Details always matter (except to most Americans; you prove otherwise!)
While what is going on is similar to the past it is also similar to the fall of Rome and even more generally the fall of every non-conquered democracy. It "rhymes," that is, it is a similar pattern. All democracy falls into despotism by the accumulated incompetence of the people over time. The more successful and distracted the more quickly things are likely to slip bye the public. Its a flaw of human nature to accept a past of only 20-30 years as the way it always has been; this makes evolutionary sense given how much shorter life spans were and how the old procreated much less (still much less.) Anyhow, this fact of human nature is why there is always a slow downward fall as small bits are lost over decades and the people get used to the boiling water they themselves added the last few degrees; well, more likely added quite a bit more because at the end it accelerates during the panic as some realize there is a crisis and create confusion and panic. (see Tea Party)
Here is a rhyme you may find interesting, watch the late 80s documentary "The Panama Deception" and pay attention to the officials involved. Only about 10 years later they repeated almost the same thing but went further; having got away with it previously they knew they could do it again. Next time, it can be taken further; perhaps far enough to attack Iran (which is still the plan BTW.)
Something that "repeats" is how political group form rather publicly. There are think tanks and books put out in the open to bring in like minded people and once they have enough people then they become more closed and more secretive, but in the beginning when building their core architects put the information is out there. Its harder to see with a 2 party smokescreen which sometimes I think exists solely to hide what is going on (their members can differ so much its truly sad they share the same label.)
I find it funny that capitalism is sold as the best way to help the most people; STILL TODAY as it grows beyond reason into a religious extremism that reminds me of the USSR on communism.
Will humans ever stop falling for propaganda claiming to solve all your problems with simple solutions? (Especially Americans who are extra susceptible to it.)
We had music be for we had the wheel; culture existed before copyright. Besides, we have more than enough PAST music that little new is being created. This protectionist system is not adding much benefit to society.
Nobody has a right to a job doing whatever they want to do. Industries must be allowed to die when their time has come! This isn't about car company bail outs, we still need cars. This is more like banning teleporters because it'll put the airlines out of business.
The greed mentality is what it is always about; take everything away from you as possible and make you pay somebody who controls it. We've gone so far as to privatize ownership of WATER, including the rain and make people pay for the water collecting naturally in their own backyard- literally. It has been done and that evil thinking continues to spread; as CRAZY as that sounds the issue will come to your area someday in the future unless trends change. Privatization has always been about handing power to the politically connected so they can leverage that power into profit and it never has anything to do about helping anybody. Copyright has NOTHING (today) to do with helping the "starving" artists and everything about control.
So used to defending "new" technology that you can't allow legitimate concerns to be raised?
I get it, I'm surrounded by technologically ignorant people who respond irrationally to the stuff. But it is no reason to become irrationally defensive of the technology-- for those people, it does make sense to not discuss the topic at any depth but one does not have to get down to their level either.
TFA is nothing new and seems so obvious that its hardly worth discussion. As somebody who deals with those "non-issues" and knows older people who suffer daily from them I am glad this was an issue in the 90s because it was when I became motivated enough to take precautions. This stuff can cause seriously miserable conditions later in life (do not get surgery it makes it worse.) Things like this serve a purpose: A) inform people of the general problem who do not yet know (unless nobody has children there is always a new batch) B) inform people who know but do not THINK about how touch screens are no different than existing tech (may be worse)
Sure, there is the anti technology types who will twist such information or those who do not properly comprehend it and go around saying "doctors say touch screens are bad for your health." Those people can be so annoying that it provides plenty of motivation for going to an irrational position on the opposite side.
Just because you believe the "disease" is imaginary.... BELIEVE being the key word. Hope you don't have to rediscover the problem with 1st hand proof; although, there would be some justice in having people dismiss your bitching as imaginary.
Shareholders demand not that it always increases even if it is huge and successful.
Anybody who does well has to exploit their market position to the hilt to maintain constant growth or lose stock value. Scratch that, I mean the fastest growth possible of the share price -- faster growth than others.
Nuclear is super extremely dangerous power yet we do a good job at managing the risk and all the extremely complex issues involved with that technology; no, its not as good as what it probably should be but we handled that problem quite well for many decades. Yet somehow we can't figure out what to do about a little fluffy cloud passing by our solar panels... we just give up and say we have to keep the stats quo because we can't wrap our heads around problems the major industries do not want solved.
