jail, some times even one time depending on the crime. Pass a bae check over 100$, it's a felony, you could serve time. a corporation defrauds thousands of people out of billions, or puts a competitor out of business using questionalb tacts, those corporate officers hardly ever see any jail time. It happens, but it's extremely rare. Corporations can just keep getting away with it, time after time, and when they are so huge as to be dominant market players, it never results in any significant changes to the corporation, other than they learn to obfuscate the bookeeping better, and THEN they figure out what new laws that would benefit them better, that might keep them from getting caught, etc, that need to be passed, and then they go to work on that with campaign contributions and lobbying, using money they half stole in the first place. It's a corrupt vicious cycle, organized gang activity basically, and gates and company are just one example of many.
The system is so broken and so corrupt there is little hope that it will get fixed any time soon. I doubt it will frankly. And there is so little difference between "government" and really really large international corporations that we should probably just end the illusion that there is.
...can people put into their clipboard, then go over there and click on the link, and have it uploaded to the malicious website and hose that turkey's box? Seems like if the dude is asking for bits and bytes, might as well give it to him!
That 6% figure of unemployment is just not true, not in any practical meaningful sense. They don't count people who have exhausted unemployment insurance benefits, those people are stricken from the official tally, and that's quite a large number now. There are perhaps millions of chronically un- or under- employed people out there now. And they DO count any part time job, no matter how meagre it is, into the "employed" figures, they make no distinctions there, which is quite misleading when you want to look at the economy as a whole. You work one day a week, it goes into the tally looking like a real full time job. that just don't compute. You hang out a shingle as a consultant, take a few jobs, but spend the bulk of your time still not working, it's still classed as if it was a full time job. And more and more even reported jobs, which can be classed as full-part time, are held by people who can't give them up, even though those jobs simply can't maintain any living level they might have held previously, and they can't find better, so they stick with it. That's why we have record mortgage defaults, and record bankruptcies, which are part of looking at the over all economic health. A lot of those folks are just constantly downsized, sometimes all the way into "no" job, and a lot of times into a less well-paying job or a less-hours worked job, but they started at a higher level. In the past, you workled your way up, now people are finding it harder to even maintain a level, and millions keep getting force-dropped down. Our economy has been going BACKWARDS for several years now,well, 20 years basically, and they try every way they can to make it look like it isn't. It's very common now for people to work long times in jobs with well under 40 hours a week, let alone any over-time pay, etc, like was true in years past, and any benefits have dropped as well, all things averaged out. Yet, wall street and government keep insisisting their methods are working, and the economy is getting better. But, you have balance of trade deficits, and levels of debt versus savings to look at, compared to years past,which again prove they are lying in general terms.
It's is NOT getting better, it's not even constant, the economy is retreating, it's getting worse.
Basically, you can double that unemployment figure, and maybe it's higher,and then break it down further by demographics,geography, race, etc. for example,in some urban areas it's already at 30% or so with younger black people, but those are just estimates, because they have no way to really know what they are, no adequate sampling methods exist.
They cook the books, and fail to keep any sort of accurate records, because it's impossible, AND because no way would they publically admit to double figures over-all, because it's a pychological and market driven level that they just can't deal with.
pretty funny man!
You mean the solar trough method, ya, I've seen those, big ones on the web anyway, then there's heliostats, which are sorta like focusing towers. I was thinking of building one of those from an old 3 meter dish that's in the junk yard here. hmm. good for stationary plants of course.
Stirlings, I've seen the tiny little kit motors, but never anything full size. I imagine they exist though.
...someone would point this out. I was going to if you hadn't thanks. YES, it is exactly the camels nose under the tent they need for official censorship. it's sneaky as all get out, but there it is.
