Civilizations are measured by how they treat their weakest citizens..
Over here in communist Australia my government health care levy covers myself and about 6 other people for less money than I could insure a family of four in the US. UHC has received bipartisan support in Oz since the right wingers gave up the fight to get rid of it in the late 80's (after it had been running for over a decade), according to numerous polls 80% of voters would now vote against a candidate who tried to fuck with it. Recently a similar scheme for the disabled was instituted with bipartisan support and strong voter approval. Personally I am proud to be part of those schemes in communist Australia.
Seriously, writing "communism" to describe the above state of affairs felt wrong even though I was aiming for sarcasm. Americans already pay about the same per-capita tax on health as Aussies do and have much better economies of scale, but then they have to go out and buy health insurance, wtf? We have statistically superior health outcomes to boot, so someone in the US must be making huge profits from other people's misery, I wonder who?
We are all going to die, so by your own logic there's a "death problem" with the number (last_death_problem_num_fixed + N) that is going to kill you. Also according to your own logic you should stop solving your own "death problems" instantly in order to reach the optimum value of N=0 (as implied by your post). In fact if you put some effort in maybe you could get to the optimum value faster by creating some artificial "death problems" for yourself.
In other words: Fuck off and die, because there's certainly no room for your particular brand of trolling on Slashdot.
Idiots who shop at Whole Foods would rather a child go blind due to vitamin deficiency rather than allow an evil GMO food to be used.
That simply is not true, most of those people would be unaware that vitamin A deficiency causes blindness and how widespread the problem is, so how they can possibly "prefer" it? If both sides go around accusing the other of being "evil" then nobody will be enlightened. Sure there's some unethical marketing involved in pushing "health foods" and it should be highlighted on sites such as this one by knowledgeable people, but really it's no worse than the industry standard since the same claim of "unethical marketing" can (and has) be made about fast food and soft-drink companies.
"Let them eat veggies" is no different to "let them eat cake" or "let them eat string cheese", the reason people say such idiotic things is due to plain ignorance, it's not stupidity, and it certainly does not imply they "prefer to see kids go blind". At most it implies the person has lead a "sheltered" life and have done a poor job of self-education on that particular subject.
At the end of the day I firmly believe the government has as much right to tell me what I put in my body as it does telling me what to put in my mind, ie: none. Having said that the government does have a strong role to play in ensuring public health, checking advertising claims and labelling, and promoting the most accurate health information science can provide. The reason I think we need those regulations (aside from preventing fraud) is because I recognise no single person is an expert on everything they eat, drink, inhale, or inject, they do not (and cannot) know the chemical makeup of everything they consume. In my experience most people consume what they do for two reasons, taste and/or inducing a state of altered consciousness.
Starvation, as seen in Africa and parts of Asia, is a completely different state of mind and is all about nutrition. Once you starve yourself beyond a few days, taste no longer matters and the hallucinations are free. In fact you can get the hallucinations in (normally) less than two days by simply not drinking and staying awake. Not that I recommend doing those things, it's just that when you get to my age (50+) it's almost a given that you will have experienced at least one (non drug induced) auditory or visual hallucination of some kind, in my experience the majority of those are induced by lack of sleep. Often combined with the dehydration of a hang over;).
Your entire premise is assuming that "human decency" is a universal, objective standard, which it is not.
"Do onto others..." is pretty close to universal across all cultures and religions. We are social animals, we are born with certain innate "morals" that are subsequently moulded by parents and society. Xenophobia is one of those naturally evolved instincts that is no longer beneficial to the species..
Perhaps sea ice extent oscillates between the North and South Poles
Yes, it's also been noted that the frequency of that (rough) oscillation seems to be synchronised with the seasons, weird huh?
Seriously, the ice at the two poles behaves in totally different ways. Just pause for a second and think about the geography, Antarctica is a land surrounded by deep oceans and a strong circumpolar ocean current, the Artic is a (relatively) shallow sea surrounded by land. Melting at the south pole INCREASES* the extent of the Antarctic sea ice.
This is because in Antarctica the majority of the sea ice comes from glacial outflows, this ice breaks up with the mechanical action of the waves and floats away as icebergs. Whatever bergs (or ships) that are still close to the coast in autumn become part of that years sea ice. The mouths of these glaciers are enormous and create permanent ice shelves that are several hundred feet thick.