The military will fund serious research into better internet technology if they have to run an air force of bandwidth hogs!
You think ISPs have any motivation? Hardware makers only slightly compete with improvements; due to the need for standards it lowers their motivation for R&D all they need to do is get to market 1st with the newest standards.
The military as usual, it going to fund the big steps forward with all the money they put into R&D.... which sadly we could have been doing more if we didn't need the waste money on the military just to excuse doing research to the foolish republicans!
Maybe if we could somehow disguise tariffs as a military operation we could restore the economy? Maybe we should say China is causing global warming so then we can invent some sort of atmosphere hack?
NASA should be working on robotics then they'd get more funding (and at least there would be some benefits from the research instead of military doing it all.) Besides, going to Mars is a stupid waste of money; robots already surpass humans in this niche and by the time Mars happens they will be 30 years more advanced! Going to Mars is a ploy by "idiot" Bush to sucker all you "smart" people into shifting priorities from immediate problems (climate) so even less money goes into pesky science. The budgeting shift he did along with that should have made this clear. If NASA worked on biology, he'd have taken them off evolution and stem cells and put them on curing the common cold and the suckers would praise the move...
If NASA didn't have a space industrial complex behind it that 1.5% of the budget they get would be cut.
It was sad when the buggy drivers were driven out of business by the car. Artists may just have to go back a few hundred years to doing it as a hobby and a few lucky ones being able to make it their job. (Not far off from what we have today, only a minority can make a living; without the machine there will be fewer rich artists and more professional artists.)
Shakespeare didn't need I.P. law to survive or crazy high budget productions to give good plays or a massive distribution chain to spread his work. The real need is the endless growth of share price which is what will drive the sociopaths until they can erase "copies" from our brains... (and that won't keep investors happy for long until they can wipe investor memories too.)
If artists get famious they can do quite well off the fame alone-- look at the no-talent morons who are celebrities today due to reality TV! Never ending line of desperate people wanting to be another celebrity.
We have "starving artists" either way and far more hobby artists; how does our system change that??
Isn't that always the case? The ones who benefit from the status quo fight hard against any changes which are perceived as a risk to their self interests... The needs of the many outweigh... sure its not a 'need' but no less of one than their 'need' to make a living with that specific career (hint: horse buggy drivers.)
The airlines did it and improved by amazing amounts (nobody remembers how bad it was) and the things were much less complex to fly back in those days; the pilots were insulted by it as well. CHECKLISTS WORK.
Something that important should involve multiple checklists; to error is human no matter how good and smart you are. Doctors are the most arrogant pricks I've ever met so they'll put up a huge fight and have a hard time admitting it when the error rate goes down by half. It likely would go down by half; that is how badly it is needed.
Nurses too... a friend of mine fought off his nurse violently (as much as he had strength post op) she had to call people in to hold him down and sedate him and luckily somebody heard his screams and READ the chart and realized she had the wrong person! he would have died and without a proper autopsy the cause wouldn't have been known. Mistakes killed my father too. Checklists must be mandatory by law like the pilots who have no issue with them today.
Bradley Manning allegedly leaked STATE DEPARTMENT information; the level of the leaked information was LOW security information.
We've not had any significant CIA leaks... ever? Former people disclosing stuff in various ways without any evidence; but I can't think of any actual CIA document leaks can you?
The mention of Honorary Degrees in the summary is a troll for comments as those of us who earned REAL degrees dislike how it undermines and trivializes them. Make it an award but do not call it a degree! Also stop calling everything engineering.
Why waste our time on it when if we invent a nuclear power station that is actually desirable (which has been 5-10 years off for 40+ years) we will just give away the knowledge in the form of patents that the Chinese will unofficially ignore? Then we will out source all the relevant jobs to China and they will corner the market; why would it be any different than all the other markets? Those were back when we had the ability to say no. If we are going to do it for ourselves; we should work with the planet to progress it. I'm still seeing 15 years minimum before we have a new proven design. Nuclear fuel is running out; somehow the USA used up its 3+ million tons and now imports the stuff with about 2 million tons left worldwide-- I've seen estimates of 10 years left before it is too expensive to use; so if you build something now (takes 10 years) it better run on a different radioactive fuel source. Again, its all talk-- somebody show me a working alternative; I'm sick of HEARING about Thorium. Prove it.
