If you live in a world where over half the people are unhappy, your "best" may not last for a large period of your life before you suffer terribly (from a murdered family member, an outright revolution which leads to a lot of stress for you and your family).
From a selfish point of view, isn't it worth giving up 25% of your money (if you will still be wealthy afterwards) to ensure you are in a stress free, happy society?
I don't see this as a problem anytime soon in the US.
And...I pay more than 33% tax to feds/state/city as it is....I pay quite enough already.
Do you want to be able to take a subway without the place reeking of shit and puke? Then be thankful for the people cleaning it up; give them respect, good working conditions, and a living wage.
Ok, I've not really had any experience riding trains, but is this seriously such a problem with people shitting and puking on trains...that designated workers to clean this up are actually required???
I mean, I refuse to ride buses and the like on public transportation for many reasons (smelly bums, not going to where I need to go door-to-door), but wow...why would anyone ride trains on a regular basis if people are shitting and puking all over them?
Let's not even get into room owners picking and choosing clients. I've seen them proudly say that they check Facebook and such beforehand, only allow professionals and other clean people, etc. Yeah, what they really mean is "no Negroes". When the "sharing economy" is beyond the reach of government regulation, problems like this that society thought solved re-appear with disturbing frequency.
So?
You're house....your rules on who stays in your home. It is a private thing, not a public business.
Star Trek's utopian view of the universe is one potential outcome, which is very much in line with your "share the wealth". You see none of that now, and the current trend is to share less. Government needs to be out of everything, smaller government, etc. See the huge backlash at anything approaching universal healthcare. So, who's going to share the wealth? Everything going on today in the US is about carving out that little section of wealth for an individual and hanging onto it as long as possible, since getting more is almost impossible for most, much like it's been for much of civilization's history.
I don't see anything wrong with that either...human nature. This life is a 'contest'...and you have to fight for the best for you and your family's life and lifestyle.
In the Dallas-FortWorth area, you can't pay cash, no toll booths. You get a bill in the mail if you don't have EZ Pass. The bill includes extra fees for examining the photograph and mailing the bill.
So, how exactly does this work for people from out of town/state? Don't they have to take cash for situations like that?
I've rarely lived anywhere that had toll roads or toll bridges, but when I have and had to use them (like when moving all over creation after Katrina), I just paid cash.
To me, it was worth the little extra they charged to keep from being tracked every time I crossed the bridge, etc.
soundgarden/audioslave? siouxsie and the banshees? the pixies? david bowie?
some great late 80s and early 90's shit there. Faith no more?
are you even trying?
And aside from Bowie, exactly which of those groups do you hear from anymore....hear their "great" songs still being played on radio or other places...played by cover bands?
How many of those (aside from Bowie) have > 1 song that most people know if you even played it for them?
Sorry, gramps, but you're really out of the loop. There is loads of music from the 1980s and 1990s that shows longevity (surprising to me, as I don't care for these particular acts). Michael Jackson continues to get lots of radio play and he sold out that comeback concert he planned before his death. Nirvana not only gets remembered by older columnists in mainstream news, but I've witnessed teenagers today expressing their admiration for Cobain. For younger listeners who prefer rock of a "progressive" sort, Tool's 1990s releases are stil a rite of passage. Rush, who are along with the Stones continue to be one of the most successful touring bands, put out their most widely remembered album in 1981. The list could go on and on.
I'm actually not quite THAT old...I was quite young when the Stones were in their heyday...I grew up mostly in the 80's and 90's, and even then during the middle of them, I didn't find much music that caught my attention they way older groups did.
Yes, Jackson did have a bit of a comeback when he died....but in the past year or so, that seems to have faded from what I hear being played.
I was there for Nirvana at the beginning...pretty powerful stuff, but aside from about 3 songs, all off the same album, you don't hear much being played in public really...
I'm a huge Rush fan....but even with them, they ran out of steam for good stuff around the Signals time. But they do have quite a catalog up till then and a few after...so, I'd give you that one. However, I'd also say that Rush doesn't have quite the large swath of people that would know much of their music like the Stones or Beatles did and still do.
I'd posit that if you got together a fairly good distributed group of young/old spread over the last 40-50 years...and played a number of songs from bands like Rush or the Stones. The majority would know more of the Stones' songs than Rush's.....I'd guess most of Rush's would be off the single album Moving Pictures as that not much else got widespread radio play at least in the US. Add in The Trees, Closer to the Heart and maybe Subdivisions and that's about it that I'd guess that the masses knew/know.