OTOH Greenland and the Antarctic peninsula have a lot in common and are both effected by something called Polar Amplification, a phenomena predicted by the much maligned climate models BEFORE it was observed in the data. There are a whole bunch of such phenomena that were predicted by models and subsequently observed in the real world, "stratospheric cooling" is another well known example.
In other words sea ice extent is basically meaningless without some context, What you really want to know for the Artic is sea ice volume. I've been following the subject for over 30yrs and the best estimates of volume that I have seen use data gleaned from cold war sonar maps that were declassified sometime in the last decade. According to those figures Artic sea ice volume is now less than 1/5th of what it was when I was born (1959).
Some (perhaps unwelcome) advise, forget about climate science for now and spend a year or two working on your technical research skills, the best way I know of doing that is to skip church (or some other overrated social club), and spend the time browsing WP and "double checking" the theories and assumptions you hold most dearly. Science is intelligently designed to evolve towards the ideal of "truth" (google "the relativity of wrong" and read it, I can't be bothered to link it). Not only that but for the last couple of centuries the rate of these changes has been increasing over time, Meaning that the older you get the faster it changes, and the more neural archives you will need to update (a personal "theory" that I use to explain my "senior" moments).
I jumped on the quote above because I first heard it in the mid-90's, I'll concede that on the surface it sounds plausible as it did to me when I first heard it. However as with most of the anti-science "talking points" pushed by a minority group within the FF industry via extremely effective (but surprisingly cheap) professional lobbyists, the theorised "oscillation" soon melts under a skeptical eye. This is why "deniers" don't normally give an alternative explanation. let alone one that stands up to rigor of broader peer-review process. I strongly suggest you use a reputable source to check out the next climate meme before you infect others with it. As stated in the title your particular meme is #113.
Immigrants must pass a test that I bet you would not.
Technically I'm a British citizen with permanent residence status in Australia. I arrived as a child and will have been here for 50yrs next February. I could become an Aussie citizen anytime I feel like it, if such a feeling does one day stir inside of me I will deliberately not study for that fucking degrading test and hope to hell I fail it badly but honestly. My response will be a heavily accented "Struth mate, that's going straight to the pool room. Is there an op-shop around here where I can get a cheap frame?".
It's a different world today than it was during my 1960's childhood when China looked more like famine ridden N. Korea and the two super powers were in a global nuclear stand-off. Today I still live in Australia, I'm a software developer for a Japanese multi-national, the bulk of our coding is done by Russian contractors in Moscow, and the end customer is often Chinese.
All but one of the Australian test team originally hail from the former USSR, they all pleasant people to work with and live up to their nations "MacGyver" reputation for getting something working no matter what. Unsurprisingly they are not the blood thirsty albinos I grew up watching on TV. All the Russians I work with are bilingual, not so common in the Aussies or Japanese, yet often my requirements come written in Japanese (and the end customer is Chinese). My Boss' Boss is not only a technically competent maths major who "grew up" with the software, he also reads/speaks fluent Japanese, that's a rare combination of skills in this country, which is why they pay him the "big bucks".
Both do a good job at reporting the news without fear or favour, and both are world renowned for their investigative skills..
They are about as good as it gets from an "old media" in terms of accuracy and impartiality. The opinion columns of both papers are heavily stacked with their sponsors shills and extremists who are sympathetic/useful to the "cause", that's where both papers political leaning can best be seen. The political tilt is most noticeable (to me) with the WSJ on environmental issues such as AGW and fracking, the opinion columns often directly contradict their own news department, yet the two independent news departments often match.
Both papers continue the (almost extinct in the US) tradition of clearly separating news and opinion. The WSJ in particular deserves credit for not going down the usual Murdoch route of blurring the two together into a continuous stream of hearsay and political propaganda.
As an example of why newspapers would print extremist, Google "Australia's most read column". Now realise he is not just an independent subversive with a big mouth, he's chief executive shill for the world's richest woman.
Mars is smaller than Earth so you would expect larger volcanos, Venus is about the same size but does not have a moon to create tidal forces in the crust. Many of the gas giant moons have cyro-volcanos, this one is purple, but take a look at the surface and it's clear that Jupiter's moon Io could be considered one giant spherical volcano..
The companies who built the reactors payed into a government fund upfront, according to a WP link someone posted above there is currently $25 billion in the fund. I don't think $25 billion is going to clean up the mess but it's a start and also a strong sign that those companies were willing to put their money where their mouth was.