I say let the Chinese invent them and maybe we'll copy them for a change... That is if they can invent a working nuclear power plant which I highly doubt because nobody has made progress in over a generation despite all the hype about the next big thing. I'm highly skeptical; even when the 1st plant is proven I'll still be somewhat skeptical because of HISTORY. The more dire the situation the easier it is to sucker people.
Meanwhile, the solar industry has managed to cut costs to the point where 2011 was the year solar SURPASSED nuclear; this despite a generation of intentional neglect. It also doesn't take 10 years to build or some unproven new technology; not to mention they can get insurance instead of forcing the government to have the tax payers insure and constantly inspect it as well as put up the billion dollar loans that never seem to get payed off fairly (plant owners can spend decades with lawyers and bribes hacking away at that government financed debt.) Nuclear power has a poor track record and I'm not just talking about the disasters. It would take less time to figure out a solution for nighttime if we just put the resources into it (create a market of buying daytime power and selling it at night; power would cost more at night....supply driven instead of demand driven. If we had been seriously working on this 40 years ago our battery tech would be more advanced than it is today and probably be impacting the electric cars too.)
Kenya has a lot of SUN. But nobody is going to send them aid if their solar plants are at risk...
It was not as bad in the 90s as it is today. It progressively gets worse; and the supreme court finished the democracy off when they made foreign corporations people.
The media doesn't make an issue out of it; unless you are Al Gore in a photo with some Buddhists (never mind the Chinese money Bush was getting.) It would not surprise me if that scandal wasn't driven by China-- you won't see any politicians be photographed by Buddhists while raising money because of that one but doing worse stuff with Christian organizations (even the sham ones) is totally ok.
Forget that; I want clarification on the right of the corporation to invade our privacy. They shouldn't be able to "steal" your computer and clone the whole thing just to find out if you emailed the competition some secret!
Information is not property. Once you let them redefine reality you've conceded to their terms of battle.
When all you have is traitor MBAs running the corps in the USA, sooner or later the suppliers in China will realize they do not need you because you moved everything important over to them; then they can buy you out! Now those MBAs who handed them everything are now sales people in a shell corp for Chinese owners who used to be just be their cost externalization dump. Except the CEOs, who can sell off the business after they finished selling everything off to China. This has happened to medium and small businesses in the US already. Will it happen to Dell or HP before they fall off the fortune 500?
China is making huge steps towards making all the chips too.
The republicans and democrats are not flip sides. Americans like simple answers even when simple answers are not adequate and this ethos of the culture causes a great many of the nations problems (but they do not full grasp this because again, they cling to simple short answers.)
I would argue that a large reason for the two party duopoly is a reflection of the culture.
I've volunteered at both just for the experience. They differ greatly. Republicans are a more authoritarian culture and the Democrats are more anarchy (not really socialist.) It is somewhat ironic the anti-government group is more authoritarian but it makes sense as you dig deeper.
Ever hear of herding cats? That is the democrats. The Republicans are dogs herding sheep. Informed people should understand what I'm saying (sorry if your a sheep who prides yourself on your "independent" thinking.)
High corruption issues are above everything, then the two party illusion breaks momentarily.
I'm a promoter of politicalcompass.org because the 1D model is idiotic; the 2D grid is far superior. If we ever get people to grasp that and Americans to just use a 1D spectrum (which is more than right++,right,middle,left,left++ they seem to glaze over if you try to even explain the 2D model) maybe we can make some progress before we over populate ourselves into a nightmare.
Ha! They stopped reporting it after Greenspan left; you can't prove your statement because it became a secret; you can only estimate.
As far as relative value, that is a trick because the rest were also playing money games; relatively, a car going 50mph can speed past the pack and win the race because they are going 30mph... it doesn't matter if the film is sped up or slowed down (btw, this is one way they do racing for movies; actually kung fu also does it because the real thing goes too fast for the audience.) If you haven't noticed, many peoples of the world are seeing their buying power diminish... (since its all relative you arguably can't nail anything down; oil prices rise and that undermines actual buying power which is all that really matters no matter how much of the money you print.)
China is purposely keeping theirs low; another game which happens to make the USD look relatively better.
Wikileaks shows the US government and especially the State Dept. work on behalf of the big moneyed interests which historically were US organizations but not so much today. I'm just waiting for the day a leak shows them going to bat for Chinese interests.
