There is no natural disease that kills 100%. There are however man made biological weapons and the resulting panic that could knock out most people. Even then, likely some pockets would survive.
well, I don't care if you have to think a bit to figure out what I'm saying.
You simply DO NOT have a fair marketplace for true competition. Tax online because local is taxed and out-of-state businesses are getting a free ride. Its part of EXTERNALIZING COST, which eventually comes back to bite you or the next generation in the ass.
Regardless-- you do business in my state-- you should pay tax because my local businesses pay tax for doing business in my state. Its not fair and it HURTS locals-- its YOUR neighbors! States get LOW on money and RAISE other kinds of TAXES...
WASTE: depends.
Given true competition, physical stores will have to lower their long term overhead to compete with online stores and still have a high start up cost to pay down.
Simply explained, excluding taxes:
Best Online Cases-
1) Buy 1-10 of a light weight rare product
2) Use a non-existent middle man (between UPS and stores) but combines all your orders into a weekly shipment in a re-usable container (similar to the post office combining your mail into a daily delivery.)
Best Physical Store Cases:
1) buy a diverse list of typical items from 1 general location (mall or mega store) using 1 trip and maybe paper bags.
2) buy from local manufacturing store (which some biz do for tax games) as many HEAVY or difficult to ship items as fit into your method transportation. Food would fit here too. If you are getting food, why not also pick up an impulse item since you are waiting in line? (well if you need the item; I never buy "impulse items" simply because I know why they are placed there.)
3) craigslist; but only if you don't drive out of your way more than the cost of buying it on ebay.
Cost is not all about money, its CO2 and material consumption. Expensive transportation will make wasteful shipping and driving impact consumers so they will do what they SHOULD have been doing if they cared in the 1st place (which they don't; but I always have, I combine as much as I can.)
Triple GAS and watch people restructure. You'll pick up that videogame at best buy since your next door getting food and the cost of mailing that videogame will not be worth it in a huge BOX from amazon.
Actually, in a way Amazon is the online walmart and is evolving into that #2 I wrote for ideal online sales. Although they do not combine items as well as it would take to win all the time.
I know a professor who is creating fuel from just about anything and has been since the 70s. Tires, waste oil, waste biomass, it seems like anything is converted to something he can power his stuff with.
He said it works great except it can't scale and only works well for people rural situations and could be useful for normal people for heating or running the lawn mower... It can't solve our problems now or back when he started it in the 70s.
Using 'absolute' is just setting yourself up for me to mop you up. Hardly anything is absolute.
We are not replacing stores with warehouses and the internet anytime soon. Maybe you buy shoes online and return them a bunch of times but I prefer going to a shoe store.
Naturally everything in a store comes packed in multiple boxes with lots of foam in addition to packing they are made in. Ever hear of mass transit, ride a bike, or walk-- paper or plastic?
Forget it-- lets go full free trade and just buy online from china and all work for FedEx for a living.
State sales taxes are more like a general fund; however, members of the state including businesses MUST pay their share. The measure of which is NOT by their physical space; perhaps that may change, but presently a local business is HARMED by its own home state's tax laws.
Businesses are not human; they exist by the rule of law, market regulation, and enforcement of the laws. A business can be taxed any number of times, they do not have any rights other than what they are given. They owe their whole existence to government (the fact they have hijacked their creator is beside the point.)
In addition, encouraging consumers to go out of state to avoid taxes results in excess waste and a larger carbon footprint. It is better to pay local tax than to pay to generate WASTE (as is often the case for myself, the tax and shipping cost are about equal for B&M.) It is ALSO unfortunate that local internet businesses must charge shipping as well as local tax (the local shipping is not much cheaper either.)
Parents has a great idea plus you can expand with it!
VERMONT CommUNITY Network: Vermont UNITY Network
Other areas could prefix the UNITY network name and you could someday unite on shared projects under one banner: The UNITY networks (which would be useful as a lobby group since that is the ONLY way to deal with gov.)
I think it DOES have something to do with eugenics to control population. If you remove the eugenics part from population control completely, sure its not exactly eugenics. I would say however that similar political issues that eugenics has ALSO applies to population control. It is understandable that somebody would lump the two issues together because on the political side of things the two are related while breeding wise they have nothing to do with each other.