The US had a very advantageous head start on the nuclear industry but lost it in the 70's/80's when a couple of European countries started doing it properly by establishing a regulatory "life cycle" for reactors, their foresight turned nuclear power into a clean and stable industry in their own nations. America's lack of foresight, enthusiasm for instant profit, and general disregard for the environment, turned a new industry into a massively expensive white elephant. I was a teenager in the 70's, IIRC even way back then plenty of people were warning the US that it would end like this.
Same thing is happening now with America's attitude to AGW. As a species we are burning over 5 billion tons of coal a year, that's right 5 BILLION tons There still exists a huge opportunity to replace coal with a power source that doesn't fuck up the planet for everyone, from where I sit on the other side of the Pacific the US senate in particular seems determined to kill those opportunities and ensure that the "green energy" industry is stillborn.
Yep, there is no insurance company in the world that will cover anyone for a nuclear accident. Reactors are normally underwritten by the state who in the case of an accident might give you a caravan to live in (if you're lucky). Same thing with riots and "civil disorder", if a bunch of arsehole protesters smash up your shop because they are pissed at someone else then your insurance company isn't going to pay for it. The reason that insurance companies routinely refuse to cover those things is because they can't quantify the risk.
It's the same idea as the 'lint' command, it picks up potential bugs.
These sort of tools can't help improve the quality of your code. Having said that, in my (20+) years of experience it's not common practice to use these things, I've worked on several large "mission critical" systems and the Y2K ordeal was the only time someone even asked if I used such a tool, let alone demanded it. At the end of the day (actually more like a month) the "Y2K lint" tool's only practical achievement was to tick a due-diligence box for insurance purposes.
You seem to enjoy ridiculing and stereotyping others, to a boomer like me that doesn't equate to someone who was "raised properly with manners". Speaking as a 50-something greybeard, there's only one sure fire way to consistently impress ALL greybeards, do what "Radar O'Riely" did in the show M.A.S.H, give him what he wants just before he asks for it. If you can do that you can come to work in a gorilla suit for all I care.
As a parent, you do what's best for your kids, and the public schools can go to hell if they are not the best option.
Epistemology is the study of how we "know" things, sadly a large chunk of the current population are unfamiliar with the term.
A democracy requires ordinary people to make very broad policy decisions. As grandparent I want those decisions to be informed, I want policy to be made using facts and figures, not feelings and fashions. Therefore demanding a public education for all IS doing the best you can for your children and grandchildren, the fact that it also benefits my neighbours children is just a happy side effect.
Having said that, there's also no reason a private student should receive less in government funds than a public student. Funding students equally via the school budget and allowing (accredited) public/private schools to compete for students seems to me the fairest and most efficient way to ensure all children receive a basic education that a functioning adult requires to get by in society. If the parent believes having a Catholic education on top of the basic public education is worth the extra money, then just maybe it's because they see some value in the extras. Also "extra" education does not just come from schools, I sent my son to boy scouts and he learnt a lot and enjoyed it for a few years, so who am I to say others can't pay to buy a broader education for their kids? - In fact I think a broad education is the best gift you can ever give a child.
The best thing my mother ever did for my education was to educate herself. Up to the age of 7 my mum had been a Sunday school teacher and my brother and I were in her class, suddenly we stopped going to Sunday school, I hated it so I didn't ask why until I was an adult myself. What she did in the way of explanation was to start reading me Aboriginal dreamtime stories at bedtime in place of bible stories. That was a pretty radical thing to do for a staunchly conservative woman in the 60's and very effective too since I have been an atheist for as long as I can remember. This is not to say that religious stories are unimportant, it just points out how confused things get when large numbers of people treat one particular story as the unadulterated truth from the ultimate authority and demonize the stories of others.
Link disclaimer: I self identify as a "greenie" not a libertarian, I just admire his intellectual honesty on this particular issue, it takes a big man to admit he was wrong and only a brave politician can afford to promote himself as "soft on drugs". I've never heard of him until I found the clip by accident a couple of days ago. If I was a yank I'd vote for him on this issue alone.
The difference is that Fox is first and foremost a political organisation, it's the marketing arm of the republican party. The others are just lazy media organisations that do little else but read whatever press releases their sponsers send them.