I am also disappointed no one noticed another alternative for those unused channels, ie, make them avaialble for much lower power community TV. Right now any sort of television is expensive, especially from licensing and regulations and whatnot. The main problem with over the air TV and radio is not lack of spectrum, or transmitters and tech to pull off low power broadcasts,it's because the FCC (and local governments)is/are such dinks about it, if they can't make money off of it, they ain't real interested. Even a commercial shortwave station costs beau coup a month for a "license", and there's tons of spectrum available there. You could put up a decent side band low watt transmitter, that still got good range, for under 2 grand maybe,a good one, yet the last I looked it costs 1200 clams a MONTH for a license. (I might be wrong on that, that's what I remember though, I know it's expensive).
Anyway, the point is moot, it's clear that only the big guys will be able to use the spectrum much, except for guerrila ad-hoc mesh networks and guys taking a chance with their low power pirate rigs. They may SAY this new spectrum will be for wireless broadband, but they haven't PROMISED to not charge for it, or to not censor it like they do now. I think even giving them authority over it is a bad idea, but that happened so long ago it's a moot point now, no need to re argue that one.
Bottom line, if the government gives, they can take back or charge or control, and given the politcal climate nowadays, who wants to bet they will be benevolent/fair about it?
... for road vehicles anyway, not for off road or like my work equipment.
I always thought you could solve the "range" problem with pure electrics quite easily, with a tow behind combo generator/fuel tank/ cargo trailer. Seems a natural, a lot of folks tow trailers on trips, and for just normal day to day commuting, cars like the EV1 were perfectly *fine*.
Eventually we'll have better engine choices. I am just tired of pistons. Ya they work, ya they got torque, but the physics with them is so limiting and 18th century.
And you KNOW they got much cooler stuff over to like area 51 places, the meanies, won't share! They probably GOT my flying car using electro gravitics and are probably GROWING my amazon hot babe robots -scratch- CYBORGS!
I need these tools for..uhh... research, ya, that-t-t-t's the ticket...re-search.....
....from the point of view of the non voting stock talking to the voting stock --> "dump management, they are bozos and have ruined the company, do it now, then let's see if there's anything left to salvage". The voting stock dudes got to be WAY past wondering that, too. Of course, I have no idea who the voting stock dudes are, either, or what they hope to get from this, no way is IBM gonna pay them a nickle, and it's quite unlikely they will win in court anyway.
I wonder IF they just dropped all the stupid lawsuit nonsense, and got back to work, could they actually come up with some product now, anything that was any good? And even if they did, would anyone use it, let alone pay for it or pay for service?
I just can't see anyone wanting to do business with them, but I guess in some places they still do. Makes ya wonder though...
...changing my name to Rastus, so I can practice saying "yas, massah, we's be shufflin off now to do yo' biddin".
Yep, it's getting that bad.
Of all the crap out there, that one that REALLY gets me is random "courtesy checkpoints". That is THE most heinous thing going, out of a boatload of heinous stuff goping dowen. It just bugs me that it's going on and getting worse. I mean, it's right out of a grade B old ww2 nazi war movie.
"well, sir, it appears from our records you only paid 120% of your gross income in taxes last year, I'm afraid we'll have to fine you and put you into the special "person of interest" surveilled tax class, at 150%"
"But, but, that's insane!"
"ARE YOU THREATENING ME, YOUR GOVERNMNET HOMELAND SECURITY TAX ADJUSTER? GUARDS, DETAIN THIS MAN, TAKE HIM TO THE RE EDUCATION CAMP FOR DISSIDENTS!"
I've got a few PV panels and the rest of the rig for my solar installation(it's mounted on my RV now since we moved and got a small house), a small wind genny, and two fuel gennys,one a 120 VAC output and one just a 12 VDC. So even if the grid completely poofs I have *some* power available and it's *paid off*, I own it. And I'm at the bottom of the economic food chain in the US income-wise, so if I can do it, almost anyone can to some degree, we just need to get the interest up to a critical threshold, like what happened with computers. Look around now, 20 years ago hardly anyone owned a personal computer, now its ridiculous common. We CAN change if we can bypass big government and big energy FUD that we got to "study it" for another 50 years. We done did studied it since the 60's, time to build a lot of them, IMO. Let's get it on, time to act, not think about acting.