Anything between flat child limits/randomization and total freedom would be influenced by eugenics. As I wrote in a previous post, there are PR things being done and laws being written to try to influence reproduction in specific groups of people ALREADY.
1) Americans forget or are famously ignorant of their bad periods history. They need to hear it.
2) In breeding other animals we don't wastefully kill the rejects, we just stop reproduction. The Nazi's DID warp it by going to extermination with the excuse that it was for eugenics.
3) Science is another part of eugenics and not knowing what 'race' is best and picking one on faith is bad science; not to mention even today we do not know enough to rank people. Genetic diversity is considered good at the present for all creatures (except in industry but thats another issue; we will mess up nature soon enough...)
4) To maintain an EU like level lifestyle the world's population must be capped to around 2 billion. The world sustains more humans and we won't use our brains to stop us from being a plague to the earth. Resources are NOT uniformly distributed so clearly those doing well will be ignorant of those suffering and likely unaware as to their part in that suffering. People need to learn about Externalizing Production Costs and how it relates YOU to those suffering. China for example, can not ever reach the present USA because they would consume more than is possible.
5) A middle ground. Use some creativity. Could be various methods of population control; while that is not strictly eugenics...
It could also be selection methods that are not rigid or as weak as public service announcements. In that case, the GOP already tries to like-minded (typically white) americans to have children with targeted incentive programs and even subtle PR on their cable news channel.
Another middle ground could be stupid accidents where you are saved, but you get sterilized. Like the darwin awards except for the idiots who lived (modern medicine IS messing with darwin!)
Another middle ground is dismissing lawsuits over being stupid; thereby, removing those idiotic warning labels from products.
A related issue which would be obvious if we were 100% clear on the genetics, is the rhetorical "Who decides?" problem that has always plagued mankind Its the political issues that is the main problem with eugenics; otherwise, its as justified as the breeding we on other animals.
Fairy Tales, Myths, and Fables do serve good purposes for people at certain phases of their development. Sadly, some people do not develop to the point where they out grow all of it.
If I had children (which I wont and with more education those odds get even worse) I WOULD give them a church experience as well as all the other childish BS as long as it serves a fruitful purpose at that point. (Catholic- because most people who broke free that I know were raised catholic.)
It is a difficult leap when you learn everything you know was a myth and lose that security and simplistic certainty one has as a child. Better as a gradual process as your able to cope with it.
I get 8meg in MN. There are few people on my segment so I actually can get their speeds for most of the day and the uplink goes direct so as long as too many young people do not move in I will do ok.
That being said, I still can't actually use the bandwidth because they will just kick me off for using 'too much.'
They PEAK for a short period above 8meg which leads me to believe they have more bandwidth available; but fear allowing 10meg for more than a minute because they probably can't handle it.
We all know that if they COULD handle everybody doing 8-10 they would limit it because that is the speed at which you could stream HD video. When I actually get a 10meg boost on a HD movie trailer it almost immediately plays.
Eugenics is not Nazi. Nazis used gasoline so does that mean we are just as bad as them?
In the USA, the government used to sterilize people! Eugenics had gone a long ways towards being acceptable and normal in the 'civilized' world. Eugenics was practiced and gaining popularity all over the world until the extreme distortion and abuse of those ideas by the Nazis linked the two together and guilt by association caused Eugenics to fall out of favor.
Is it not possible that there is some middle ground? Should we be completely dismissing it?
I was told (by an agent) that most the work FBI involves conspiracy. All corrupt governments do is collaborate to screw the masses; the very definition of conspiracy!
Doesn't anybody WONDER why idiots get promoted for incompetence? Its a general measure for conspiracy; just watch - nobody will be punished. They used to pick a fall guys (ex: O. North) but since Bush got in, they hardly even bother to cover their tracks anymore. Its not like the media is doing anything. In this case, the Chinese might follow up so they might have a fall guy (who won't make the news.)
How does any ANY RATIONAL person believe the media's parroting of a government story (anymore??) We know they lie for more than just legitimate security reasons and this situation has possible legitimate reasons. Odds of this being innocent are a million to 1.