One thing it might be however, is that that "shared existance" where much of the US knew and listened to the same thing...fragmented quite a bit, especially in music in about the 90's. Rock itself became : Rock, Rock and roll (oldies), Metal, Death Metal, etc...then all the other fragmented genre's. So, the 'group' experience kinda died and it was hard for one band to unite or gain such a large audience as they used to in the early days of rock like in the 60's and 70's.
So, possibly a combinations of things....but again, I see bands of today, and I don't see them as great musicians, with a tight band that can play and improve ON stage.....they're too worried about messing up the dance choreography and timed out light show I guess to actually be able to just jam with each other and let the audience in to enjoy it.
In some ways true...but I think there's other reasons the Stones (no, not talking Fred and Wilma here) have been around so long.
In their heyday...they WERE just about the most important musicians in the world, they got world wide attention just for picking their nose, and they were one hell of a rock band. Look back at films like "Ladies and Gentlemen", and watch concerts from back in the '69-'74 era.
While they did try to start putting on stage shows that rivaled anything of their day, often they were simple lights, maybe a slightly whacky stage....but the draw was the performance. The Stones were a FUN band to listen and watch.When I see these old shows and then think about acts today that are lip sync'ing, using auto tune, and have no concept of improvising on stage, I literally cringe.
The Stones were sloppy often....hell, much of the time they didn't start or stop a song all together, but somehow they have a sort of magic that made the event something to see and hear. Where is that in bands over the past couple of decades? I just don't see it....
We've not seen much like that in a band with few exceptions...many of those exceptions being other bands in their day (Zeppelin, Floyd, etc).
The Stones, in addition to being one of the largest money making and popular touring bands ever....produced a legacy of music that is still strangely popular today. Why haven't we seen a large number of bands in the past 20-30 years that have done the same? What happened to music? Where are the songs from the 80's and 90's and 00's that will be the classic rock that will have the longevity the Stones' songs have had and somehow still do? I see young kids today wearing tshirts with the Stones tongue on them or AC/DC shirts, and surprisingly they KNOW the songs from these groups of *my* youth....
I'm saying and asking much of this, to just say that we've not really had bands that came along to supercede them and replace them, and hence their long professional lifetime.
I still get a rush when driving down the road, and something like the Stones' song "Gimme Shelter" comes on. I get shivers down my spine when I hear that chick Merry Clayton singing with them hit the last note so hard that her voice breaks.
I miss songs that you can 'feel' the soul coming through the speakers.
You know, for the sake of humanity, we really might need to get DNA samples to sequence from Keith Richards, just so we can figure out how he has survived all these years.
Apple or any company would do well to survive like that guy has.
As the old joke goes, "What will be left after a nuclear holocaust?"
It's time to clean house, but there are a handful of clear allies to the American people in Washington. The real solution isn't to vote everyone out, the solution is to hold those in office accountable for their actions in office. Voting out Pelosi, Boehner, Reid, and whatever that guy serving as Senate Minority Leader's name is would be good. Voting out the guys who tried to defund the NSA's surveilance program would be counterproductive.
I don't think that would work, it likely has to be all or nothing.
If you do it your way...everyone will hem and haw over their current legislators, and think "Well my guy is ok"...and we're largely still stuck.
Clean house....I suppose if the truly good ones run again or switch houses maybe, that would be palatable, but at this point, start from scratch I say.
Being a federal politician was NOT supposed to be a career or lifetime job. It was supposed to be short service.
Perhaps vote everyone out...new folks could vote in term limits, etc....and we go forward from there.
Only other thing I can think of....is one guy I saw on TV recently (name elludes me right now), but he's calling for the states to start a constitutional amendment, doing this way to bypass starting it in congress which would never work....but one of the main ones, is passing severe term limits on congress-critters.
That might help knock some of the lobby interest down too since they couldn't count on one person for decades at a time to bribe...err.....donate to.
I think it is time to 'clean house' in Washington.
PLEASE....vote out whoevers currently in office, and vote in anyone that will at least make lip service that this type of thing will end.
Personally, I'm less worried about a terrorist attack ending my life, than I am of my govt running roughshod over my privacy and my rights.