In california it's taking off,look at the example in the article, because they got burned, bad, relying on government and big business to be honest and fair and to watch out for the poor peepuls, phooie, they BURNED the folks out in cal, so you have more awareness there of the importance of backups, and diverse sources.
And de centralised power is better for national security! A few more million points of production spread out over the USA makes it much less likely that if any large plants go out from attack/damage/political & economic shenanigans that it will have as bad an effect. As to selling it, sure! If you have more than what you can use, you SHOULD be able to market it into the grid, or offer it in other ways. The exisitng energy industry has been fighting this for decades now, they do NOT want competition. They got mandated the lock-in generations ago,and they wanted to keep it. It's changing but they fought it constantly and still are whenever they can Now ME if I had a surplus of electricity or burnable gas, I'd use it for more projects/businesses, I wouldn't just sell it, that's just selling off raw materials in a sense, and it's usually a better deal to just keep converting until you have a better, more profitable pr
it really just depends. One, you don't have to use manure, you can use a variety of any biomass that will anerobically digest, which is hmm, all of it. One idea I heard of was from jaque cousteau, his was to use kelp, because of it's incredibly fast growing nature and the make-up of kelp makes it ideal for digesting. It seems industrial hemp would be ideal, too, it's cellulose production per acre/year is amazing, and it doesn't require that much fertiliser, you could get by just plowing under 1/2 the plants every year for that, then re apply the slurry as well. If you could see in meat space how much quite useable burnable gas you get from even a small amount you'd see it's very practical and economic. The deal is, the big energy companies CAN'T send you a bill for it,because you can own it, so no way will this be pushed officially by the government or it's controllers, big industry, that much. They *dig* having you pay forever into their monopoly, both with cash and with mindshare. It's the same with solar, with wind generation, etc.
Second,to get back to some farm savings, although the nitrogen level % remains the same in the manure and water slurry after digestion, it is in a more available form to plants than normal aerobic digestion or composting (farmers just shoot this stuff back on the fields now, with conveyor spreaders or flail spreaders). I have read it is as high as 600% better with anerobic digestion, so you get significant savings on fertilizer (which is a HUGE cost now and going up because artificial fertiliser is made from natural gas), which is what's done with the slurry after it has exhausted methane production potential. And last, it is "relatively" cheap to build these things,and they are incredibly scalable, there's a size and technique to fit any size operation, from joe water buffalo rice farmer on up. There are hundreds of thousands of them around the planet now,of various sizes,just not much in the US, so here it's stayed mostly "experimental",and they have to "study it", etc, that's all, any place else it's just normal, and sunlight is an excellent conversion tool for getting solar energy into various useful products. It's very productive sunlight is,a great energy conversion tool, especially with living plants, and it's the only practical fusion generator we have, and it's "free and open source", the government or industry can't charge you for it directly. They will play act at supporting it, that's about it, it doesn't lend itself to monopoly control, so they spread a lot of economic FUD around it.
Remember, farming has always been profitable and useful,well, from obvious reasons, food is kinda nice, even before modern techniques were invented, so it's quite do-able. Look at giant forests, grow all on their own, no high tech anything needed for them to grow, just water, dirt, sunlight, air, done. They are just huge biological manufacturing plants, quite sophisticated really, and that's all any farm is, a biological factory, and there's various ways to cut costs and remain profitable, ONCE you as joe big farmer STOP being brainwashed by monsanto and the energy companies and the equipment companies and the banks. You have to break that mindset of "dependence" first before you can wrap your brane around "how to do it" better. That first step is just too much for most people to get over. It's not really their fault, it's how they were taught, and what the "approved" techniques are as taught at ag colleges and in industry orgs. There are VERY few independent farmers around, the vast majority are really just coporate sub contractors and have to follow these corporation rules. The guy I work for owns three large farms, he is controlled by his suppliers and marketing org down to an obscene picky little level like you wouldn't believe on how to run his farm, or he can't market, and that's the biggest problems farmers have now, and they get trapped into it, go along, or go broke. Once in and in debt, they are trapped, it's almost like a form of serfdom on a large scale. It's a hard
some of the growth industries in the US now are defence related, and the "justice system".