I thought Orewell just picked 1984 because it was a future date where he flipped the 48 of current date to 84. The issues are human and therefor his work is timeless.
8 billion living in texas using current tech? I don't believe it. soylent green? free energy? full recycling? A human farm like the matrix?
Population control isn't happening by itself there are forces at work. (see China, who BTW just extended their 1 child per couple law; aside form abortions, infanticide, and soon GM rice. )
You just assert that things could work in a vague texas utopia. I've never read anything that leads me to think your premise has any grounding in reality.
Modern recorded history has largely upper classes riding on the backs of the poor and sometimes a sizable middle class sits in the middle; but still dependent upon exploiting the poorer people. Sure, something new might happen someday but not likely.
NYC is FAR FAR FAR FROM self contained. Don't be silly. They are almost all externalized; economically, food, power, etc. Walmart is cheap because they externalize their costs and your cost to the child slave workers in another country. CHINA puts out more CO2 than the USA now; however, much of it is the USA just our sourcing their pollution (along with the jobs, etc) along with everybody else having their stuff made in China. Then we complain about them needing to fix the problem...
Long ago I read a paper that said for everybody to have a living standard on par with a European 1st world nation the planet could only sustain 2 billion people.
Industrializing the 3rd world can not solve the problem simply because the current global system that supports industrialized nations depends upon exploiting 3rd world resources and labor. Note: I'm not even getting into environmental issues.
- Alternatives:
How about GM food? China has rice that causes birth defects. You already eat GM food like the cattle we are. Would be easy to slip it in, have gov help the corps cover it up like they do on so many things already. It could easily take a generation before its resolved and then the population is lower.
How about a mutated gene? we use deadly bacteria and viruses to mix genes between creatures without any knowledge of how it works (fine, maybe we know 1% of the genetics field at this early stage.) Maybe its more humane for one of these new live-virus "vaccines" to go terribly wrong than to starve people by killing of major sources of food (or all the bees...)
Not so simple. Sure you can place rules upon those who own weapons and apply those to yourself to be "fair." But who defines the rules? You do. Naturally, you make it so you pass your own test and when you don't you modify or re-interpret the rules you made but expect others to have to live by.
The USA is known for doing just that; more consistently and frequently in recent times.
Mutually assured destruction is a big part of it; if you don't have it you can be invaded. Problem is groups not tied to a location getting the weapons because there is no counter strike to deter them.
Seems the premise of the content "industry" is security by obscurity. We all know how well that works out...
Corporations are not citizens and they are not human. Allowing them citizen status (which they have) lets them have many of our rights but without the draw backs of being human. It leads to many problems.
Take away corporate ownership of "IP" rights. At least then they can't lay off influential creators/inventors before retirement to save money -- with that line "What have you done for us lately?" How about (80 - Current Age) years? I think 30 years is plenty.
"Intellectual Property" is a Propaganda term (oh wait, they get offended if you call them propagandists-- they want to be called Public Relations.)
The term "Piracy" is ALSO a manipulative tactic on the act of non-profit copyright infringement. Its such a minor infringement, where as the profit without permission on copy written work is a major infringement and is a core principle for the existence of copyright. Sadly, the "pirates" have embraced the term as part of their identity which HURTS their image to the outside world.
Large cartels that unfairly exploit creators for profit; while legal, are the antithesis of the this fundamental reason for copyright.
These suckers that buy into the propaganda are not able to think clearly enough; therefore, normal reasoning will get NOT WORK. You're wasting your time, it is like trying to explain evolution to a devoted creationist or seeing a wise InvisiblePinkUnicorn. (slam!)
Ironically, people can use a lot of reason justifying their unreasonable positions and end up taking you down to their level and then they beat you at it (to paraphrase an old saying on fools.)
DDT is still allowed as well as illegally used in many places in the world. Do you know where your food comes from? In the USA, after banning DDT it was still for a long time in all the food being imported central/south america into the USA (don't know how much there is today and if I'd trust the official information on it.)