Just recently we have news of them actually threatening Spain to be more draconian and not that many years ago they were threatening Spain again but that time it was to allow GM foods wholly "owned" by Monsanto to the point where they were directly planning with Monsanto execs on the maneuver.
Other nations do it a little but nobody has topped the USA at it; one of the few things we are still #1 at. (see France and the privatization of water.)
Seymour Papert used computers as a TOOL along with legos to promote THINKING and his approach translated into other topics that didn't use technology. The quality MECC software didn't need newer technology to fulfill its job; some lesser software like the pointless Oregon Trail was really a video game and could benefit from upgrades; sadly it continues having not made any constructive progress. (the WWW helping reading is just a by product.)
Technology is NOT needed in K-12 at all. Its just a popular excuse to avoid solving the difficult issues involved. It can help in limited ways only; just as calculators are overused and are doing harm in many classrooms.
Obama put the wars into the budget for the 1st time; that made it appear spending went up more than it actually did! The revenue went down because of the depression that started under Bush and continues today; that means less money coming in while spending continues and in most cases can not and should not instantly reflect revenue. Then you have tax cut extensions which also lowered revenue. Plus do not forget inflation undermining the dollar's value; a number which is no longer reported because it got so bad (again under Bush, but Obama would have probably done it too.) While this makes the debt amount seem lower in value it actually does more harm than good. The economy stimulus was way too weak and way too foolish (republican tax cuts) and that cost us a huge amount only to soften the downward spiral and couldn't dig us out-- you have to take a big step backwards so then you can build up enough momentum to escape...
The culture and system produces an environment that does not prepare students for such experiences; they learn how to hack the broken system they've learned to manage within doing as little as possible (which I would argue is human nature.) This is classic conditioning working against their and our best interests. Their brains are also not exercised in such areas so it makes it even more difficult-- the "smart" kid may simply be the one who's been able to ride their bike a lot while the rest never had enough time to get beyond the training wheels.
Rather than a fixed structure that is easy to learn to work around, we should have more diversity throughout development but instead we choose to promote wrote learning and teaching to tests which only take us further down this path. We use simplistic systems pitted against human brains where even a child can learn to outwit the mindless system (see multiple guess.) If you had human evaluations not tests you'd have one hell of a time as a student; with an underdeveloped skill level, pitted against an expert evaluating you.
I don't find there are "smart" students, merely those who didn't adapt as naturally to the broken environment and instead seem to seek out what isn't given and the ones who are predisposed in that subject or situation (which do no better when outside their comfort zone.) The normal students can learn and grow into better ones and the better ones can fall down into the normal patterns. "Smart" is largely who does well with the metrics used. An actual smart person is another whole topic. It is too easy to just give people IQs and shift the blame.
Boy have times changed. Everybody thinks of a CURVE even when they do not use a curve. If the average student gets a D then either its too hard or the prof sucks-- so then a curve is used to raise it up to compensate-- a few old ones adapted by using a curve but most just adapted their systems so it came out close to a curve. All courses are judged the same; its the prof's flaws that cause deviations from the bell curve and only a little slack is given for hard classes. There is no rigid system to enforce it but the perception exists and it has influence over the long term.
The culture has changed. not for the better in most cases; I'd assume this is yet another area of decline.
I'm surprised libraries are not next. I can get movies, music, books and even audio books at the library for free; I can donate stuff to the library. We got those with a lot of fighting and the benefits of traditions started by our socialist founding fathers. The library is BARRED from digital books; why?? Barred from conversion of 1 type to another-- such as creating audio books for the blind of printed books they own. why?? Barred from digital distribution vs physical distribution, why?? If they can't do anything like non-profit publishing-- fine. But online distribution should be fine; you download and after 1 day you have to "return it" so another person can download; then it is not publishing but merely digital sharing without DRM. People rip CDs, DVDs, and even scan books from the library for decades...
New corrupt laws will make what was once a civil game to strike terror in down loaders into criminal law the STATE pays to freely go after people for the industry. It should remind you of drug law as well; we didn't care much about the drug users so we let them trample our rights and now....
I expect when somebody comes up with a brain erase technique they'll be trying to figure out how to charge you for REMEMBERING a song or chipping you and making you pay if you hum a melody.
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Details always matter (except to most Americans; you prove otherwise!)
