...private contracts. As an adult, you make your own decisions. As per the government and Tax BS,, every individual is the same, no advantage OR disadvantage to being in a relationship or not. As to your private business, you negotiate that with your employer, insurer, your estate advisor, whatever you want. A lot of those things can be done just with a notary for that matter, ie., cheap. If you are in a relationship covered by contract, that you are the "closest" next of kin as per a living arrangement and your self proclaimed friendship and love, because you agreed to it, the hospital (one of the examples above as being "unfair") can't deny you visitation. And so on, right down the line.
It's none of the government's business who you hang out with or sign a contract with, short of you cannot legally sign away your rights, you cannot sell yourself into bondage or slavery or any situation where you lose born with rights. Other than that, they shouldn't have any say in it whatsoever.
I see no reason to regress, we used to have discriminatory laws on the books about race, gender, etc, and right now, the marriage laws are discriminatory against *everyone*, noit just gays or plurals,, but everyone, because they are predicated on you seeking a marriage permit, the stat'es permission, to do something that is your born with right in the first place, to associate with whomever you like in your private life, and as such, all those discriminatory marriage laws should be stricken from the books. What we DON'T need is MORE discriminatory laws.
So the answer isn't more laws, it is the same as the others, remove the bogus unfair and unequal and illegal laws that are still on he books. End the discrimination. Extremely traditional hetero couples would want this as well, they shouldn't need some lame government "permission" to get married and have a loving union, that is between those people, and it can be recognized inside their own community, with whatever ritual they want.
Same with anyone else. If they want zero ceremony, just an official notification of some arrangement, again, just write up a contract with the agreed on parameters and sign the thing in front of a notary, done. If you don't want to do anything, that is your right as well, just live together or whatever. It is no one else's business ethically, so it shouldn't be any government's business either, one way or the other.
No discrimination, for or against this or that, the laws stays strictly neutral and out of your affairs. There just shouldn't be 1,000 "laws" on the books for a basic human right, freedom to be you and to associate with whomever you want in any manner you want.
All they need is one law, to right a long overdue wrong, any previous law that has the word "marriage" in it is now stricken, null and void, and it would be that simple. One sentence, clean all this up as pertains the government. You can still "marry", just the government has no say in it one way or the other, and there's no economic or tax or visitation or nuthin discrimination allowed against people then.
Look at the larger picture and don't be instantly knee jerk about it, logic it out further jus *one step more*.
The government should have *nothing* to do with who you live with or "marry" in any outside ceremony. If the straight and gay folks would realize this, that they have a 100% common beef with STATE PERMISSION to marry, they could lobby TOGETHER to get all governmental laws about marriage just removed from the books. Instead, once again like they always do, the governmental goons use that old tired 'divide and keep them conquered' routine to keep you in serfdom.
Any sort of personal economic or custody issues can be addressed by *private contract*. YOU and your partner(s) decide how to run your affairs entirely, fullstop.
I mean really, say from the religious and very hetero side, which keeps fighting to stop gay marriage, what business of government is it that you need a PERMIT, permission, and LICENSE to get married? None, you can do it like they did in ye olden days, with your pastor and community, and that's it. The heteros are suffering under that same delusion that they need "permission" to marry, and keep fighting for less freedom for themselves! And now all the gay folks want that same thing?!? Nuts! Crazy! "Please government, we beg you and petition you, take away more of our rights and sell us a piece of paper permission slip, signed by one of your useless kommisars!"
See how crazy that is?
Get the stupid state and government out of the marriage "permission" business entirely, FOR EVERYONE, all of the above, "we the people", it is no longer needed, if ever it was, and it should be illegal because of freedom of association born with rights.
And if you look back in history, a lot of the first state "licenses to get married" were jim crow racist laws designed to prevent interrace marrying, now they are the "norm" when they should have all been repealed. (incidentally the same with some of the earlier "gun laws", they were racist in origin then got extended to the population in general)
Repeal the marriage "license" entirely, and all the ancillary stupid laws around that, (like tax issues and your hospital visit issues, etc) don't seek and fight and lobby to extend that abomination of statist power and control. What the heck do you want governmental restrictions for? Makes no sense, the better solution is end it entirely.
Straights, gays, Bis, and all the otherwise out there, the polygamists and polyandrous-ists, all of the above, could all unite behind that, and end this state control nonsense once and for all.
..marijuana really isn't illegal at the federal level, they just have a so much an ounce tax on it (I forget what,a lot though, 200 bucks maybe) and you need a permit. Then they about slap refuse to issue any permits, even to medical researchers.
The one that it is even *nuttier* is they outlaw industrial hemp, which is a very good multiple use ag crop, yet you can import and sell industrial hemp products.
The federal government (we the people) would do good to just eliminate several agencies as doing more harm than good, to the economy, to society, etc, those guys in the DEA (the war on some drugs is an abject complete failure), the BATFE (WTF is that all about?), and the DOE (education)(state run is all that is needed, no fed skimming of cash is necessary to fund schools, we got by completely fine without it for a long long time) for starters. There's a very few aspects to those agencies that could be retained (not many though), and those could be rolled into other agencies.
We see these nostalgia OS articles all the time, but I have never personally used any of them (outside of mac classic, which we will leave out for this discussion). So...all you greybeards, which is better, AmigaOS, BeOS, or OS/2? Which would you like to see REALLY resurrected with a lot of interest and development?
Those few quoted figures in the article are astounding to me. I question them. We live out in north cow flop redneck georgia and the local library is always packed, they have multiple librarians checking out the books and you have to wait in line. This is at various times of the week, we only go into town occasionally, and the days vary. The library has gone in a few years from three computers to about two dozen and again, most of the time you have to wait to get access, and there's always half a dozen to a dozen folks using their free wifi connections with laptops sitting around on the couches and chairs, all reading or researching or whatever. And a lot of local stores sell a lot of books, etc.