There are other chemicals as well being used. Not to mention the over farming and genetic plants that may not be causing direct problems (yet) but may cause many indirect ones. We almost had a serious problem with bananas years back because everybody was using the same plant and the others were in such low numbers... but thats another issue.
2) Democrats may be similar as republicans politically; but as a party they are NOT the same. The Dems seem to pride themselves on their 'distributed' nature and lack of organization and uniformity that constantly undercuts them despite historically having the largest membership.
3) Democrats have more in-fighting and less uniformity among their members; nor do they frequently threaten and undermine those who break rank - that is if they even bother to even force a position as a party (party positions are largely PR.)
4) The SENATE is 50/50. Joe Lieberman does whatever his blackmailers tell him to do (hint: warrantless watergate - one may recall that many staff members of watergate era work in the current whitehouse; break and enter isn't required. oh, they wouldn't be so dishonest as to datamine politicians would they?;-)
5) Impeachment is off the table. Everybody is waiting it out until 2008. Can't believe they'd actually want McCain to have to take the fall for the growing mess that can't be cleaned up in 4 or even 8 years (which naturally, people will blame the one in office because they can't remember back more than 1 year. I'm NOT kidding I heard a GOP strategist plan on that statistic.)
Try participating in both parties. I have. Culture and voter turn-out issues are largely the only big differences.
Well, the USA is headed towards a great depression thus making that an 80 year economic cycle.
I did not see any "nice" rebound in the economy during Bush's time in office. The media promotes silly definitions of economic conditions along with the government; both are dishonest. Unemployment has been redefined to make it look better; before that it was still a bogus statistic (look into it.) The stock market is not the definitive measure of the state of the economy. 60% of business is small business and those are not on the stock market.
If you wanted to know the truth, you'd look at the tax records; which is good source, even in corrupt governments. Small business is hurting, incomes are going down, quality of life in general has consistently been going down and the import/export imbalance has been getting worse. The present situation has never existed before, its all new uncharted territory for the USA.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no natural disease that kills 100%. There are however man made biological weapons and the resulting panic that could knock out most people. Even then, likely some pockets would survive.
well, I don't care if you have to think a bit to figure out what I'm saying.
You simply DO NOT have a fair marketplace for true competition. Tax online because local is taxed and out-of-state businesses are getting a free ride. Its part of EXTERNALIZING COST, which eventually comes back to bite you or the next generation in the ass.
Regardless-- you do business in my state-- you should pay tax because my local businesses pay tax for doing business in my state. Its not fair and it HURTS locals-- its YOUR neighbors! States get LOW on money and RAISE other kinds of TAXES...
WASTE: depends.
Given true competition, physical stores will have to lower their long term overhead to compete with online stores and still have a high start up cost to pay down.
Simply explained, excluding taxes:
Best Online Cases-
1) Buy 1-10 of a light weight rare product
2) Use a non-existent middle man (between UPS and stores) but combines all your orders into a weekly shipment in a re-usable container (similar to the post office combining your mail into a daily delivery.)
Best Physical Store Cases:
1) buy a diverse list of typical items from 1 general location (mall or mega store) using 1 trip and maybe paper bags.
2) buy from local manufacturing store (which some biz do for tax games) as many HEAVY or difficult to ship items as fit into your method transportation. Food would fit here too. If you are getting food, why not also pick up an impulse item since you are waiting in line? (well if you need the item; I never buy "impulse items" simply because I know why they are placed there.)
3) craigslist; but only if you don't drive out of your way more than the cost of buying it on ebay.
Cost is not all about money, its CO2 and material consumption. Expensive transportation will make wasteful shipping and driving impact consumers so they will do what they SHOULD have been doing if they cared in the 1st place (which they don't; but I always have, I combine as much as I can.)
Triple GAS and watch people restructure. You'll pick up that videogame at best buy since your next door getting food and the cost of mailing that videogame will not be worth it in a huge BOX from amazon.
Actually, in a way Amazon is the online walmart and is evolving into that #2 I wrote for ideal online sales. Although they do not combine items as well as it would take to win all the time.
I know a professor who is creating fuel from just about anything and has been since the 70s. Tires, waste oil, waste biomass, it seems like anything is converted to something he can power his stuff with.