As Winston Churchill once said something along the lines of... You can rely on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have tried everything else. Point 6 (asking for congressional approval to go to war) is the RightThingToDo(TM). What you seem to be suggesting is that the POTUS should be able to do whatever the fuck he wants without consulting anyone, ie: a king or a dictator that barks orders. That's fine if you want that, but most of us want a democratic leader who is forced to answer to his fellow citizens before commiting them to war.
turning into a totalitarian regime without hope of reverting back to democracy
While on the subject of "stupid" - If it was impossible to change from a totalitarian state to a democratic one, there would be no democratic states in the first place.
In my mind STEM is the next level of basic education after the three "R's". My solicitor has a BSc, therefore I can assume he has a good general knowledge of how the world around him woks. There's more to life than STEM but it's important because it makes it possible for others to spend more time creating the art that feeds our soul and keeps us entertained. More than ever before we live in a world where everyone is a specialist, people often see this as a "bad thing" but to me it just demonstrates that past STEM practitioners have given us much more useful knowledge than can possibly fit inside a single human head.
The only "arrogance" I am sick of is the arrogance of secularists who think human beings can somehow affect the weather.
Ever heard of "black rain", it falls from a type of manmade wether called "mushroom clouds". We have enough mushroom cloud machines to create a whole new season called "nuclear winter". Heating up the entire atmosphere/ocean system takes a bit longer but it's doable, in fact we have already pushed it up by a degree or two without really trying.
Poppycock, if people do not agree about what has been observed (ie: perceived by their brain) then science cannot exist. Science is a philosophy the has as it's foundation the assumption the "real world" not only exists but looks and behaves the same to all individuals. I think what you meant to say is that science is never about personal experience, having a guardian angle is not an experience other scientists can share, however how such apparitions form and take root in the human mind is certainly a valid field of scientific study, crazy ideas and flawed methods didn't stop the study of physics, chemistry, medicine, etc, so I don't see why it should stop the study of phycology.
Slashdot Mirror
Civilizations are measured by how they treat their weakest citizens..
Over here in communist Australia my government health care levy covers myself and about 6 other people for less money than I could insure a family of four in the US. UHC has received bipartisan support in Oz since the right wingers gave up the fight to get rid of it in the late 80's (after it had been running for over a decade), according to numerous polls 80% of voters would now vote against a candidate who tried to fuck with it. Recently a similar scheme for the disabled was instituted with bipartisan support and strong voter approval. Personally I am proud to be part of those schemes in communist Australia.
Seriously, writing "communism" to describe the above state of affairs felt wrong even though I was aiming for sarcasm. Americans already pay about the same per-capita tax on health as Aussies do and have much better economies of scale, but then they have to go out and buy health insurance, wtf? We have statistically superior health outcomes to boot, so someone in the US must be making huge profits from other people's misery, I wonder who?
We are all going to die, so by your own logic there's a "death problem" with the number (last_death_problem_num_fixed + N) that is going to kill you. Also according to your own logic you should stop solving your own "death problems" instantly in order to reach the optimum value of N=0 (as implied by your post). In fact if you put some effort in maybe you could get to the optimum value faster by creating some artificial "death problems" for yourself.
In other words: Fuck off and die, because there's certainly no room for your particular brand of trolling on Slashdot.
Idiots who shop at Whole Foods would rather a child go blind due to vitamin deficiency rather than allow an evil GMO food to be used.
That simply is not true, most of those people would be unaware that vitamin A deficiency causes blindness and how widespread the problem is, so how they can possibly "prefer" it? If both sides go around accusing the other of being "evil" then nobody will be enlightened. Sure there's some unethical marketing involved in pushing "health foods" and it should be highlighted on sites such as this one by knowledgeable people, but really it's no worse than the industry standard since the same claim of "unethical marketing" can (and has) be made about fast food and soft-drink companies.
;).
"Let them eat veggies" is no different to "let them eat cake" or "let them eat string cheese", the reason people say such idiotic things is due to plain ignorance, it's not stupidity, and it certainly does not imply they "prefer to see kids go blind". At most it implies the person has lead a "sheltered" life and have done a poor job of self-education on that particular subject.