The giving it willingly to foreign countries' intelligence agencies is just painful icing on the cake.
Why is there not more of an uproar over this? Are US citizens that scared? Or do they just not give a fuck anymore for the rights that so many have died for over the years to protect for us....?
Ah, that's weak tea. A true 1983-style nuclear apocalypse has to have mutants on dune-buggies and wastelands (or at least bombed-out cities with lots of skulls laying around).
...and a young, anti-hero...looks a lot like a very young Mel Gibson (before he went nuts), and I think he was "Angry" or something...?
It is not the goverments job to make sure everyone and anyone caters to your fears and beliefs.
I don't have really any fears about it, but given the choice to know if my food was natural or had had foreign genes spliced into it, I'd prefer to eat the more 'natural' ones.
And...what would you say, if down the road about 20-30 years, they do find that GMO foods had a negative effect on humans?
Foods picked by diseased workers have caused human deaths in the US.
Don't most people wash their foods first?
The same cannot be said of GM foods designed for human consumption.
The long term effects of these food mutations, haven't yet had time to likely manifest themselves. We are currently seeing problems with peoples' health and all sorts of new allergies that haven't really yet been explained, but a lot of the problems do seem to coincide with the influx of changes in our food system in recent decades.
And so far, there isn't a LOT of in-depth scientific (independent of the companies producing the stuff) of GMO foods yet.
That's exactly the point. YOU have some fear of GMO foods, and think that justifies mandatory labelling. Well, OTHER people have concerns (kosher, organic, whatever) that, to them, are equally deserving of a label. What makes your fears any more valid than theirs?
Bad examples....foods are already labeled kosher and organic.
Again, what are the fears of labeling food that has been genetically altered?
What is the fear of giving people information? I don't get it...
Labeling is an additional expense. If the government mandates showing the GM status of foods, you are removing the possibility of the consumer to buy the least expensive food possible.
What extra expense??
We already label food ingredients...this is just an added ingredient requirement, the cost of a fraction of a bit more ink maybe is going to tip the balance? Seriously?
Even with produce...everything already gets a sticker on it that I see in the store, just add GMO to that sticker if it is GMO...no added expense...
Be sure to leave plenty of space on the label so we can mandate all the other things that every loony with an agenda thinks should be mandated. Warning: Tref! Warning: Non-organic! Warning: Hydroponically grown! Warning: Picked by Mexicans! Warning: Not fair-trade certified!
Well, I think your examples are pretty trival compared to someone actually manipulating your food you consume into your body system genetically, vs who picked it.
Seriously, what's wrong with letting someone make and informed decision on veg. A (normal) vs veg A1 which has had some jellyfish gene spliced into its DNA?
I don't really care who picked it....but I do care to know as much about the product as I can before I put it down my throat and let my body (which has adapted to process different foods in different ways over the human evolution period) start to digest and process it.
Why should it be mandated? It's not the government's business, unless there is an actual, scientifically-documented health risk involved. If you don't like genetically-modified food, it's your responsibility to choose products to avoid it.
Not necessarily. I mean, we label ingredients now, and that isn't due to having"scientifically-documented health risk".
GMO foods are a special kind of 'ingredient' IMHO...and it is virtually impossible to know how pervasive they are in our foods without such labeling.
Ingredients lists as we currently have them, allow shoppers to make better informed decisions on what they want to ingest (cane sugar vs HFCS, or even salt levels for instance).
And frankly, some folks would like to maybe do a wait and see. There really hasn't been enough time and study yet to see what the full impacts of GMO on the human system or the environment are yet.
I just don't understand why people that are for GMO so much, would oppose simply labeling it as an ingredient or a process on a food.
The govt would only mandate it as an add-on to existing labeling laws. From there, the public can make their own informed choices.
What is more democratic than that? Why do you cheer for more 'obscurity' in how our foods are processed and made available to market?
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I don't see this as a problem anytime soon in the US.
And...I pay more than 33% tax to feds/state/city as it is....I pay quite enough already.
Ok, I've not really had any experience riding trains, but is this seriously such a problem with people shitting and puking on trains...that designated workers to clean this up are actually required???
I mean, I refuse to ride buses and the like on public transportation for many reasons (smelly bums, not going to where I need to go door-to-door), but wow...why would anyone ride trains on a regular basis if people are shitting and puking all over them?
So?