I mean, this is *out in the sticks*, this is blue collars-ville, farming (that would be me) and a little manufacturing and construction and logging, in the larger cities the book scene is way more robust and extensive than that.
I really doubt people check out books and buy books just to not read them. I also question this because the listed reference URL in the article you linked where they received this information is merely a spam link that has nothing more there that is on topic.
I mean it is great and all that ya'all read a lot in Germany, but I don't think you should assume people don't read a lot of books here either,(and magazines and newspapers and online), or that is it just people with advanced degrees or whatever, it is still a rather large industry and business across the demographic here. I mean, look back up in the article at the amount of ebooks being sold, and that is just a teeny tiny part of the overall market here so far.
Now to be fair, the age of the internet has probably changed a lot of reading habits, but text is text, on a screen or holding it in your hand and turning the pages. Today, I read a lot more on the internet than I did when I was a kid...and that's easy to do..the net didn't exist then;)
"Native Americans" are foreigners as well, they originally came from Asia, primarily crossing the Siberian land bridge when it existed, although some came from boats as well (some researchers believe that anyway).
As in where exactly is the dividing line between a regular cellphone today and a smartphone? I think with these smallish laptops it is easier, has optical drive/does not have an optical drive. The one without is a netbook, the one with is a notebook. but I am not sure on the line between phone species yet.
Free assembly today means you have the right to go stand in some official cage miles away (called the "free speech zone") from the real protest point you want to be at, and then if you decline to relocate to the "official" area or decline to provide ID or refuse to do either on demand, trying to remain both anonymous and to have your assemblage actually mean anything, you get arrested anyway, err, I mean "detained", if not also physically assaulted and punished on the spot, using a variety of blunt force trauma or chemical or electrical or sonic weapons and techniques.
The bill of rights, the alleged born with freedoms that can't be abridged, are a very nice theory, but in practice, the state and their mercenary enforcers routinely violate any and all of those rights, and have, as far back as I can remember going back to racial civil rights protest days, also including the state insisting you need their "permission", a permit of some kind, for what should clearly be a born with right..
I'm not sure but I still think you need the (appropriate) usb cable to do tethering to your regular computer (although I think the TOS sort of frown on that, I know it is possible) though, not sure on bluetooth yet. Most likely I am gong with these guys when I upgrade next, just to have a backup cheap ISP. I use either prepaid tracphone or net10 now (have both here), and it's the same ten cents a minute, or you get boost all you can eat everything for 50 bucks, or just the data is 35 cents a day, then ten cents a minute talk, which I will probably go for, because I just don't talk that much on the phone anymore so I really don't need even the 50 buck plan. 11 bucks a month for a backup ISP is quite the deal, even if it is a slow network. I also like that they are iden, same as the electric power guys, so when the grid goes down, that will most likely be still up no matter what in my area, it is their emergency commo service, they even have emergency mobile towers and everything. Plus the walkie talkie feature is another cool deal. Probably get a sprint/nextel iden network styled blackberry (used), then activate it with a boost activation Sim card, etc. I've been researching this for awhile now, seems the combination of the cheapest and best for all the various mobile everything you might want. Just waiting for the "spare" FRNs to show up 0_o
Did you jump through the hoops and put the opera mini browser on it? I know the guys at the howard forums recommend that over the stock browser that comes with that phone.
It will level out sooner than that, because the US wouldn't exist if they had ten to thirty million people out homeless on the sreet, there'd be violent revolution well before that, so the fatbankcats and politicians will come up with a way for people to stay in their homes to avoid that "social unrest" scene, which will stabilize prices faster. Stroke of the pen, law of the land deal. I have no idea what form it will take, but it is *going* to happen.
Housing is one of the few things in the US now that is not totally dependent on imports, so the dropping dollar won't completely impact it as bad. It is way more a domestic and more controllable (and fixable) economic issue than say an external deficit causing expense like price of oil or imported manufactured goods and gadgets that will become more expensive as the dollar drops.
A lot of some anticipated upstream megaprofits on sliced and diced and repackaged mortgages will vanish, but really, they were unsustainable in the first place, to even think that you could lather on (quite literally) 20 layers deep of profit skimming off of one mortgage, that was just nuts. My guess is those speculators will be forced to eat it eventually (which should happen anyway just for being greedy tards about it).
So the houses will get used, and the prices stabilize faster, albeit still well below the real estate tulip mania bubble prices, which about anyone who wasn't totally deranged *knew* were bloated in the first place and were bound to crash.
And that doesn't even count the several million a year new immigrants, both kinds, who will need housing and will spur demand and price stabilization. They'll be a several year shakeout, we are still in the beginning of it, but housing is a *necessity*, not a luxury, so a way will be found there to get it back to affordable levels.
And besides, there's nothing wrong with more affordable/cheaper housing. We need it as a society, it is way over priced now in a lot of places from that dumb house flipping nonsense, and in a global economy with shrinking middle class pay and jobs, people need to start thinking differently (so they will, and are right now), including every two year job hopping. It might not even be possible for a lot of people to do that much longer, they are going to hang on to ANY job they got and any house they can get into, because the alternative will be *quite sucky*. Using your house as some sort of "stock" and ATM machine is lame, it's your home first and primarily, or the next guy's home, that is what a house is "worth" more than just the dollars and cents figures.
Now we'll be seeing less new housing based on the "SUV model" type Mc Mansions and more reasonably sized and equipped for energy savings instead of energy waste and priced units, but that will be the larger overall difference.