At the end of the day I firmly believe the government has as much right to tell me what I put in my body as it does telling me what to put in my mind, ie: none. Having said that the government does have a strong role to play in ensuring public health, checking advertising claims and labelling, and promoting the most accurate health information science can provide. The reason I think we need those regulations (aside from preventing fraud) is because I recognise no single person is an expert on everything they eat, drink, inhale, or inject, they do not (and cannot) know the chemical makeup of everything they consume. In my experience most people consume what they do for two reasons, taste and/or inducing a state of altered consciousness.
Starvation, as seen in Africa and parts of Asia, is a completely different state of mind and is all about nutrition. Once you starve yourself beyond a few days, taste no longer matters and the hallucinations are free. In fact you can get the hallucinations in (normally) less than two days by simply not drinking and staying awake. Not that I recommend doing those things, it's just that when you get to my age (50+) it's almost a given that you will have experienced at least one (non drug induced) auditory or visual hallucination of some kind, in my experience the majority of those are induced by lack of sleep. Often combined with the dehydration of a hang over
Your entire premise is assuming that "human decency" is a universal, objective standard, which it is not.
"Do onto others..." is pretty close to universal across all cultures and religions. We are social animals, we are born with certain innate "morals" that are subsequently moulded by parents and society. Xenophobia is one of those naturally evolved instincts that is no longer beneficial to the species..
Perhaps sea ice extent oscillates between the North and South Poles
Yes, it's also been noted that the frequency of that (rough) oscillation seems to be synchronised with the seasons, weird huh?
Seriously, the ice at the two poles behaves in totally different ways. Just pause for a second and think about the geography, Antarctica is a land surrounded by deep oceans and a strong circumpolar ocean current, the Artic is a (relatively) shallow sea surrounded by land. Melting at the south pole INCREASES* the extent of the Antarctic sea ice.
This is because in Antarctica the majority of the sea ice comes from glacial outflows, this ice breaks up with the mechanical action of the waves and floats away as icebergs. Whatever bergs (or ships) that are still close to the coast in autumn become part of that years sea ice. The mouths of these glaciers are enormous and create permanent ice shelves that are several hundred feet thick.
These ice shelves are the best indicators that the warming trend is impacting Antarctica, we are seeing Antarctic ice shelves that have existed for at least 4kys breaking up disappearing at the rate of roughly one a year for over a decade now.
OTOH Greenland and the Antarctic peninsula have a lot in common and are both effected by something called Polar Amplification, a phenomena predicted by the much maligned climate models BEFORE it was observed in the data. There are a whole bunch of such phenomena that were predicted by models and subsequently observed in the real world, "stratospheric cooling" is another well known example.
In other words sea ice extent is basically meaningless without some context, What you really want to know for the Artic is sea ice volume. I've been following the subject for over 30yrs and the best estimates of volume that I have seen use data gleaned from cold war sonar maps that were declassified sometime in the last decade. According to those figures Artic sea ice volume is now less than 1/5th of what it was when I was born (1959).
Some (perhaps unwelcome) advise, forget about climate science for now and spend a year or two working on your technical research skills, the best way I know of doing that is to skip church (or some other overrated social club), and spend the time browsing WP and "double checking" the theories and assumptions you hold most dearly. Science is intelligently designed to evolve towards the ideal of "truth" (google "the relativity of wrong" and read it, I can't be bothered to link it). Not only that but for the last couple of centuries the rate of these changes has been increasing over time, Meaning that the older you get the faster it changes, and the more neural archives you will need to update (a personal "theory" that I use to explain my "senior" moments).
I jumped on the quote above because I first heard it in the mid-90's, I'll concede that on the surface it sounds plausible as it did to me when I first heard it. However as with most of the anti-science "talking points" pushed by a minority group within the FF industry via extremely effective (but surprisingly cheap) professional lobbyists, the theorised "oscillation" soon melts under a skeptical eye. This is why "deniers" don't normally give an alternative explanation. let alone one that stands up to rigor of broader peer-review process. I strongly suggest you use a reputable source to check out the next climate meme before you infect others with it. As stated in the title your particular meme is #113.
Immigrants must pass a test that I bet you would not.
Technically I'm a British citizen with permanent residence status in Australia. I arrived as a child and will have been here for 50yrs next February. I could become an Aussie citizen anytime I feel like it, if such a feeling does one day stir inside of me I will deliberately not study for that fucking degrading test and hope to hell I fail it badly but honestly. My response will be a heavily accented "Struth mate, that's going straight to the pool room. Is there an op-shop around here where I can get a cheap frame?".