Jobs in the future for kids now inside the US will be soldier, prostitute, house maid, gardener--and that car wash example. About like that it appears. Tongue in cheek but it's roughly true, too.
They got all these kids now faked out they will be a sports star or a rock star or something, or some other job along those lines. It's pretty sad when those are the best paid jobs to strive for from societal brainwashing. It's obviously the most interest that the vast majority have. You can fill a stadium -or multiple stadiums and venues really- with 50,000 people any given weekend near any medium or large US city to watch some game or get entertained with some various music, but you're *lucky* to get 500 people to a political conference even occassionally. Ya, I just invented the numbers, but I think you can see the point.
IF "globalism" as they push it now was so successful, then WHY are we now the worlds largest debtor nation, when a bit over 20 years ago when all this big push started we were the largest creditor nation? If it was supposed to make the nation all this loot and be successful, where's the beef? They keep claiming it's working, and the numbers keep proving them wrong, so they say we need MORE of their schemes to make it work. It's nuts. There's the big lie staring at us, along with we now have the highest incidence of mortgage defaults since the great depression, personal bankruptcy is at record highs,pension funds in both private and government are in the most serious problem levels, and so on. Can't even think about the ponzi scheme social insecurity is, that's gone for most practical purposes.
Nuts, it's a series of big lies. This "new and improved" system is designed to transfer even more wealth to the upper 1% of the population that is already the richest and most powerful, and it has to come from someplace, and that someplace is the US middle class, because that's the only other place it exists in the fist place, it's the last place they can steal it from, so there ya go.
... with you on it never really was run the way it was supposed to be run. And it usually de-evolves into an oligarchy,most true,and I think it's happening,the goal being two class society run as technofeudalism, the new aristocracy running the show with just advanced tech and comforts.
The WORDS back then were very good though, certainly one of ther better attempts at humans organizing some sort of government. The failures were obvious, slavery being the most notable example.
I am hoping that something like the FreeState project can suceed, get at least one state in the union back to a more-true constitutional bent, and to serve as a catalyst to other states. There are some other efforts being made in other states, starting with electing a constitutionalist as the chief executive in the governors office. Jesse Ventura blew it when he got in,just blew it, sad to say. One that stands out is Richard Mack running in utah, he has the first coalition of some third parties (libertarians, constitutionalists, I think some other parties) and other independents and break away R's and D's effort that seems to have a fair chance of success. I don't agree with allhe thinks (hard to get any two humans to 100% agree obviously), but he comes pretty dang close. Who knows, he might get in. Utah is especially hit hard by the federal government, for a variety of reasons, so he has a chance. I don't live there but am shipping him a few clams for his campaign soon, because I think it's really important to get the ball rolling on breaking this stranglehold on our government "as a whole".
Have you ever read about the "northwoods" documents? Worth a google if you've never seen them. Goes along with your example of the Luisitania (and also the sinking of the Maine), and allowing the japanese to attack at pearl, and not meeting them out to sea instead. And we just lately have been getting confirmation with the release of the LBJ tapes about the "tonkin gulf" attacks being a complete sham. it was thought, but not proven, until just lately this was the case.
Too bad it seems to take decades and generations to find out the truth, my hope is that by primarily using the internet, truths can come out faster and they'll have a harder time spinning them into oblivion.
9-11 has enough rat-smell to it to make the nearest cheese factory guys real nervous...
The reason we had such an explosion in illegals coming over from central america was because of NAFTA, we put millions of poor campesinos out of work on their small farms when our corporate farms dumped on them. whoops. The amount of blue collar manufacturing jobs cshipped to mexico was not any where near enough to compensate for the other millions put out of work. It was nuts, way too fast, lopsided, no thought to social stability or where people were going to work, here OR there. And a LOT of people back then warned that this would happen, heck, I was one of them, exactly what I said and wrote back then happened. Sucks, because I know what's coming next, a really BORKED middle class inside the US, inevitable now.