You're house....your rules on who stays in your home. It is a private thing, not a public business.
I don't see anything wrong with that either...human nature. This life is a 'contest'...and you have to fight for the best for you and your family's life and lifestyle.
Well, I suppose they could just move over into the medical marijuana business, that seems to be a real growth sector of the economy there.
So, how exactly does this work for people from out of town/state? Don't they have to take cash for situations like that?
To me, it was worth the little extra they charged to keep from being tracked every time I crossed the bridge, etc.
God, if they were to implement this....98% of the cars in New Orleans would never start again?!?!?!
And aside from Bowie, exactly which of those groups do you hear from anymore....hear their "great" songs still being played on radio or other places...played by cover bands?
How many of those (aside from Bowie) have > 1 song that most people know if you even played it for them?
I think you helped prove my point for me. Thanks.
I'm actually not quite THAT old...I was quite young when the Stones were in their heyday...I grew up mostly in the 80's and 90's, and even then during the middle of them, I didn't find much music that caught my attention they way older groups did.
Yes, Jackson did have a bit of a comeback when he died....but in the past year or so, that seems to have faded from what I hear being played.
I was there for Nirvana at the beginning...pretty powerful stuff, but aside from about 3 songs, all off the same album, you don't hear much being played in public really...
I'm a huge Rush fan....but even with them, they ran out of steam for good stuff around the Signals time. But they do have quite a catalog up till then and a few after...so, I'd give you that one. However, I'd also say that Rush doesn't have quite the large swath of people that would know much of their music like the Stones or Beatles did and still do.
I'd posit that if you got together a fairly good distributed group of young/old spread over the last 40-50 years...and played a number of songs from bands like Rush or the Stones. The majority would know more of the Stones' songs than Rush's.....I'd guess most of Rush's would be off the single album Moving Pictures as that not much else got widespread radio play at least in the US. Add in The Trees, Closer to the Heart and maybe Subdivisions and that's about it that I'd guess that the masses knew/know.
One thing it might be however, is that that "shared existance" where much of the US knew and listened to the same thing...fragmented quite a bit, especially in music in about the 90's. Rock itself became : Rock, Rock and roll (oldies), Metal, Death Metal, etc...then all the other fragmented genre's. So, the 'group' experience kinda died and it was hard for one band to unite or gain such a large audience as they used to in the early days of rock like in the 60's and 70's.
So, possibly a combinations of things....but again, I see bands of today, and I don't see them as great musicians, with a tight band that can play and improve ON stage.....they're too worried about messing up the dance choreography and timed out light show I guess to actually be able to just jam with each other and let the audience in to enjoy it.
In some ways true...but I think there's other reasons the Stones (no, not talking Fred and Wilma here) have been around so long.
In their heyday...they WERE just about the most important musicians in the world, they got world wide attention just for picking their nose, and they were one hell of a rock band. Look back at films like "Ladies and Gentlemen", and watch concerts from back in the '69-'74 era.
While they did try to start putting on stage shows that rivaled anything of their day, often they were simple lights, maybe a slightly whacky stage....but the draw was the performance. The Stones were a FUN band to listen and watch.When I see these old shows and then think about acts today that are lip sync'ing, using auto tune, and have no concept of improvising on stage, I literally cringe.
The Stones were sloppy often....hell, much of the time they didn't start or stop a song all together, but somehow they have a sort of magic that made the event something to see and hear. Where is that in bands over the past couple of decades? I just don't see it....
We've not seen much like that in a band with few exceptions...many of those exceptions being other bands in their day (Zeppelin, Floyd, etc).
The Stones, in addition to being one of the largest money making and popular touring bands ever....produced a legacy of music that is still strangely popular today. Why haven't we seen a large number of bands in the past 20-30 years that have done the same? What happened to music? Where are the songs from the 80's and 90's and 00's that will be the classic rock that will have the longevity the Stones' songs have had and somehow still do? I see young kids today wearing tshirts with the Stones tongue on them or AC/DC shirts, and surprisingly they KNOW the songs from these groups of *my* youth....
I'm saying and asking much of this, to just say that we've not really had bands that came along to supercede them and replace them, and hence their long professional lifetime.
I still get a rush when driving down the road, and something like the Stones' song "Gimme Shelter" comes on. I get shivers down my spine when I hear that chick Merry Clayton singing with them hit the last note so hard that her voice breaks.