Conventional energy is tax payer funded as well-to make it more "economically feasible" for private energy companies, if you look at the whole stack. Cherry picking just some of the costs results in skewed figures that just make it seem to be cheaper. Thousands of miles of seized land for transmission towers and natgas pipelines, with no recompense for the private party land owners that these lines and pipelines cross, decades of uranium research run by the taxpayers or subsidized into academia and private companies, the government/taxpayers being the insurer of last resort for nuke plants (or they wouldn't exist commercially today), decades of using the US military @ *trillions* of dollars to protect oil fields all over the planet, etc., health costs associated with conventional energy sources, large hydro projects, coal, natgas amd oil sold off of public lands for cheap, then resold privately at much higher costs, a direct subsidy, yada yada.
There isn't a single form of energy production out there that isn't at least partially government/tax payer supported in some fashion if you follow the economic breadcrumbs around, and the total bill over the last century and change for "conventional" energy is *huge*. The amount thrown at more modern alternative ways is chump change in comparison. Make conventional centralized power production and distribution pay *all* their own way, including these superfund sites cleanup, and forcing the private oil companies to pay for all their own overseas security, so you see the price at the pump instead of half of it hidden in the tax bill,etc, etc,a big list, and stop hiding all the real costs with bookeeping shenanigans like that, and the alternatives-especially decentralized production of energy, become instantly quite the deal and "economically feasible" in a lot of cases.
If they come up with an algae fuel that makes the black oily stuff in the ground not so attractive or valuable, it will do more than all the diplomats in the past have done to make some of the more "contentious" areas of the planet...less so. I think it *would* deserve the peace prize on that basis.
I mean, let's get real here, do people REALLY think the mid east and central african wars, etc have *nothing* to do with vast oil reserves in those same areas, that it is just a "coincidence"? What, maybe two drools and one moron on the whole planet still believe that government horse hockey, tops?
Algae fuel that can be grown just about anywhere, in any quantities you feel like having, would just do wonders to help end high stakes geopolitical "resource envy".
And now you know why this isn't pushed faster, with emergency funding that would dwarf those casino bankers bailouts..it's too much of a planetary wealth shifter and game changer. Oil is valuable because it is scarce, and does a job nothing else can, and a lot of really big fat roly poly cats make billions on it and make political careers out of it, both civvie and military, making sure that oil keeps flowing in the "correct" way and at the "correct" prices.
Algae fuel would make most of that obsolete, it is what they call "disruptive technology", at least equal to like the transistor in importance, maybe even more.
And we *need* it. We are something like one or two decades away from rising population meets declining crop yields and what crops there being hugely more expensive to produce. Food today, once you boil it all down to basics, is made from still cheap-enough diesel fuel, and water supplies primarily and that's it, take away either one of those things (and throw in cheap phosphates and natural gas derived fertilizer in the "must haves") and planetary mass starvation happens real quick like, which means quite a bit of "social unrest".
If google just stopped indexing all his "intellectual property", he'd be laughed out of complaining about it because of his now quite public previous statements. He's already dicked himself and he doesn't even know that.
And I think google should do this NOW and set a precedent by showing these online news content complainers exactly what they are asking for. And google has another ace in the hole, it isn't that much for them to just regurgitate the AP and other feeds either, they can afford it, and could easily just wipe out most online newspapers today if they felt like it. Then they could expand from there and start pushing the better of the world wide independent blog scene. There's just no absolute need anymore to have expensive "flown in" journalists to go cover this or that news event when there are millions of people already living there all over who can write well enough to pass, who are already carrying net enabled cellphones with cameras, and want to write, primarily for funzies, and have a big interest in seeing their local "hot breaking news" covered.
Google's indexing is like getting put in the old dead trees yellow pages for free, if they went to the real yellow pages style of CHARGING for indexing for commercial sites like murdoch's news ventures, this would sort that out fast.
I hope they call his bluff and just stop indexing anything he owns just to put that cretin in his place.
The looks take some getting used to (like the smart car), but the specs are good. I am impressed they are running with the generator trailer idea, or the "modular hybrid" for extended driving trips. To me, that makes *loads* more sense than onboard dual engine/electric motor, then batterties plus fuel tank, etc, that you have with a regular gas/electric hybrid. That's just too much weight. Pure electric, make it a hybrid with the generator trailer, only attached when you REALLY need to drive long trips.
100 grand though....ain't getting one. Some day do my own electric conversion, proly on a smallish pickup. 10 grand is more reasonable there.
This mixture is probably better represented in Brazil today than the US, so it gives a sneak peek into what humans will look like in the future.
This will probably happen unless someone or group releases some "race" specific/tagged bioweapon. Of course we could easily see an entire human "race" bioweapon that would be near unstoppable, say it had a very long incubation period.
I think if we do make it 500 years civilization will be pretty neat though, just judging by the last century of development. It's a big "if" right now though I think.
The financial "business" of London was even further in the hole than the US wallstreet boys and needed an almost entire 100% level GDP new poof created cash injection to keep from going bankrupt. because it is unsustainable, or it wouldn't have needed this fast inflationary stealth tax injection. Here's a graph/link from the BBC yesterday about it. Someone has to do the real work in the world,you can't eat or drive or live inside electrons, and when it is increasingly not your own nation doing the real work of wealth creation, you have to resort to emergency accounting tricks, which merely delay the inevitable full collapse. The UK killed off manufacturing faster than the US, shipping it off for chump change for the fast buck, and that's why they got nailed even harder. It's directly proprtional how this happens.
That old model is unsustainable, completely proven last year and this year, it just doesn't work, but that business model and those gents is what we have right now "by law" in many western nations. They *should* have been allowed to fail and collapse so we can get this sorted out better. Hate to flog that old tired mule, but there's no free lunch, you must have domestic manufacturing. That's the number #1 method of having value added wealth creation. You can't create wealth with the printing press or just changing server entries. You can keep the people faked out domestically for a little longer doing that, but not the whole world, you have to actually do real work to create real wealth. Who is sitting on surplus and who isn't? Who are the big debtors and the big creditors now? Look how much this has changed over the last thirty years. The manufacturing world, primarily china, is the big creditor, followed by japan, the other big manufacturer. The oil rich states have that too, surplus, but they are mining "fossil wealth" (I do hereby claim this new financial term), and it will get exhausted eventually. They've been blowing it for three generations now on massive luxuries purchases, busywork mc government jobs, and buying foreign made goods and importing foreign serf laborers to do construction and menial tasks. That can't go on forever, only as long as they can pump out fossil wealth.