All that will happen with this scheme is the dilution of the US's middle class's average worth, it will go down. And, well, it has, you can see it now, looking at *all* the stats. Just look at the real obvious biggee, since all this globalization started we have gone from being the worlds largest creditor nation-we had enough extra and surplus money handy to be able to loan and invest and just give it away around the world, to now we are the worlds largest debtor nation, only staying afloat from foreigners buying up our mortgages and government paper, and their phony buck has dropped in value severely. It's cuckoo,and happened within the last 20 years,exactly corresponding to their mass globalization efforts and transference of our economy, and they got the nads to call that a "success". Phooie. When I was a kid, one just normal mid level blue collar job could support a large family, home ownership, a nice car, vacation, a pension, benefits,put the kids through school, etc, now that is almost entirely gone, it take two such jobs to accomplish the same thing, and the prices are getting worse, so....it will destroy families. After two jobs you've run out of adults to work in a household. It causes a ton of stress, economics are a prime reason for family problems, divorce, etc. sucks. Kids suffer from this bad.
I think the really large powers-that-be are doing it on purpose,from a LOT of other references and research, again, way to long for a single post, they really don't like power sharing with a large successful middle class, they much pre
Datum 2. If you watch politics for enough decades, you will *notice* it doesn't really matter which R or D is in the white house, or controls congress, they play good cop/ bad cop back and forth with their various constituencies, but you always get more or less the same results, more whopper government, more bogus laws, more freedoms stripped, higher taxes, more debt,more reallystrange foreign wars that you find out years later were based on lies and were scam wars,and more destruction of the backbone of the US, the productive middle class. Again, pretty obvious. When people say they voted for their idea of the lesser of two evils, they are admitting to being scared, tricked, or just didn't really care enough to NOT vote for one of those evils. Pitiful really. they didn't want to "waste their vote", even though the only 'wasted' vote is one not cast.
Of course, none of that matters now because...
#3 the elections are now officially hijacked, what little remnants of honest voting used to exist are now gone, you'll "elect" who THEY want to be in there, and THOSE guys get told what to do from international very large power and money interests. We were WARNED this would happen, and we ignored it.
#4 the only rational plan is something completely & radically different from "politics as we know it", because the old ways of doing things WILL GIVE YOU THE SAME OLD WAYS. IT ALWAYS HAPPENS. It CAN'T give you anything BUT that, it's basic math. NOTHING will change, you will always get the same results if you copy what you just did.
I think we'll run out of cheap for civilians liquid petroleum productrs well before 30 years, it will be so expensive in terms of BTUS to get more BTUs only the worlds ultra rich and some governments will use it. They will force-switch us peons back to coal, and build more nukes, along with mass adoption of technologies like wind generators, etc. There's hundreds of years of coal left, heck, just one field in utah has enough for the entire planet for centuries, and humans will wind up burning all of it,along with extracting petroleum from tar sands, etc, probably using solar heat in the deserts for extraction, and sea water for the carrier for the slurry. You'll see interest in air pollution drop when fuel costs become 75% of peoples budgets, given everything has to be still manufactured and transported, using SOMETHING for the energy source. and I think that point could come within 15 years or so. Peak oil in all the significant fields outside of the middle east has ALREADY occurred.
... pretty much control everything unless you are living extremely primitive out in the wild someplace. Mod-erne life as we know it is totally enmeshed in it, so ya, open source is going to be an even more powerful aspect to all our lives in the future. Even non computerised "life" interacts with computerised life, if you think about it. All our goods and services are getting more and more dependent on it, it's critical part of it now. and it sure didn't take very long, either, we went from just a few computers on the planet to now there are untold billions of them, everywhere, doing so many things it's amazing, especially to people who have watched it completely happen.
Prices have dropped, technology quality and diversity have risen dramatically, and isn't this what we wanted, anyway, that eventually smart machines would take over all the mundane, leaving the humans to REALLY expand and explore, both inside themselves and out into space? Looking at it in that aspect, it seems to be the goal, automate and computerize to the extenet that we no longer have to struggle to just live, it's a great emancipator, part deux. So, the closer we can get to "free" with computers and software, the better, IMO.