While what is going on is similar to the past it is also similar to the fall of Rome and even more generally the fall of every non-conquered democracy. It "rhymes," that is, it is a similar pattern. All democracy falls into despotism by the accumulated incompetence of the people over time. The more successful and distracted the more quickly things are likely to slip bye the public. Its a flaw of human nature to accept a past of only 20-30 years as the way it always has been; this makes evolutionary sense given how much shorter life spans were and how the old procreated much less (still much less.) Anyhow, this fact of human nature is why there is always a slow downward fall as small bits are lost over decades and the people get used to the boiling water they themselves added the last few degrees; well, more likely added quite a bit more because at the end it accelerates during the panic as some realize there is a crisis and create confusion and panic. (see Tea Party)
Here is a rhyme you may find interesting, watch the late 80s documentary "The Panama Deception" and pay attention to the officials involved. Only about 10 years later they repeated almost the same thing but went further; having got away with it previously they knew they could do it again. Next time, it can be taken further; perhaps far enough to attack Iran (which is still the plan BTW.)
Something that "repeats" is how political group form rather publicly. There are think tanks and books put out in the open to bring in like minded people and once they have enough people then they become more closed and more secretive, but in the beginning when building their core architects put the information is out there. Its harder to see with a 2 party smokescreen which sometimes I think exists solely to hide what is going on (their members can differ so much its truly sad they share the same label.)
I find it funny that capitalism is sold as the best way to help the most people; STILL TODAY as it grows beyond reason into a religious extremism that reminds me of the USSR on communism.
Will humans ever stop falling for propaganda claiming to solve all your problems with simple solutions? (Especially Americans who are extra susceptible to it.)
We had music be for we had the wheel; culture existed before copyright. Besides, we have more than enough PAST music that little new is being created. This protectionist system is not adding much benefit to society.
Nobody has a right to a job doing whatever they want to do. Industries must be allowed to die when their time has come! This isn't about car company bail outs, we still need cars. This is more like banning teleporters because it'll put the airlines out of business.
The greed mentality is what it is always about; take everything away from you as possible and make you pay somebody who controls it. We've gone so far as to privatize ownership of WATER, including the rain and make people pay for the water collecting naturally in their own backyard- literally. It has been done and that evil thinking continues to spread; as CRAZY as that sounds the issue will come to your area someday in the future unless trends change. Privatization has always been about handing power to the politically connected so they can leverage that power into profit and it never has anything to do about helping anybody. Copyright has NOTHING (today) to do with helping the "starving" artists and everything about control.
So used to defending "new" technology that you can't allow legitimate concerns to be raised?
I get it, I'm surrounded by technologically ignorant people who respond irrationally to the stuff. But it is no reason to become irrationally defensive of the technology-- for those people, it does make sense to not discuss the topic at any depth but one does not have to get down to their level either.
TFA is nothing new and seems so obvious that its hardly worth discussion. As somebody who deals with those "non-issues" and knows older people who suffer daily from them I am glad this was an issue in the 90s because it was when I became motivated enough to take precautions. This stuff can cause seriously miserable conditions later in life (do not get surgery it makes it worse.) Things like this serve a purpose:
A) inform people of the general problem who do not yet know (unless nobody has children there is always a new batch)
B) inform people who know but do not THINK about how touch screens are no different than existing tech (may be worse)
Sure, there is the anti technology types who will twist such information or those who do not properly comprehend it and go around saying "doctors say touch screens are bad for your health." Those people can be so annoying that it provides plenty of motivation for going to an irrational position on the opposite side.
Just because you believe the "disease" is imaginary.... BELIEVE being the key word. Hope you don't have to rediscover the problem with 1st hand proof; although, there would be some justice in having people dismiss your bitching as imaginary.
Shareholders demand not that it always increases even if it is huge and successful.
Anybody who does well has to exploit their market position to the hilt to maintain constant growth or lose stock value. Scratch that, I mean the fastest growth possible of the share price -- faster growth than others.
Nuclear is super extremely dangerous power yet we do a good job at managing the risk and all the extremely complex issues involved with that technology; no, its not as good as what it probably should be but we handled that problem quite well for many decades. Yet somehow we can't figure out what to do about a little fluffy cloud passing by our solar panels... we just give up and say we have to keep the stats quo because we can't wrap our heads around problems the major industries do not want solved.
The military will fund serious research into better internet technology if they have to run an air force of bandwidth hogs!