So them investing in just more proven failed business models is not a smooth move either, those oil rich states doing that are just grasping at straws now, because they are stuck with poof created money, a cultural mindset of anyone but them does the real work, and need something to do with their fossil mined and now accumulated cash, and are furthering their own domestic collapse when their oil runs out, because they have never bothered to even try and do manufacturing or anything else with their fossil wealth. Some of them are investing in farmland in Africa, like China is also doing with surplus poof created money, because at least a few sixty watt bulbs there in those nations realized they will have to eat all the time, that *might* work longer range until such a time the locals decide once again that they don't like being the exploited colony, and they want to own it back. mau mau version two will happen, with many foreigners becoming lunch and so on....
Some are investing in solar power, etc., and the saudis and I think one of the emirates are making noises this week about wanting their own nukes now,but none of it is a substitute for manufacturing and agriculture, which are the two main ways to actually create *value added compounded wealth*, and that act as economic force multipliers inside an economy. Yes, you need energy production for that, but it is only the first step, you need to keep climbing that ladder to develop the vertical stack.
Wealth is grown, mined, harvested, extracted and then if needs be manufactured from the combination of the above. Everything else is wealth rearranging, wealth governance, wealth entertaining, yada yada, basically just wealth dilution. Some wealth dilution and rearrangement
That's what I said, they are exporting raw materials to the US and china at chump change prices and neglecting future generations and even the current ones. It's a bad trend I saw many years ago and the trend is increasing, they have the ability to reverse that now.
They have gone out of their way to make themselves a colony for the US and now China for exploitation. They do it a lot, example, lobbying furiously at the wto for softwoods exports, when they could be using that wood more internally, or at least working it into higher end products, even beyond finished lumber. Develop that stack better, don't just ship off raw wood so much. A for instance: Harsh climate in the winter, they could be the world's leader in developing superinsulated thick walled and roofed homes, like four feet thick. They have simply gigantic, tremendous energy potential, they could be the world's leader in developing cold climate mass scale year round farming with vastly improved greenhouse design with geothermal and windpowered and hydroelectric and fission adjunctive heating and lighting. Oil, they could be sitting on their reserves for a longer time and using them to develop internally, not exporting raw crude by the tanker full. They are so wealthy in natural resources they have the theoretical ability to sit on these raw resources more, and basically use them internally for a longer period, for further value added wealth creation, which has a profound and dramatic wealth multiplier effect when it is taken several logical steps forward. They do it *some* now, and have success, so I suggest they do it *a lot more* and expand the success in that direction as the TOP emphasis.
Raw resources are indeed a saleable item, and if you have enough you can still be well off, witness the gulf states who make hardly anything much, just sell raw oil, then using that to build luxury cities, which will eventually collapse once that oil runs out because that's all they do. They've been stupid, generationally short sighted, and lazy. Oh well, we'll just pump oil now for whatever we can get and look, we are making billions! Yes, that's true, eventually though it will not be true, then they got *bupkis*. Anyone can see that, it is *by far* the easiest of futurist trends to see.
Now think besides oil, all the minerals and metals, the biologicals, the weater, the wind, all the possible resources...USE them, don't just dig them up and export them, USE those things more. Work that stuff VERTICALLY as far as possible, then kick it another notch higher, and again.
The *combination* of raw resources into manufactured goods and in advanced services is where it is at for valued added wealth creation.
Look at Japan where despite them having to import everything,like 98% "everything*, they still manage to create vast amounts of wealth by being masters in this combination of raw resources. Imagine this Japanese model of value added and compounded wealth creation IF they *also* had internally the vast raw resources that Canada has, and didn't need to import as much raw materials and energy. That could be Canada, if they CHOSE to be.
Canada has way more of a policy that reflects early centuries thinking where stopping at the *first* level of wealth creation seems to be one of the primary driving economic trends today. They have HUGE potential, they DO manufacture a lot of items, some are very good, what I am saying is they should expand on THAT and head for the high end ultimate *quality* markets, starting internally, (you want to be richer, right?) and not bother with the low end cheapest possible razor thing margins markets that other nations clearly have an advantage in, and will, because of vastly cheaper monkey labor, more monkey labor in the terms of numbers of hands, and a workforce willing to live in hovels and be near serfs. No sense even trying to compete there, so don't bother. You don't want that, you want better quality of life and a higher wealth to capita rati
At this time Canada relies on trade with the US, but if they were smarter, and thought more long range, they wouldn't need to at all. They could be completely independent on energy and (most) manufactured goods and agriculture, then they would have the luxury of charging heavy premium prices for any exports, because they really wouldn't need exports then, nor much in the way of imports. Plus they could ignore all that border crossing nonsense for the most part. It is potentially the richest nation on earth per capita if you take their low population and compare it to land mass and available natural resources, including the largest amount of freshwater. They just need to diversify even more then they are now and stop selling off all their resources at sub wholesale rates for short term profits like some third world poverty stricken developing nation. They could go high end and develop the best quality this or that manufactured thing, and not even try to compete at the low range. If they don't watch it, they will become just a colony to be exploited by the US and China for all that wealth. They are half way there now as it is.
Slashdot Mirror
http://cbr.honda.com/?section=cbr1000rr&page=photo
...private contracts. As an adult, you make your own decisions. As per the government and Tax BS,, every individual is the same, no advantage OR disadvantage to being in a relationship or not. As to your private business, you negotiate that with your employer, insurer, your estate advisor, whatever you want. A lot of those things can be done just with a notary for that matter, ie., cheap. If you are in a relationship covered by contract, that you are the "closest" next of kin as per a living arrangement and your self proclaimed friendship and love, because you agreed to it, the hospital (one of the examples above as being "unfair") can't deny you visitation. And so on, right down the line.