I'm an old timey protester, started off with civil rights and the environment, then womens rights, then anti war and anti slavery-draft.
You get beat, gassed, arrested,, now they taser you, and they got microwave beam weapons coming, there exists sonic nausea indusing weapons, and other sorts of mass torture goodies to use on you, along with surveillance and tracking that is sophisticated enough you won't know it if it's used on you, no matter how leet you think you are. and that's just the grade B stuff they use against you, the grade a stuff is phony arrests, manufactured evidence, then crooked judges and incarceration.
Seen that, too. sucks.
And in some cases the goons and their mercenaries kill people, AND get away with it.
Think on that a bit....real hard, just think on that.
I have SEEN with my own eyeballs disgusting goon cops dressed as protesters STARTING violence at demos, I busted several of them myself, followed them because I smelt a rat with their actions, some doofuses we never saw before, then all of a sudden up front in the demo, whip out rocks,they bean some uniformed cop, get the charge-reaction, then they split and melted away. Too suspicious for me, followed them as covertly as I could. I then took it on myself to keep track of people stating violence, the rock throwers, etc, and followed them back after the riots started, they would sneak away, and go "check in" with their bosses/cop handlers way back a few blocks away. I saw this several times, it's a pattern with them.
I also know personally a few guys, some ex cops, some ex military, who either did this stuff, or they were approached in a recruitment effort to go be part of these teams. One guy I know had the smarts and bravery to say NO to them, he was a high ranking cop, the federal government tried to recruit him into an alphabet soup agency for the *express* purpose of infiltrating and being a violence - starter. He just said no thanks, but it freaked him out, being an honest guy and all. He really dislikes uncle sugar now, from that, and other things he saw over the years. And I know some military guys who, when they were younger and brainwashed -their words, not mine-- did much worse than what we are seeing coming out of iraq, both outside the country in other nations and INSIDE the US, where it is quite completely illegal. And I mean some ultra *nasty* stuff. And so on and so forth, I have accumulated *quite* the large amount of anecdotal over the years, being a political activist and researcher. the bottomline is, in around 75% of the cases of "9ncidents" out there, roughly speaking, it's some aspect of the government who pulled it of, then they blame someone lese for it. I'll include the OKC bombing attacks in that as well, that was government inside job. 9-11 I *think* was just they let it go down, they knew it was coming, they are using it as a reichstagg fire like event. My opinion might change on that though, given more evidence.
The bottom line is, the man is NOT impressed by any large scale non violent protest, they will NOT change one single iota of any heinous laws, questionable actions, or stop doing anything apparently illegal. It is almost a complete waste of time.
MLK and passive non violence. Yes, this was somewhat effective,BACK THEN, I will grant that,it was really only non violent for the protesters, on the other side they were as violent as they felt like. But there wasn't any significant change until after the goons shot him (yes, he was probably assassinated by government "contractors"), until after around 68 when it became apparent that all the returning black combat vets were not going to remain "passive", having been first screwed via institutionalised discrimination, THEN screwed by being poor and not having daddy get them out of the draft by buying them a cushy guard spot or being placed in some school with a 2S deferrment, to go fight some redakalus war for profit against other people of color. Starting in 67, then in 68, then into the early
this is interesting, right off the bat:
"In a widely quoted study, Baruch Lev of the Brookings Institution reported that in 1982, 62% of the market value of companies in the S & P 500 Index could be attributed to tangible assets, and only 38% to intangibles. By 1992, Lev noted, the ratio had essentially reversed: 32% of the assets for S & P companies were tangible, while 68% were intangible. A follow-up study by Brookings in 1998 reported that the asset ratio had shifted even more, with 85% of assets intangible, and only 15% tangible."
And I am assuming it might even be a more worse situation now, tangibles versus intangibles. 15% tangibles, this is what our economic leaders and government brought us, aren't we proud?