You think ISPs have any motivation? Hardware makers only slightly compete with improvements; due to the need for standards it lowers their motivation for R&D all they need to do is get to market 1st with the newest standards.
The military as usual, it going to fund the big steps forward with all the money they put into R&D.... which sadly we could have been doing more if we didn't need the waste money on the military just to excuse doing research to the foolish republicans!
Maybe if we could somehow disguise tariffs as a military operation we could restore the economy? Maybe we should say China is causing global warming so then we can invent some sort of atmosphere hack?
NASA should be working on robotics then they'd get more funding (and at least there would be some benefits from the research instead of military doing it all.) Besides, going to Mars is a stupid waste of money; robots already surpass humans in this niche and by the time Mars happens they will be 30 years more advanced! Going to Mars is a ploy by "idiot" Bush to sucker all you "smart" people into shifting priorities from immediate problems (climate) so even less money goes into pesky science. The budgeting shift he did along with that should have made this clear. If NASA worked on biology, he'd have taken them off evolution and stem cells and put them on curing the common cold and the suckers would praise the move...
If NASA didn't have a space industrial complex behind it that 1.5% of the budget they get would be cut.
It was sad when the buggy drivers were driven out of business by the car. Artists may just have to go back a few hundred years to doing it as a hobby and a few lucky ones being able to make it their job. (Not far off from what we have today, only a minority can make a living; without the machine there will be fewer rich artists and more professional artists.)
Shakespeare didn't need I.P. law to survive or crazy high budget productions to give good plays or a massive distribution chain to spread his work. The real need is the endless growth of share price which is what will drive the sociopaths until they can erase "copies" from our brains... (and that won't keep investors happy for long until they can wipe investor memories too.)
If artists get famious they can do quite well off the fame alone-- look at the no-talent morons who are celebrities today due to reality TV! Never ending line of desperate people wanting to be another celebrity.
We have "starving artists" either way and far more hobby artists; how does our system change that??
Isn't that always the case? The ones who benefit from the status quo fight hard against any changes which are perceived as a risk to their self interests... The needs of the many outweigh... sure its not a 'need' but no less of one than their 'need' to make a living with that specific career (hint: horse buggy drivers.)
The airlines did it and improved by amazing amounts (nobody remembers how bad it was) and the things were much less complex to fly back in those days; the pilots were insulted by it as well. CHECKLISTS WORK.
Something that important should involve multiple checklists; to error is human no matter how good and smart you are. Doctors are the most arrogant pricks I've ever met so they'll put up a huge fight and have a hard time admitting it when the error rate goes down by half. It likely would go down by half; that is how badly it is needed.
Nurses too... a friend of mine fought off his nurse violently (as much as he had strength post op) she had to call people in to hold him down and sedate him and luckily somebody heard his screams and READ the chart and realized she had the wrong person! he would have died and without a proper autopsy the cause wouldn't have been known. Mistakes killed my father too. Checklists must be mandatory by law like the pilots who have no issue with them today.
Bradley Manning allegedly leaked STATE DEPARTMENT information; the level of the leaked information was LOW security information.
We've not had any significant CIA leaks ... ever? Former people disclosing stuff in various ways without any evidence; but I can't think of any actual CIA document leaks can you?
The mention of Honorary Degrees in the summary is a troll for comments as those of us who earned REAL degrees dislike how it undermines and trivializes them. Make it an award but do not call it a degree! Also stop calling everything engineering.
Why waste our time on it when if we invent a nuclear power station that is actually desirable (which has been 5-10 years off for 40+ years) we will just give away the knowledge in the form of patents that the Chinese will unofficially ignore? Then we will out source all the relevant jobs to China and they will corner the market; why would it be any different than all the other markets? Those were back when we had the ability to say no. If we are going to do it for ourselves; we should work with the planet to progress it. I'm still seeing 15 years minimum before we have a new proven design. Nuclear fuel is running out; somehow the USA used up its 3+ million tons and now imports the stuff with about 2 million tons left worldwide-- I've seen estimates of 10 years left before it is too expensive to use; so if you build something now (takes 10 years) it better run on a different radioactive fuel source. Again, its all talk-- somebody show me a working alternative; I'm sick of HEARING about Thorium. Prove it.