It's none of the government's business who you hang out with or sign a contract with, short of you cannot legally sign away your rights, you cannot sell yourself into bondage or slavery or any situation where you lose born with rights. Other than that, they shouldn't have any say in it whatsoever.
I see no reason to regress, we used to have discriminatory laws on the books about race, gender, etc, and right now, the marriage laws are discriminatory against *everyone*, noit just gays or plurals,, but everyone, because they are predicated on you seeking a marriage permit, the stat'es permission, to do something that is your born with right in the first place, to associate with whomever you like in your private life, and as such, all those discriminatory marriage laws should be stricken from the books. What we DON'T need is MORE discriminatory laws.
So the answer isn't more laws, it is the same as the others, remove the bogus unfair and unequal and illegal laws that are still on he books. End the discrimination. Extremely traditional hetero couples would want this as well, they shouldn't need some lame government "permission" to get married and have a loving union, that is between those people, and it can be recognized inside their own community, with whatever ritual they want.
Same with anyone else. If they want zero ceremony, just an official notification of some arrangement, again, just write up a contract with the agreed on parameters and sign the thing in front of a notary, done. If you don't want to do anything, that is your right as well, just live together or whatever. It is no one else's business ethically, so it shouldn't be any government's business either, one way or the other.
No discrimination, for or against this or that, the laws stays strictly neutral and out of your affairs. There just shouldn't be 1,000 "laws" on the books for a basic human right, freedom to be you and to associate with whomever you want in any manner you want.
All they need is one law, to right a long overdue wrong, any previous law that has the word "marriage" in it is now stricken, null and void, and it would be that simple. One sentence, clean all this up as pertains the government. You can still "marry", just the government has no say in it one way or the other, and there's no economic or tax or visitation or nuthin discrimination allowed against people then.
Look at the larger picture and don't be instantly knee jerk about it, logic it out further jus *one step more*.
The government should have *nothing* to do with who you live with or "marry" in any outside ceremony. If the straight and gay folks would realize this, that they have a 100% common beef with STATE PERMISSION to marry, they could lobby TOGETHER to get all governmental laws about marriage just removed from the books. Instead, once again like they always do, the governmental goons use that old tired 'divide and keep them conquered' routine to keep you in serfdom.
Any sort of personal economic or custody issues can be addressed by *private contract*. YOU and your partner(s) decide how to run your affairs entirely, fullstop.
I mean really, say from the religious and very hetero side, which keeps fighting to stop gay marriage, what business of government is it that you need a PERMIT, permission, and LICENSE to get married? None, you can do it like they did in ye olden days, with your pastor and community, and that's it. The heteros are suffering under that same delusion that they need "permission" to marry, and keep fighting for less freedom for themselves! And now all the gay folks want that same thing?!? Nuts! Crazy! "Please government, we beg you and petition you, take away more of our rights and sell us a piece of paper permission slip, signed by one of your useless kommisars!"
See how crazy that is?
Get the stupid state and government out of the marriage "permission" business entirely, FOR EVERYONE, all of the above, "we the people", it is no longer needed, if ever it was, and it should be illegal because of freedom of association born with rights.
And if you look back in history, a lot of the first state "licenses to get married" were jim crow racist laws designed to prevent interrace marrying, now they are the "norm" when they should have all been repealed. (incidentally the same with some of the earlier "gun laws", they were racist in origin then got extended to the population in general)
Repeal the marriage "license" entirely, and all the ancillary stupid laws around that, (like tax issues and your hospital visit issues, etc) don't seek and fight and lobby to extend that abomination of statist power and control. What the heck do you want governmental restrictions for? Makes no sense, the better solution is end it entirely.
Straights, gays, Bis, and all the otherwise out there, the polygamists and polyandrous-ists, all of the above, could all unite behind that, and end this state control nonsense once and for all.
That's FREEDOM, that's EQUALITY.
..marijuana really isn't illegal at the federal level, they just have a so much an ounce tax on it (I forget what,a lot though, 200 bucks maybe) and you need a permit. Then they about slap refuse to issue any permits, even to medical researchers.
The one that it is even *nuttier* is they outlaw industrial hemp, which is a very good multiple use ag crop, yet you can import and sell industrial hemp products.
The federal government (we the people) would do good to just eliminate several agencies as doing more harm than good, to the economy, to society, etc, those guys in the DEA (the war on some drugs is an abject complete failure), the BATFE (WTF is that all about?), and the DOE (education)(state run is all that is needed, no fed skimming of cash is necessary to fund schools, we got by completely fine without it for a long long time) for starters. There's a very few aspects to those agencies that could be retained (not many though), and those could be rolled into other agencies.
We see these nostalgia OS articles all the time, but I have never personally used any of them (outside of mac classic, which we will leave out for this discussion). So...all you greybeards, which is better, AmigaOS, BeOS, or OS/2? Which would you like to see REALLY resurrected with a lot of interest and development?
Those few quoted figures in the article are astounding to me. I question them. We live out in north cow flop redneck georgia and the local library is always packed, they have multiple librarians checking out the books and you have to wait in line. This is at various times of the week, we only go into town occasionally, and the days vary. The library has gone in a few years from three computers to about two dozen and again, most of the time you have to wait to get access, and there's always half a dozen to a dozen folks using their free wifi connections with laptops sitting around on the couches and chairs, all reading or researching or whatever. And a lot of local stores sell a lot of books, etc.
I mean, this is *out in the sticks*, this is blue collars-ville, farming (that would be me) and a little manufacturing and construction and logging, in the larger cities the book scene is way more robust and extensive than that.