But RIGHT THERE he misses the boat. The US economy is in trouble PRECISELY because we live in a tangible world, and we gave away our ability to produce tangible assets! We decided tangibles were worthless! We placed an artificiality of extreme "worth" to intangibles, that completely skewed centuries of understanding of what was "worth" more, or what constituted "wealth". WHAT is worth more, which is "produced wealth", which is a "more valuable" asset to own, a nice JPEG of a turkey dinner with all the fixin's, or a REAL turkey dinner?
He's correct in the article on outsourcing, but he missed what was more valuable, and that was the outsourcing and destruction of domestic manufacturing. And you could see the further results in the great dot bomb fiasco, when some web page about something was somehow going to be worth X-amount more than THE REAL THING, AND keep going up in value! That was the real bottom line disaster in the economy, substituting real stuff for pie in the sky and intangibles, swapping snake oil for your basket of produce, buying the sizzle, not the steak.
And the proof resides in the hard numbers of balance of trade stats, in the old way of measuring unemployment, not the new way that takes off the rolls those who have exhausted unemployment "insurance",the cost of living indices they had to adjust to keep people from freaking out and so to nothave to pay entitlement COLAS as required by law, the historically high levels of personal and corporate bankruptcy, the levels of non -savings, personal and corporate and governmental debt, pensions funds (and social security)that are almost universally in serious hotwater, and so on.
We let our government and high level casino traders trade us the magic beans for the cow. It was and continues to be quite a lamer move.
Open source and free software (and perhaps an overhaul of intangible patenting to be sure) will go to place intangibles back to their proper place, as some of the, and JUST "some of the",tools to do the real work. Just having a "tool industry" based on intangibles or servicing intangibles, won't produce a single thing, you need to *use* the tools to make the real stuff, to perform the real service that the real stuff needs. Intangibles have a place in economy, no one would argue against that, but putting them at the top? Basing your national economy on them? Nuts! Crazy! Someone ate their branes! No way, seriously misguided. Until there's some sort of 2$ replicator, in meatworld space, tangibles will always rule, both as tools and as products, and whomever has world mastery of them will rule, too, it's that simple, and we *gave it away* for basically free.
Now all the economic shills, err I mean most learned pundits are trying to explain how nice these magic beans are, how nutritious and filling, how we'll all get rich quick with more magic beans, and will insist you keep trading for more magic beans, and it's pretty funny how many adults still don't see the fairy tale for what it is.
you might be interested in this.
"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest."
Mohandas Gandi
... or more accurately, I don't see a preponderence of anti - gun sentiment, or anti self defense. On the contrary, I think on most geek/tech places I have seen, including slashdot, a libertarian philosophy seems to be of above the average "norm" of sorts, and pro gun, pro self defense, pro second amendment is quite well represented. Like, I've never felt any sort of overt huge anti-bias here whenever the discussion revolved around guns or self defense, and have contributed several times to such discussions and it's been mostly well received. A few exceptions, but that's to be expected with a forum of this size*.
Of course,to be fair, it is offset by geography, I've noticed that places that have "more" private gun ownership tend to more or less support it more, as opposed to nations and posters there-from, who's respective countries disallow or severely restrict private gun ownership. That shows that most likely it's also a learned cultural thing, and also, if it is illegal in some posters nation,and depending on the nation, they might not want to post pro gun ownership thoughts, for some obvious reasons....
It's hard to be "pro" freedom, and be "anti" effective self defense or be anti "tools", which when you get down to it, is all a firearm is, a tool. Geeks usually value freedom, the right to chose, and the right to use tools of choice.
*side issue but it's interesting, and I've wondered before but never found out.. I wonder-does anyone know-what IS the largest active forum on the web? Is this it?
I done did my share of hot attic crawlin, and factory/shop ceiling and attic cable pullin... I also know there are a variety of "smart" automated homes websites out there.
Here ya go
Looks like a few possibilities on the first page there.