It's a different world today than it was during my 1960's childhood when China looked more like famine ridden N. Korea and the two super powers were in a global nuclear stand-off. Today I still live in Australia, I'm a software developer for a Japanese multi-national, the bulk of our coding is done by Russian contractors in Moscow, and the end customer is often Chinese.
All but one of the Australian test team originally hail from the former USSR, they all pleasant people to work with and live up to their nations "MacGyver" reputation for getting something working no matter what. Unsurprisingly they are not the blood thirsty albinos I grew up watching on TV. All the Russians I work with are bilingual, not so common in the Aussies or Japanese, yet often my requirements come written in Japanese (and the end customer is Chinese). My Boss' Boss is not only a technically competent maths major who "grew up" with the software, he also reads/speaks fluent Japanese, that's a rare combination of skills in this country, which is why they pay him the "big bucks".
Both do a good job at reporting the news without fear or favour, and both are world renowned for their investigative skills..
They are about as good as it gets from an "old media" in terms of accuracy and impartiality. The opinion columns of both papers are heavily stacked with their sponsors shills and extremists who are sympathetic/useful to the "cause", that's where both papers political leaning can best be seen. The political tilt is most noticeable (to me) with the WSJ on environmental issues such as AGW and fracking, the opinion columns often directly contradict their own news department, yet the two independent news departments often match.
Both papers continue the (almost extinct in the US) tradition of clearly separating news and opinion. The WSJ in particular deserves credit for not going down the usual Murdoch route of blurring the two together into a continuous stream of hearsay and political propaganda.
As an example of why newspapers would print extremist, Google "Australia's most read column". Now realise he is not just an independent subversive with a big mouth, he's chief executive shill for the world's richest woman.
Sorry, no mod points, just laughter and applause. :)
Sorry Mr Anonymous internet guy, it appears your data is corrupt, not theirs.
You beat me to it. ;)
Mars is smaller than Earth so you would expect larger volcanos, Venus is about the same size but does not have a moon to create tidal forces in the crust. Many of the gas giant moons have cyro-volcanos, this one is purple, but take a look at the surface and it's clear that Jupiter's moon Io could be considered one giant spherical volcano..
The companies who built the reactors payed into a government fund upfront, according to a WP link someone posted above there is currently $25 billion in the fund. I don't think $25 billion is going to clean up the mess but it's a start and also a strong sign that those companies were willing to put their money where their mouth was.
The US had a very advantageous head start on the nuclear industry but lost it in the 70's/80's when a couple of European countries started doing it properly by establishing a regulatory "life cycle" for reactors, their foresight turned nuclear power into a clean and stable industry in their own nations. America's lack of foresight, enthusiasm for instant profit, and general disregard for the environment, turned a new industry into a massively expensive white elephant. I was a teenager in the 70's, IIRC even way back then plenty of people were warning the US that it would end like this.
Same thing is happening now with America's attitude to AGW. As a species we are burning over 5 billion tons of coal a year, that's right 5 BILLION tons There still exists a huge opportunity to replace coal with a power source that doesn't fuck up the planet for everyone, from where I sit on the other side of the Pacific the US senate in particular seems determined to kill those opportunities and ensure that the "green energy" industry is stillborn.
Yep, there is no insurance company in the world that will cover anyone for a nuclear accident. Reactors are normally underwritten by the state who in the case of an accident might give you a caravan to live in (if you're lucky). Same thing with riots and "civil disorder", if a bunch of arsehole protesters smash up your shop because they are pissed at someone else then your insurance company isn't going to pay for it. The reason that insurance companies routinely refuse to cover those things is because they can't quantify the risk.
So what is a Coverity Scan service
It's the same idea as the 'lint' command, it picks up potential bugs.
These sort of tools can't help improve the quality of your code. Having said that, in my (20+) years of experience it's not common practice to use these things, I've worked on several large "mission critical" systems and the Y2K ordeal was the only time someone even asked if I used such a tool, let alone demanded it. At the end of the day (actually more like a month) the "Y2K lint" tool's only practical achievement was to tick a due-diligence box for insurance purposes.
You seem to enjoy ridiculing and stereotyping others, to a boomer like me that doesn't equate to someone who was "raised properly with manners". Speaking as a 50-something greybeard, there's only one sure fire way to consistently impress ALL greybeards, do what "Radar O'Riely" did in the show M.A.S.H, give him what he wants just before he asks for it. If you can do that you can come to work in a gorilla suit for all I care.