I really doubt people check out books and buy books just to not read them. I also question this because the listed reference URL in the article you linked where they received this information is merely a spam link that has nothing more there that is on topic.
I mean it is great and all that ya'all read a lot in Germany, but I don't think you should assume people don't read a lot of books here either,(and magazines and newspapers and online), or that is it just people with advanced degrees or whatever, it is still a rather large industry and business across the demographic here. I mean, look back up in the article at the amount of ebooks being sold, and that is just a teeny tiny part of the overall market here so far.
Now to be fair, the age of the internet has probably changed a lot of reading habits, but text is text, on a screen or holding it in your hand and turning the pages. Today, I read a lot more on the internet than I did when I was a kid...and that's easy to do..the net didn't exist then ;)
"Native Americans" are foreigners as well, they originally came from Asia, primarily crossing the Siberian land bridge when it existed, although some came from boats as well (some researchers believe that anyway).
As in where exactly is the dividing line between a regular cellphone today and a smartphone? I think with these smallish laptops it is easier, has optical drive/does not have an optical drive. The one without is a netbook, the one with is a notebook. but I am not sure on the line between phone species yet.
Free assembly today means you have the right to go stand in some official cage miles away (called the "free speech zone") from the real protest point you want to be at, and then if you decline to relocate to the "official" area or decline to provide ID or refuse to do either on demand, trying to remain both anonymous and to have your assemblage actually mean anything, you get arrested anyway, err, I mean "detained", if not also physically assaulted and punished on the spot, using a variety of blunt force trauma or chemical or electrical or sonic weapons and techniques.
The bill of rights, the alleged born with freedoms that can't be abridged, are a very nice theory, but in practice, the state and their mercenary enforcers routinely violate any and all of those rights, and have, as far back as I can remember going back to racial civil rights protest days, also including the state insisting you need their "permission", a permit of some kind, for what should clearly be a born with right..
should you ever want to upgrade hardware, check this stuff out (third party modded) for boost
http://boostberry.com/
I am really thinking now after finding this site of upgrading my cheapie phone to one of these guys here, proly that least expensive refurb model.
direct download for apps on boost phones, less hoop jumping
http://boostapps.com/
I'm not sure but I still think you need the (appropriate) usb cable to do tethering to your regular computer (although I think the TOS sort of frown on that, I know it is possible) though, not sure on bluetooth yet. Most likely I am gong with these guys when I upgrade next, just to have a backup cheap ISP. I use either prepaid tracphone or net10 now (have both here), and it's the same ten cents a minute, or you get boost all you can eat everything for 50 bucks, or just the data is 35 cents a day, then ten cents a minute talk, which I will probably go for, because I just don't talk that much on the phone anymore so I really don't need even the 50 buck plan. 11 bucks a month for a backup ISP is quite the deal, even if it is a slow network. I also like that they are iden, same as the electric power guys, so when the grid goes down, that will most likely be still up no matter what in my area, it is their emergency commo service, they even have emergency mobile towers and everything. Plus the walkie talkie feature is another cool deal. Probably get a sprint/nextel iden network styled blackberry (used), then activate it with a boost activation Sim card, etc. I've been researching this for awhile now, seems the combination of the cheapest and best for all the various mobile everything you might want. Just waiting for the "spare" FRNs to show up 0_o
Boost mobile discussion
Howardforums are the best for various cellphone discussion, tons of subgroups there
Did you jump through the hoops and put the opera mini browser on it? I know the guys at the howard forums recommend that over the stock browser that comes with that phone.
It will level out sooner than that, because the US wouldn't exist if they had ten to thirty million people out homeless on the sreet, there'd be violent revolution well before that, so the fatbankcats and politicians will come up with a way for people to stay in their homes to avoid that "social unrest" scene, which will stabilize prices faster. Stroke of the pen, law of the land deal. I have no idea what form it will take, but it is *going* to happen.
Housing is one of the few things in the US now that is not totally dependent on imports, so the dropping dollar won't completely impact it as bad. It is way more a domestic and more controllable (and fixable) economic issue than say an external deficit causing expense like price of oil or imported manufactured goods and gadgets that will become more expensive as the dollar drops.
A lot of some anticipated upstream megaprofits on sliced and diced and repackaged mortgages will vanish, but really, they were unsustainable in the first place, to even think that you could lather on (quite literally) 20 layers deep of profit skimming off of one mortgage, that was just nuts. My guess is those speculators will be forced to eat it eventually (which should happen anyway just for being greedy tards about it).
So the houses will get used, and the prices stabilize faster, albeit still well below the real estate tulip mania bubble prices, which about anyone who wasn't totally deranged *knew* were bloated in the first place and were bound to crash.
And that doesn't even count the several million a year new immigrants, both kinds, who will need housing and will spur demand and price stabilization. They'll be a several year shakeout, we are still in the beginning of it, but housing is a *necessity*, not a luxury, so a way will be found there to get it back to affordable levels.
And besides, there's nothing wrong with more affordable/cheaper housing. We need it as a society, it is way over priced now in a lot of places from that dumb house flipping nonsense, and in a global economy with shrinking middle class pay and jobs, people need to start thinking differently (so they will, and are right now), including every two year job hopping. It might not even be possible for a lot of people to do that much longer, they are going to hang on to ANY job they got and any house they can get into, because the alternative will be *quite sucky*. Using your house as some sort of "stock" and ATM machine is lame, it's your home first and primarily, or the next guy's home, that is what a house is "worth" more than just the dollars and cents figures.
Now we'll be seeing less new housing based on the "SUV model" type Mc Mansions and more reasonably sized and equipped for energy savings instead of energy waste and priced units, but that will be the larger overall difference.