He said it works great except it can't scale and only works well for people rural situations and could be useful for normal people for heating or running the lawn mower... It can't solve our problems now or back when he started it in the 70s.
Using 'absolute' is just setting yourself up for me to mop you up. Hardly anything is absolute.
We are not replacing stores with warehouses and the internet anytime soon. Maybe you buy shoes online and return them a bunch of times but I prefer going to a shoe store.
Naturally everything in a store comes packed in multiple boxes with lots of foam in addition to packing they are made in. Ever hear of mass transit, ride a bike, or walk-- paper or plastic?
Forget it-- lets go full free trade and just buy online from china and all work for FedEx for a living.
1) You can't trust China or the Bush Admin; I'd expect the Chinese to be better at fudging.
2) China has no right take over another country. Neither does the USA.
3) I don't care about stats.
Not so simple.
State sales taxes are more like a general fund; however, members of the state including businesses MUST pay their share. The measure of which is NOT by their physical space; perhaps that may change, but presently a local business is HARMED by its own home state's tax laws.
Businesses are not human; they exist by the rule of law, market regulation, and enforcement of the laws. A business can be taxed any number of times, they do not have any rights other than what they are given. They owe their whole existence to government (the fact they have hijacked their creator is beside the point.)
In addition, encouraging consumers to go out of state to avoid taxes results in excess waste and a larger carbon footprint. It is better to pay local tax than to pay to generate WASTE (as is often the case for myself, the tax and shipping cost are about equal for B&M.) It is ALSO unfortunate that local internet businesses must charge shipping as well as local tax (the local shipping is not much cheaper either.)
Parents has a great idea plus you can expand with it!
VERMONT CommUNITY Network:
Vermont UNITY Network
Other areas could prefix the UNITY network name and you could someday unite on shared projects under one banner: The UNITY networks (which would be useful as a lobby group since that is the ONLY way to deal with gov.)
online version
http://numbermunchers.org/
I think it DOES have something to do with eugenics to control population. If you remove the eugenics part from population control completely, sure its not exactly eugenics. I would say however that similar political issues that eugenics has ALSO applies to population control. It is understandable that somebody would lump the two issues together because on the political side of things the two are related while breeding wise they have nothing to do with each other.
Anything between flat child limits/randomization and total freedom would be influenced by eugenics. As I wrote in a previous post, there are PR things being done and laws being written to try to influence reproduction in specific groups of people ALREADY.
1) Americans forget or are famously ignorant of their bad periods history. They need to hear it.
2) In breeding other animals we don't wastefully kill the rejects, we just stop reproduction. The Nazi's DID warp it by going to extermination with the excuse that it was for eugenics.
3) Science is another part of eugenics and not knowing what 'race' is best and picking one on faith is bad science; not to mention even today we do not know enough to rank people. Genetic diversity is considered good at the present for all creatures (except in industry but thats another issue; we will mess up nature soon enough...)
4) To maintain an EU like level lifestyle the world's population must be capped to around 2 billion. The world sustains more humans and we won't use our brains to stop us from being a plague to the earth. Resources are NOT uniformly distributed so clearly those doing well will be ignorant of those suffering and likely unaware as to their part in that suffering. People need to learn about Externalizing Production Costs and how it relates YOU to those suffering. China for example, can not ever reach the present USA because they would consume more than is possible.
5) A middle ground. Use some creativity.
Could be various methods of population control; while that is not strictly eugenics...
It could also be selection methods that are not rigid or as weak as public service announcements. In that case, the GOP already tries to like-minded (typically white) americans to have children with targeted incentive programs and even subtle PR on their cable news channel.
Another middle ground could be stupid accidents where you are saved, but you get sterilized. Like the darwin awards except for the idiots who lived (modern medicine IS messing with darwin!)
Another middle ground is dismissing lawsuits over being stupid; thereby, removing those idiotic warning labels from products.
A related issue which would be obvious if we were 100% clear on the genetics, is the rhetorical "Who decides?" problem that has always plagued mankind Its the political issues that is the main problem with eugenics; otherwise, its as justified as the breeding we on other animals.
Fairy Tales, Myths, and Fables do serve good purposes for people at certain phases of their development. Sadly, some people do not develop to the point where they out grow all of it.