I miss songs that you can 'feel' the soul coming through the speakers.
Apple or any company would do well to survive like that guy has.
As the old joke goes, "What will be left after a nuclear holocaust?"
--Cockroaches and Keith Richards
That only clears out some of them...this needs to be done next 2-3 voting cycles to clear out ALL the old crony-ism crew.
I don't think that would work, it likely has to be all or nothing.
If you do it your way...everyone will hem and haw over their current legislators, and think "Well my guy is ok"...and we're largely still stuck.
Clean house....I suppose if the truly good ones run again or switch houses maybe, that would be palatable, but at this point, start from scratch I say.
Being a federal politician was NOT supposed to be a career or lifetime job. It was supposed to be short service.
Perhaps vote everyone out...new folks could vote in term limits, etc....and we go forward from there.
Only other thing I can think of....is one guy I saw on TV recently (name elludes me right now), but he's calling for the states to start a constitutional amendment, doing this way to bypass starting it in congress which would never work....but one of the main ones, is passing severe term limits on congress-critters.
That might help knock some of the lobby interest down too since they couldn't count on one person for decades at a time to bribe...err.....donate to.
But they can be fired by our elected officials, or have their agencies disbanded or de-funded, no?
PLEASE....vote out whoevers currently in office, and vote in anyone that will at least make lip service that this type of thing will end.
Personally, I'm less worried about a terrorist attack ending my life, than I am of my govt running roughshod over my privacy and my rights.
The giving it willingly to foreign countries' intelligence agencies is just painful icing on the cake.
Why is there not more of an uproar over this? Are US citizens that scared? Or do they just not give a fuck anymore for the rights that so many have died for over the years to protect for us....?
I don't have really any fears about it, but given the choice to know if my food was natural or had had foreign genes spliced into it, I'd prefer to eat the more 'natural' ones.
And...what would you say, if down the road about 20-30 years, they do find that GMO foods had a negative effect on humans?
They were ALL on the Paleo/Primal diet thing...and found that wooly mammoth tasted really GOOD!!!!
Don't most people wash their foods first?
The long term effects of these food mutations, haven't yet had time to likely manifest themselves. We are currently seeing problems with peoples' health and all sorts of new allergies that haven't really yet been explained, but a lot of the problems do seem to coincide with the influx of changes in our food system in recent decades.
And so far, there isn't a LOT of in-depth scientific (independent of the companies producing the stuff) of GMO foods yet.
Bad examples....foods are already labeled kosher and organic.
Again, what are the fears of labeling food that has been genetically altered?
What is the fear of giving people information? I don't get it...
What extra expense??
We already label food ingredients...this is just an added ingredient requirement, the cost of a fraction of a bit more ink maybe is going to tip the balance? Seriously?
Even with produce...everything already gets a sticker on it that I see in the store, just add GMO to that sticker if it is GMO...no added expense...
Well, I think your examples are pretty trival compared to someone actually manipulating your food you consume into your body system genetically, vs who picked it.
Seriously, what's wrong with letting someone make and informed decision on veg. A (normal) vs veg A1 which has had some jellyfish gene spliced into its DNA?
I don't really care who picked it....but I do care to know as much about the product as I can before I put it down my throat and let my body (which has adapted to process different foods in different ways over the human evolution period) start to digest and process it.
Not necessarily. I mean, we label ingredients now, and that isn't due to having"scientifically-documented health risk".
GMO foods are a special kind of 'ingredient' IMHO...and it is virtually impossible to know how pervasive they are in our foods without such labeling.
Ingredients lists as we currently have them, allow shoppers to make better informed decisions on what they want to ingest (cane sugar vs HFCS, or even salt levels for instance).
And frankly, some folks would like to maybe do a wait and see. There really hasn't been enough time and study yet to see what the full impacts of GMO on the human system or the environment are yet.
I just don't understand why people that are for GMO so much, would oppose simply labeling it as an ingredient or a process on a food.
The govt would only mandate it as an add-on to existing labeling laws. From there, the public can make their own informed choices.
What is more democratic than that? Why do you cheer for more 'obscurity' in how our foods are processed and made available to market?
I said "an out"....not just out.
That means he found a way out of the hole he dug for himself, with his toothless threats.
I meant he stumbled upon a possible way to accomplish something in spite of himself, I think on TV they called it pulling a Homer (Simpson).