I say let the Chinese invent them and maybe we'll copy them for a change... That is if they can invent a working nuclear power plant which I highly doubt because nobody has made progress in over a generation despite all the hype about the next big thing. I'm highly skeptical; even when the 1st plant is proven I'll still be somewhat skeptical because of HISTORY. The more dire the situation the easier it is to sucker people.
Meanwhile, the solar industry has managed to cut costs to the point where 2011 was the year solar SURPASSED nuclear; this despite a generation of intentional neglect. It also doesn't take 10 years to build or some unproven new technology; not to mention they can get insurance instead of forcing the government to have the tax payers insure and constantly inspect it as well as put up the billion dollar loans that never seem to get payed off fairly (plant owners can spend decades with lawyers and bribes hacking away at that government financed debt.) Nuclear power has a poor track record and I'm not just talking about the disasters. It would take less time to figure out a solution for nighttime if we just put the resources into it (create a market of buying daytime power and selling it at night; power would cost more at night....supply driven instead of demand driven. If we had been seriously working on this 40 years ago our battery tech would be more advanced than it is today and probably be impacting the electric cars too.)
Kenya has a lot of SUN. But nobody is going to send them aid if their solar plants are at risk...
It was not as bad in the 90s as it is today. It progressively gets worse; and the supreme court finished the democracy off when they made foreign corporations people.
The media doesn't make an issue out of it; unless you are Al Gore in a photo with some Buddhists (never mind the Chinese money Bush was getting.) It would not surprise me if that scandal wasn't driven by China-- you won't see any politicians be photographed by Buddhists while raising money because of that one but doing worse stuff with Christian organizations (even the sham ones) is totally ok.
Forget that; I want clarification on the right of the corporation to invade our privacy. They shouldn't be able to "steal" your computer and clone the whole thing just to find out if you emailed the competition some secret!
Information is not property. Once you let them redefine reality you've conceded to their terms of battle.
Quick! corporations need more cheap foreign labor to suppress wage increases, Call Bill Gates to testify before congress again!
When all you have is traitor MBAs running the corps in the USA, sooner or later the suppliers in China will realize they do not need you because you moved everything important over to them; then they can buy you out! Now those MBAs who handed them everything are now sales people in a shell corp for Chinese owners who used to be just be their cost externalization dump. Except the CEOs, who can sell off the business after they finished selling everything off to China. This has happened to medium and small businesses in the US already. Will it happen to Dell or HP before they fall off the fortune 500?
China is making huge steps towards making all the chips too.
The republicans and democrats are not flip sides. Americans like simple answers even when simple answers are not adequate and this ethos of the culture causes a great many of the nations problems (but they do not full grasp this because again, they cling to simple short answers.)
I would argue that a large reason for the two party duopoly is a reflection of the culture.
I've volunteered at both just for the experience. They differ greatly. Republicans are a more authoritarian culture and the Democrats are more anarchy (not really socialist.) It is somewhat ironic the anti-government group is more authoritarian but it makes sense as you dig deeper.
Ever hear of herding cats? That is the democrats. The Republicans are dogs herding sheep. Informed people should understand what I'm saying (sorry if your a sheep who prides yourself on your "independent" thinking.)
High corruption issues are above everything, then the two party illusion breaks momentarily.
I'm a promoter of politicalcompass.org because the 1D model is idiotic; the 2D grid is far superior. If we ever get people to grasp that and Americans to just use a 1D spectrum (which is more than right++,right,middle,left,left++ they seem to glaze over if you try to even explain the 2D model) maybe we can make some progress before we over populate ourselves into a nightmare.
Ha! They stopped reporting it after Greenspan left; you can't prove your statement because it became a secret; you can only estimate.
As far as relative value, that is a trick because the rest were also playing money games; relatively, a car going 50mph can speed past the pack and win the race because they are going 30mph... it doesn't matter if the film is sped up or slowed down (btw, this is one way they do racing for movies; actually kung fu also does it because the real thing goes too fast for the audience.) If you haven't noticed, many peoples of the world are seeing their buying power diminish... (since its all relative you arguably can't nail anything down; oil prices rise and that undermines actual buying power which is all that really matters no matter how much of the money you print.)
China is purposely keeping theirs low; another game which happens to make the USD look relatively better.
Wikileaks shows the US government and especially the State Dept. work on behalf of the big moneyed interests which historically were US organizations but not so much today. I'm just waiting for the day a leak shows them going to bat for Chinese interests.