Also, there's low tech, ever see those roof turbines you can get? No motors, just vanes that spin, partially from wind, partially from just the heat wants to rise. Straight up is better than sideways for losing heat, all things else being equal. They work OK, put enough of them in, you'll get some exhaust action. What you have to remember though, is you not only want to exhaust heat, but you want to suck cooler air in somehow. If you go to a powered vent, perhaps pull the incoming air from the shadiest/coolest side of the house down close to the ground with some cheap ductwork.
Ya know what would be *nice*? One of those stirling motors using the waste heat to generate electricity. Maybe even stick all your apartments hot water heaters up there, zee-ro hot water energy bills for a lot of the year.
Sometimes in the summer it's wicked hot(aww heckk, it's already hit over 90 here in georgia, it's always hot in the summer), and I'm thinking "dang, wish there was way to store all this free heat up and use it next winter" and I'm thinking all this expensive high tech geothermal computerised doodads, then I get slapped back to reality and see the "stored solar" wood pile over by the well house, and go "yep, got it, check!"
You forgotten that a large part of the digits represented by the money supply is FUTURE debt, it's not based on past productivity of any kind. That's why they are called "notes" and not "certificates".
I understand a lot more about money, what it is, how it comes about, etc, than what you give me "credit" for, pun intended. I also know the difference between "wealth" and "money" and how you can't inflate or deflate wealth(short of physical destruction of course), but you can with "money", and also use the same money to dictate how society progrresses, instead of allowing society to dictate how wealth production progresses, so that money can be used to represent the actual produced wealth. Wealth - as opposed to money - can only come into true existence in one of three ways; it can be extracted from the earth in terms of raw resources, it can be grown, or it can be reassembled/manufactured using any sort of combination of the previous two. All other forms of human endeavor are examples of wealth transference, or re-arrangement, but they don't represent *creation* of wealth. And when your representation of produced wealth is not based on actual true created wealth, it's called "fiat", it's ersatz, and it only represents what someone tells you it represents, taken to an extreme when -say- a government just dictates that it is worth such and such. You can get away with that for awhile, but not forever.
Most examples in man's past history indicate once that is attempted, it invariably leads to the diminishing of the money, no matter how many digits of the example are "placed into circulation", or what sorts of arcane formulae are attempted to regulate it, which in our nation is primarily done through mortgages/loans starting with the central bank, who "loan" money that they create, then demand "interest" on it, or they "promise" future payments of the same sort of ersatz created digits sometime in the future, by placing their citizenry into future bondage, ie, they sell government paper or bonds or debt notes, sometimes called bills. They claim ownership over you and your future labor, you automatically owe them a "debt" because they say so, they are bigger than you, more organized, more ruthless, and have more guns and mercenaries than you do. And that's really it. You've been not only conned, you've been conquered, and even babies born today are born into what is in essence, conquered serfdom, those babies future labor, their created wealth or service to a created wealth, is already promised-by "law", to a huge degree now to the conquerers, to do with what they feel like, at some vague point in the future.
It's complicated, but simpler if you can always differentiate between wealth and representations of wealth that are not based on a one to one example, because the representations can be so hugely altered as to worth., or what they can be re-traded for, for a real produced piece of wealth-some product, or a service to that wealth.
IF our money supply reflected produced wealth,on ANY sort of one to one honest arrangement, I would be getting *more* in the terms of goods and services with todays buck then what I got decades ago, not less, because, well, I can't. I only get a fraction of what it should be, because they inflated it by loaning it to themselves in the future, and it's sheer lunancy to think it can be maintained forever. It's been "inflated", inflated beyond even where it should be by the accumulation of millions of people working and creating true wealth in the intervening years. That's why when I was a teen I could get 5 mickey D's and a shake and a fry and get a nickle back from my dollar, and today, well, not even close.
One of my other points (and I know I wasn't clear on it, my bad) was that, all considerations of what the digits represent put aside,to get back to these taxes, the government (the combination of fed/state/local) has already taxed 100% of the money in circulation. It's been taxed, and re-taxed, and re-re-re taxed. That's only one of the reasons why it's