If I had children (which I wont and with more education those odds get even worse) I WOULD give them a church experience as well as all the other childish BS as long as it serves a fruitful purpose at that point. (Catholic- because most people who broke free that I know were raised catholic.)
It is a difficult leap when you learn everything you know was a myth and lose that security and simplistic certainty one has as a child. Better as a gradual process as your able to cope with it.
I get 8meg in MN. There are few people on my segment so I actually can get their speeds for most of the day and the uplink goes direct so as long as too many young people do not move in I will do ok.
That being said, I still can't actually use the bandwidth because they will just kick me off for using 'too much.'
They PEAK for a short period above 8meg which leads me to believe they have more bandwidth available; but fear allowing 10meg for more than a minute because they probably can't handle it.
We all know that if they COULD handle everybody doing 8-10 they would limit it because that is the speed at which you could stream HD video. When I actually get a 10meg boost on a HD movie trailer it almost immediately plays.
Eugenics is not Nazi. Nazis used gasoline so does that mean we are just as bad as them?
In the USA, the government used to sterilize people! Eugenics had gone a long ways towards being acceptable and normal in the 'civilized' world. Eugenics was practiced and gaining popularity all over the world until the extreme distortion and abuse of those ideas by the Nazis linked the two together and guilt by association caused Eugenics to fall out of favor.
Is it not possible that there is some middle ground? Should we be completely dismissing it?
I was told (by an agent) that most the work FBI involves conspiracy.
All corrupt governments do is collaborate to screw the masses; the very definition of conspiracy!
Doesn't anybody WONDER why idiots get promoted for incompetence? Its a general measure for conspiracy; just watch - nobody will be punished. They used to pick a fall guys (ex: O. North) but since Bush got in, they hardly even bother to cover their tracks anymore. Its not like the media is doing anything. In this case, the Chinese might follow up so they might have a fall guy (who won't make the news.)
How does any ANY RATIONAL person believe the media's parroting of a government story (anymore??) We know they lie for more than just legitimate security reasons and this situation has possible legitimate reasons. Odds of this being innocent are a million to 1.
I thought Orewell just picked 1984 because it was a future date where he flipped the 48 of current date to 84. The issues are human and therefor his work is timeless.
8 billion living in texas using current tech? I don't believe it. soylent green? free energy? full recycling? A human farm like the matrix?
Population control isn't happening by itself there are forces at work. (see China, who BTW just extended their 1 child per couple law; aside form abortions, infanticide, and soon GM rice. )
You just assert that things could work in a vague texas utopia. I've never read anything that leads me to think your premise has any grounding in reality.
Modern recorded history has largely upper classes riding on the backs of the poor and sometimes a sizable middle class sits in the middle; but still dependent upon exploiting the poorer people. Sure, something new might happen someday but not likely.
NYC is FAR FAR FAR FROM self contained. Don't be silly. They are almost all externalized; economically, food, power, etc. Walmart is cheap because they externalize their costs and your cost to the child slave workers in another country. CHINA puts out more CO2 than the USA now; however, much of it is the USA just our sourcing their pollution (along with the jobs, etc) along with everybody else having their stuff made in China. Then we complain about them needing to fix the problem...
DESPOTISM is the word people should be looking for instead of nazi.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-461990723502527420
Long ago I read a paper that said for everybody to have a living standard on par with a European 1st world nation the planet could only sustain 2 billion people.
Industrializing the 3rd world can not solve the problem simply because the current global system that supports industrialized nations depends upon exploiting 3rd world resources and labor. Note: I'm not even getting into environmental issues.
- Alternatives:
How about GM food? China has rice that causes birth defects. You already eat GM food like the cattle we are. Would be easy to slip it in, have gov help the corps cover it up like they do on so many things already. It could easily take a generation before its resolved and then the population is lower.
How about a mutated gene? we use deadly bacteria and viruses to mix genes between creatures without any knowledge of how it works (fine, maybe we know 1% of the genetics field at this early stage.) Maybe its more humane for one of these new live-virus "vaccines" to go terribly wrong than to starve people by killing of major sources of food (or all the bees...)