Conventional energy is tax payer funded as well-to make it more "economically feasible" for private energy companies, if you look at the whole stack. Cherry picking just some of the costs results in skewed figures that just make it seem to be cheaper. Thousands of miles of seized land for transmission towers and natgas pipelines, with no recompense for the private party land owners that these lines and pipelines cross, decades of uranium research run by the taxpayers or subsidized into academia and private companies, the government/taxpayers being the insurer of last resort for nuke plants (or they wouldn't exist commercially today), decades of using the US military @ *trillions* of dollars to protect oil fields all over the planet, etc., health costs associated with conventional energy sources, large hydro projects, coal, natgas amd oil sold off of public lands for cheap, then resold privately at much higher costs, a direct subsidy, yada yada.
There isn't a single form of energy production out there that isn't at least partially government/tax payer supported in some fashion if you follow the economic breadcrumbs around, and the total bill over the last century and change for "conventional" energy is *huge*. The amount thrown at more modern alternative ways is chump change in comparison. Make conventional centralized power production and distribution pay *all* their own way, including these superfund sites cleanup, and forcing the private oil companies to pay for all their own overseas security, so you see the price at the pump instead of half of it hidden in the tax bill,etc, etc,a big list, and stop hiding all the real costs with bookeeping shenanigans like that, and the alternatives-especially decentralized production of energy, become instantly quite the deal and "economically feasible" in a lot of cases.
If they come up with an algae fuel that makes the black oily stuff in the ground not so attractive or valuable, it will do more than all the diplomats in the past have done to make some of the more "contentious" areas of the planet...less so. I think it *would* deserve the peace prize on that basis.
I mean, let's get real here, do people REALLY think the mid east and central african wars, etc have *nothing* to do with vast oil reserves in those same areas, that it is just a "coincidence"? What, maybe two drools and one moron on the whole planet still believe that government horse hockey, tops?
Algae fuel that can be grown just about anywhere, in any quantities you feel like having, would just do wonders to help end high stakes geopolitical "resource envy".
And now you know why this isn't pushed faster, with emergency funding that would dwarf those casino bankers bailouts..it's too much of a planetary wealth shifter and game changer. Oil is valuable because it is scarce, and does a job nothing else can, and a lot of really big fat roly poly cats make billions on it and make political careers out of it, both civvie and military, making sure that oil keeps flowing in the "correct" way and at the "correct" prices.
Algae fuel would make most of that obsolete, it is what they call "disruptive technology", at least equal to like the transistor in importance, maybe even more.
And we *need* it. We are something like one or two decades away from rising population meets declining crop yields and what crops there being hugely more expensive to produce. Food today, once you boil it all down to basics, is made from still cheap-enough diesel fuel, and water supplies primarily and that's it, take away either one of those things (and throw in cheap phosphates and natural gas derived fertilizer in the "must haves") and planetary mass starvation happens real quick like, which means quite a bit of "social unrest".
If google just stopped indexing all his "intellectual property", he'd be laughed out of complaining about it because of his now quite public previous statements. He's already dicked himself and he doesn't even know that.
And I think google should do this NOW and set a precedent by showing these online news content complainers exactly what they are asking for. And google has another ace in the hole, it isn't that much for them to just regurgitate the AP and other feeds either, they can afford it, and could easily just wipe out most online newspapers today if they felt like it. Then they could expand from there and start pushing the better of the world wide independent blog scene. There's just no absolute need anymore to have expensive "flown in" journalists to go cover this or that news event when there are millions of people already living there all over who can write well enough to pass, who are already carrying net enabled cellphones with cameras, and want to write, primarily for funzies, and have a big interest in seeing their local "hot breaking news" covered.
Google's indexing is like getting put in the old dead trees yellow pages for free, if they went to the real yellow pages style of CHARGING for indexing for commercial sites like murdoch's news ventures, this would sort that out fast.
I hope they call his bluff and just stop indexing anything he owns just to put that cretin in his place.
The looks take some getting used to (like the smart car), but the specs are good. I am impressed they are running with the generator trailer idea, or the "modular hybrid" for extended driving trips. To me, that makes *loads* more sense than onboard dual engine/electric motor, then batterties plus fuel tank, etc, that you have with a regular gas/electric hybrid. That's just too much weight. Pure electric, make it a hybrid with the generator trailer, only attached when you REALLY need to drive long trips.
100 grand though....ain't getting one. Some day do my own electric conversion, proly on a smallish pickup. 10 grand is more reasonable there.
This mixture is probably better represented in Brazil today than the US, so it gives a sneak peek into what humans will look like in the future.
This will probably happen unless someone or group releases some "race" specific/tagged bioweapon. Of course we could easily see an entire human "race" bioweapon that would be near unstoppable, say it had a very long incubation period.
I think if we do make it 500 years civilization will be pretty neat though, just judging by the last century of development. It's a big "if" right now though I think.
...who makes a good board that is tested adequately?
The financial "business" of London was even further in the hole than the US wallstreet boys and needed an almost entire 100% level GDP new poof created cash injection to keep from going bankrupt. because it is unsustainable, or it wouldn't have needed this fast inflationary stealth tax injection. Here's a graph/link from the BBC yesterday about it. Someone has to do the real work in the world,you can't eat or drive or live inside electrons, and when it is increasingly not your own nation doing the real work of wealth creation, you have to resort to emergency accounting tricks, which merely delay the inevitable full collapse. The UK killed off manufacturing faster than the US, shipping it off for chump change for the fast buck, and that's why they got nailed even harder. It's directly proprtional how this happens.