Meh, I'm 54 and have a Marvin the Martian clock in the kitchen.
No good deed should go unpunished.
As a parent, you do what's best for your kids, and the public schools can go to hell if they are not the best option.
Epistemology is the study of how we "know" things, sadly a large chunk of the current population are unfamiliar with the term.
A democracy requires ordinary people to make very broad policy decisions. As grandparent I want those decisions to be informed, I want policy to be made using facts and figures, not feelings and fashions. Therefore demanding a public education for all IS doing the best you can for your children and grandchildren, the fact that it also benefits my neighbours children is just a happy side effect.
Having said that, there's also no reason a private student should receive less in government funds than a public student. Funding students equally via the school budget and allowing (accredited) public/private schools to compete for students seems to me the fairest and most efficient way to ensure all children receive a basic education that a functioning adult requires to get by in society. If the parent believes having a Catholic education on top of the basic public education is worth the extra money, then just maybe it's because they see some value in the extras. Also "extra" education does not just come from schools, I sent my son to boy scouts and he learnt a lot and enjoyed it for a few years, so who am I to say others can't pay to buy a broader education for their kids? - In fact I think a broad education is the best gift you can ever give a child.
The best thing my mother ever did for my education was to educate herself. Up to the age of 7 my mum had been a Sunday school teacher and my brother and I were in her class, suddenly we stopped going to Sunday school, I hated it so I didn't ask why until I was an adult myself. What she did in the way of explanation was to start reading me Aboriginal dreamtime stories at bedtime in place of bible stories. That was a pretty radical thing to do for a staunchly conservative woman in the 60's and very effective too since I have been an atheist for as long as I can remember. This is not to say that religious stories are unimportant, it just points out how confused things get when large numbers of people treat one particular story as the unadulterated truth from the ultimate authority and demonize the stories of others.
Link disclaimer: I self identify as a "greenie" not a libertarian, I just admire his intellectual honesty on this particular issue, it takes a big man to admit he was wrong and only a brave politician can afford to promote himself as "soft on drugs". I've never heard of him until I found the clip by accident a couple of days ago. If I was a yank I'd vote for him on this issue alone.
The difference is that Fox is first and foremost a political organisation, it's the marketing arm of the republican party. The others are just lazy media organisations that do little else but read whatever press releases their sponsers send them.
As Winston Churchill once said something along the lines of... You can rely on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have tried everything else. Point 6 (asking for congressional approval to go to war) is the RightThingToDo(TM). What you seem to be suggesting is that the POTUS should be able to do whatever the fuck he wants without consulting anyone, ie: a king or a dictator that barks orders. That's fine if you want that, but most of us want a democratic leader who is forced to answer to his fellow citizens before commiting them to war.
turning into a totalitarian regime without hope of reverting back to democracy
While on the subject of "stupid" - If it was impossible to change from a totalitarian state to a democratic one, there would be no democratic states in the first place.
In my mind STEM is the next level of basic education after the three "R's". My solicitor has a BSc, therefore I can assume he has a good general knowledge of how the world around him woks. There's more to life than STEM but it's important because it makes it possible for others to spend more time creating the art that feeds our soul and keeps us entertained. More than ever before we live in a world where everyone is a specialist, people often see this as a "bad thing" but to me it just demonstrates that past STEM practitioners have given us much more useful knowledge than can possibly fit inside a single human head.
The only "arrogance" I am sick of is the arrogance of secularists who think human beings can somehow affect the weather.
Ever heard of "black rain", it falls from a type of manmade wether called "mushroom clouds". We have enough mushroom cloud machines to create a whole new season called "nuclear winter". Heating up the entire atmosphere/ocean system takes a bit longer but it's doable, in fact we have already pushed it up by a degree or two without really trying.
Science is never about human experience
Poppycock, if people do not agree about what has been observed (ie: perceived by their brain) then science cannot exist. Science is a philosophy the has as it's foundation the assumption the "real world" not only exists but looks and behaves the same to all individuals. I think what you meant to say is that science is never about personal experience, having a guardian angle is not an experience other scientists can share, however how such apparitions form and take root in the human mind is certainly a valid field of scientific study, crazy ideas and flawed methods didn't stop the study of physics, chemistry, medicine, etc, so I don't see why it should stop the study of phycology.