Not so simple. Sure you can place rules upon those who own weapons and apply those to yourself to be "fair." But who defines the rules? You do. Naturally, you make it so you pass your own test and when you don't you modify or re-interpret the rules you made but expect others to have to live by.
The USA is known for doing just that; more consistently and frequently in recent times.
Mutually assured destruction is a big part of it; if you don't have it you can be invaded. Problem is groups not tied to a location getting the weapons because there is no counter strike to deter them.
Seems the premise of the content "industry" is security by obscurity. We all know how well that works out...
Corporations are not citizens and they are not human. Allowing them citizen status (which they have) lets them have many of our rights but without the draw backs of being human. It leads to many problems.
Take away corporate ownership of "IP" rights. At least then they can't lay off influential creators/inventors before retirement to save money -- with that line "What have you done for us lately?" How about (80 - Current Age) years? I think 30 years is plenty.
Parent is insightful and informative.
"Intellectual Property" is a Propaganda term (oh wait, they get offended if you call them propagandists-- they want to be called Public Relations.)
The term "Piracy" is ALSO a manipulative tactic on the act of non-profit copyright infringement. Its such a minor infringement, where as the profit without permission on copy written work is a major infringement and is a core principle for the existence of copyright. Sadly, the "pirates" have embraced the term as part of their identity which HURTS their image to the outside world.
Large cartels that unfairly exploit creators for profit; while legal, are the antithesis of the this fundamental reason for copyright.
These suckers that buy into the propaganda are not able to think clearly enough; therefore, normal reasoning will get NOT WORK. You're wasting your time, it is like trying to explain evolution to a devoted creationist or seeing a wise InvisiblePinkUnicorn. (slam!)
Ironically, people can use a lot of reason justifying their unreasonable positions and end up taking you down to their level and then they beat you at it (to paraphrase an old saying on fools.)
DDT is still allowed as well as illegally used in many places in the world. Do you know where your food comes from? In the USA, after banning DDT it was still for a long time in all the food being imported central/south america into the USA (don't know how much there is today and if I'd trust the official information on it.)
There are other chemicals as well being used. Not to mention the over farming and genetic plants that may not be causing direct problems (yet) but may cause many indirect ones. We almost had a serious problem with bananas years back because everybody was using the same plant and the others were in such low numbers... but thats another issue.
1) 2/3 vote required to pass a VETO by the chimp
;-)
2) Democrats may be similar as republicans politically; but as a party they are NOT the same. The Dems seem to pride themselves on their 'distributed' nature and lack of organization and uniformity that constantly undercuts them despite historically having the largest membership.
3) Democrats have more in-fighting and less uniformity among their members; nor do they frequently threaten and undermine those who break rank - that is if they even bother to even force a position as a party (party positions are largely PR.)
4) The SENATE is 50/50. Joe Lieberman does whatever his blackmailers tell him to do (hint: warrantless watergate - one may recall that many staff members of watergate era work in the current whitehouse; break and enter isn't required. oh, they wouldn't be so dishonest as to datamine politicians would they?
5) Impeachment is off the table. Everybody is waiting it out until 2008. Can't believe they'd actually want McCain to have to take the fall for the growing mess that can't be cleaned up in 4 or even 8 years (which naturally, people will blame the one in office because they can't remember back more than 1 year. I'm NOT kidding I heard a GOP strategist plan on that statistic.)
Try participating in both parties. I have. Culture and voter turn-out issues are largely the only big differences.
see politicalcompass.org
Well, the USA is headed towards a great depression thus making that an 80 year economic cycle.
I did not see any "nice" rebound in the economy during Bush's time in office. The media promotes silly definitions of economic conditions along with the government; both are dishonest. Unemployment has been redefined to make it look better; before that it was still a bogus statistic (look into it.) The stock market is not the definitive measure of the state of the economy. 60% of business is small business and those are not on the stock market.
If you wanted to know the truth, you'd look at the tax records; which is good source, even in corrupt governments. Small business is hurting, incomes are going down, quality of life in general has consistently been going down and the import/export imbalance has been getting worse. The present situation has never existed before, its all new uncharted territory for the USA.