That old model is unsustainable, completely proven last year and this year, it just doesn't work, but that business model and those gents is what we have right now "by law" in many western nations. They *should* have been allowed to fail and collapse so we can get this sorted out better. Hate to flog that old tired mule, but there's no free lunch, you must have domestic manufacturing. That's the number #1 method of having value added wealth creation. You can't create wealth with the printing press or just changing server entries. You can keep the people faked out domestically for a little longer doing that, but not the whole world, you have to actually do real work to create real wealth. Who is sitting on surplus and who isn't? Who are the big debtors and the big creditors now? Look how much this has changed over the last thirty years. The manufacturing world, primarily china, is the big creditor, followed by japan, the other big manufacturer. The oil rich states have that too, surplus, but they are mining "fossil wealth" (I do hereby claim this new financial term), and it will get exhausted eventually. They've been blowing it for three generations now on massive luxuries purchases, busywork mc government jobs, and buying foreign made goods and importing foreign serf laborers to do construction and menial tasks. That can't go on forever, only as long as they can pump out fossil wealth.
So them investing in just more proven failed business models is not a smooth move either, those oil rich states doing that are just grasping at straws now, because they are stuck with poof created money, a cultural mindset of anyone but them does the real work, and need something to do with their fossil mined and now accumulated cash, and are furthering their own domestic collapse when their oil runs out, because they have never bothered to even try and do manufacturing or anything else with their fossil wealth. Some of them are investing in farmland in Africa, like China is also doing with surplus poof created money, because at least a few sixty watt bulbs there in those nations realized they will have to eat all the time, that *might* work longer range until such a time the locals decide once again that they don't like being the exploited colony, and they want to own it back. mau mau version two will happen, with many foreigners becoming lunch and so on....
Some are investing in solar power, etc., and the saudis and I think one of the emirates are making noises this week about wanting their own nukes now,but none of it is a substitute for manufacturing and agriculture, which are the two main ways to actually create *value added compounded wealth*, and that act as economic force multipliers inside an economy. Yes, you need energy production for that, but it is only the first step, you need to keep climbing that ladder to develop the vertical stack.
Wealth is grown, mined, harvested, extracted and then if needs be manufactured from the combination of the above. Everything else is wealth rearranging, wealth governance, wealth entertaining, yada yada, basically just wealth dilution. Some wealth dilution and rearrangement
That's what I said, they are exporting raw materials to the US and china at chump change prices and neglecting future generations and even the current ones. It's a bad trend I saw many years ago and the trend is increasing, they have the ability to reverse that now.
They have gone out of their way to make themselves a colony for the US and now China for exploitation. They do it a lot, example, lobbying furiously at the wto for softwoods exports, when they could be using that wood more internally, or at least working it into higher end products, even beyond finished lumber. Develop that stack better, don't just ship off raw wood so much. A for instance: Harsh climate in the winter, they could be the world's leader in developing superinsulated thick walled and roofed homes, like four feet thick. They have simply gigantic, tremendous energy potential, they could be the world's leader in developing cold climate mass scale year round farming with vastly improved greenhouse design with geothermal and windpowered and hydroelectric and fission adjunctive heating and lighting. Oil, they could be sitting on their reserves for a longer time and using them to develop internally, not exporting raw crude by the tanker full. They are so wealthy in natural resources they have the theoretical ability to sit on these raw resources more, and basically use them internally for a longer period, for further value added wealth creation, which has a profound and dramatic wealth multiplier effect when it is taken several logical steps forward. They do it *some* now, and have success, so I suggest they do it *a lot more* and expand the success in that direction as the TOP emphasis.
Raw resources are indeed a saleable item, and if you have enough you can still be well off, witness the gulf states who make hardly anything much, just sell raw oil, then using that to build luxury cities, which will eventually collapse once that oil runs out because that's all they do. They've been stupid, generationally short sighted, and lazy. Oh well, we'll just pump oil now for whatever we can get and look, we are making billions! Yes, that's true, eventually though it will not be true, then they got *bupkis*. Anyone can see that, it is *by far* the easiest of futurist trends to see.
Now think besides oil, all the minerals and metals, the biologicals, the weater, the wind, all the possible resources...USE them, don't just dig them up and export them, USE those things more. Work that stuff VERTICALLY as far as possible, then kick it another notch higher, and again.
The *combination* of raw resources into manufactured goods and in advanced services is where it is at for valued added wealth creation.
Look at Japan where despite them having to import everything,like 98% "everything*, they still manage to create vast amounts of wealth by being masters in this combination of raw resources. Imagine this Japanese model of value added and compounded wealth creation IF they *also* had internally the vast raw resources that Canada has, and didn't need to import as much raw materials and energy. That could be Canada, if they CHOSE to be.
Canada has way more of a policy that reflects early centuries thinking where stopping at the *first* level of wealth creation seems to be one of the primary driving economic trends today. They have HUGE potential, they DO manufacture a lot of items, some are very good, what I am saying is they should expand on THAT and head for the high end ultimate *quality* markets, starting internally, (you want to be richer, right?) and not bother with the low end cheapest possible razor thing margins markets that other nations clearly have an advantage in, and will, because of vastly cheaper monkey labor, more monkey labor in the terms of numbers of hands, and a workforce willing to live in hovels and be near serfs. No sense even trying to compete there, so don't bother. You don't want that, you want better quality of life and a higher wealth to capita rati
At this time Canada relies on trade with the US, but if they were smarter, and thought more long range, they wouldn't need to at all. They could be completely independent on energy and (most) manufactured goods and agriculture, then they would have the luxury of charging heavy premium prices for any exports, because they really wouldn't need exports then, nor much in the way of imports. Plus they could ignore all that border crossing nonsense for the most part. It is potentially the richest nation on earth per capita if you take their low population and compare it to land mass and available natural resources, including the largest amount of freshwater. They just need to diversify even more then they are now and stop selling off all their resources at sub wholesale rates for short term profits like some third world poverty stricken developing nation. They could go high end and develop the best quality this or that manufactured thing, and not even try to compete at the low range. If they don't watch it, they will become just a colony to be exploited by the US and China for all that wealth. They are half way there now as it is.
link for you as a reply
Sometimes "de law" is just an ass, and is obviously just made "law" to protect a few well heeled folks at the expense of everyone else.