Just recently we have news of them actually threatening Spain to be more draconian and not that many years ago they were threatening Spain again but that time it was to allow GM foods wholly "owned" by Monsanto to the point where they were directly planning with Monsanto execs on the maneuver.
Other nations do it a little but nobody has topped the USA at it; one of the few things we are still #1 at. (see France and the privatization of water.)
Mod parent up.
Seymour Papert used computers as a TOOL along with legos to promote THINKING and his approach translated into other topics that didn't use technology. The quality MECC software didn't need newer technology to fulfill its job; some lesser software like the pointless Oregon Trail was really a video game and could benefit from upgrades; sadly it continues having not made any constructive progress. (the WWW helping reading is just a by product.)
Technology is NOT needed in K-12 at all. Its just a popular excuse to avoid solving the difficult issues involved. It can help in limited ways only; just as calculators are overused and are doing harm in many classrooms.
Obama put the wars into the budget for the 1st time; that made it appear spending went up more than it actually did!
The revenue went down because of the depression that started under Bush and continues today; that means less money coming in while spending continues and in most cases can not and should not instantly reflect revenue. Then you have tax cut extensions which also lowered revenue.
Plus do not forget inflation undermining the dollar's value; a number which is no longer reported because it got so bad (again under Bush, but Obama would have probably done it too.) While this makes the debt amount seem lower in value it actually does more harm than good.
The economy stimulus was way too weak and way too foolish (republican tax cuts) and that cost us a huge amount only to soften the downward spiral and couldn't dig us out-- you have to take a big step backwards so then you can build up enough momentum to escape...
The culture and system produces an environment that does not prepare students for such experiences; they learn how to hack the broken system they've learned to manage within doing as little as possible (which I would argue is human nature.) This is classic conditioning working against their and our best interests. Their brains are also not exercised in such areas so it makes it even more difficult-- the "smart" kid may simply be the one who's been able to ride their bike a lot while the rest never had enough time to get beyond the training wheels.
Rather than a fixed structure that is easy to learn to work around, we should have more diversity throughout development but instead we choose to promote wrote learning and teaching to tests which only take us further down this path. We use simplistic systems pitted against human brains where even a child can learn to outwit the mindless system (see multiple guess.) If you had human evaluations not tests you'd have one hell of a time as a student; with an underdeveloped skill level, pitted against an expert evaluating you.
I don't find there are "smart" students, merely those who didn't adapt as naturally to the broken environment and instead seem to seek out what isn't given and the ones who are predisposed in that subject or situation (which do no better when outside their comfort zone.) The normal students can learn and grow into better ones and the better ones can fall down into the normal patterns. "Smart" is largely who does well with the metrics used. An actual smart person is another whole topic. It is too easy to just give people IQs and shift the blame.
Boy have times changed. Everybody thinks of a CURVE even when they do not use a curve. If the average student gets a D then either its too hard or the prof sucks-- so then a curve is used to raise it up to compensate-- a few old ones adapted by using a curve but most just adapted their systems so it came out close to a curve. All courses are judged the same; its the prof's flaws that cause deviations from the bell curve and only a little slack is given for hard classes. There is no rigid system to enforce it but the perception exists and it has influence over the long term.
The culture has changed. not for the better in most cases; I'd assume this is yet another area of decline.
Yes they are. There is a lot more than stealing that goes on in cults... Also, to copy is not to steal.
I'm surprised libraries are not next. I can get movies, music, books and even audio books at the library for free; I can donate stuff to the library. We got those with a lot of fighting and the benefits of traditions started by our socialist founding fathers. The library is BARRED from digital books; why?? Barred from conversion of 1 type to another-- such as creating audio books for the blind of printed books they own. why?? Barred from digital distribution vs physical distribution, why?? If they can't do anything like non-profit publishing-- fine. But online distribution should be fine; you download and after 1 day you have to "return it" so another person can download; then it is not publishing but merely digital sharing without DRM. People rip CDs, DVDs, and even scan books from the library for decades...
New corrupt laws will make what was once a civil game to strike terror in down loaders into criminal law the STATE pays to freely go after people for the industry. It should remind you of drug law as well; we didn't care much about the drug users so we let them trample our rights and now....
I expect when somebody comes up with a brain erase technique they'll be trying to figure out how to charge you for REMEMBERING a song or chipping you and making you pay if you hum a melody.