Okay, I looked it up. The first site I came across shows US literacy rates at 92% in the 1920s. The site also lists the rate at 99% in 1970, the last decade for which they show data. I think both of these figures are a bit high, but what do I know.
Another site shows current literacy rate inthe U.S. as 99.5% according to one poll, and 95% according to another. Yet another site says that 50% of US persons are barely literate. Maybe that means they can't read Shakespeare. Or maybe it means they can read Shakespeare but prefer not to. I don't think Shakespeare's "works" (good thing copywrite law wasn't around back then, huh?) should necessarily be the bar that determines literacy. There are plenty of works within the last 100 years of equal or higher import.
I remember seeing commercials on TV even in the last few years which stated things like "half of adults in the United States can't read" which I think is a staggeringly wrong number based on my experience. But hey, it's TV, so they can say whatever they want to make you break out your checkbook. I guess the moral of that is, don't give poor people TVs, because there is far more untruth then truth.
Why shouldn't we strive not to offend or inconvenience our neighbors? It shouldn't be mandated by the government, but since people won't take it upon themselves not to be a hassle to everyone else, then somebody has to make people behave as they ought to in a civilised society. Think of how people act on the road. If someone travelling in the left lane suddenly realises they need to turn right, rather than say "I screwed up" and take the next turn, they will inconvenience or even endanger dozens of people and stop in the middle of the road and attempt to make thir right turn.
I don't have any problem with people swining their fists, but there is no reason they should need to do it right in front of my face. It inconveniences me while not benefiting them at all over swinging their fists somewhere else.
TV is still an important medium by which ideas and knowledge can be disseminated.
I'm sure all of the people at home on welfare are busy watching Public Television so they can better themselves, and not some drivel like daytime Soaps or Oprah.
80 years ago people were expected to read Shakespear in the 4th grade, now we (MAYBE) get into it by high school. We've been dumbed down folks, and if you don't think TV played a large part in that, well, you watch too much TV...
Wow, more than half the people couldn't read or write and the few that could were expected to read Shakespeare by 4th grade. Of course, now our illiteracy rate is closer to 10%, but they can't read Shakespeare until High School. I don't think that's such a bad tradeoff.
...here the Libertarians have it nailed down: My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins, barring extennuating circumstances residing entirely outside of the act itself.
The Libertarians have it wrong. Swinging your fists around within inches of my nose is an act of agression. I have no way of telling whether you are just posturing or whether you intend to hurt me until after you have hurt me. Therefore, as soon as you start swinging fists close to my face my rights are violated because I have to drop everything I am doing and pay full attention in order to make certain that I don't get hurt in case I move unexpectedly or you decide to go from posturing to fighting.
Distance between the two is exactly what I implied with Density. The Earth's curst could have been a mile or two farther from the center of mass back then. Perhaps even more. Plus the amount of ash and heavier material in the air would mean that parts of the gravitational attraction of the earth would actually be ABOVE the surface. Technically, this is true now as well, but would have been more common in a more volcanic era. Still, a few miles of difference in radius of the Earth, and a few million tons of ash in the air is not likely to affect the weight of a surface animal much.
It is possible that the Earth was less dense, though not by much. There could have been heavier particles in the air than we see today due to volcanism, and also, earthquakes and the like over time could have compacted the Earth to a denser sphere, although I would doubt it would have more than a 5% or 10% effect on the weight of a creature at the surface even over millions of years.
Fish can hover with very little energy required because they have a "swim bladder" which is essentially a ballast tank like on a submarine. They can control their vertical height in the water via planing (by physically swimming up or down), but their swim bladder is used to maintain a certain level without much effort.
Birds can glide for long periods of time because wind resistance at typical animal velocities is very low, as compared to water resistance at the same velocity. Further, gliding is not possible for fish as they can not trade height for speed since they use a swim bladder to control height rather than having to actually beat their fins to maintain a height in the water. If a bird stops flapping, it will sink. It a fish stops flapping, it will still sit at the same level, unless it loses control of its bladder:)
No, I remember when my PC had a whole 5 MEGA bytes of hard drive capacity and I wondered how I could fill it up.
I'm really old.
The first PC that I had that had a hard drive had something like 7 MB. Before that, it was just two floppies. And the one before that was just ONE floppy. "Please insert OS disk", "Please insert Lotus 1-2-3 Program Disk", "Please insert OS disk".
Well, once you get it done, it will be out of date. I get notifications from my state about three times a week saying this county or that city has lowered/raised/instituted/redacted their tax rate, and the occasional one saying, "we're sorry, we reported such and such county/city has done X, but they've really done Y". The only way to keep on track of this for 50 states is to be a huge company, or to hire it out at additional expense.
I make about 500K a year (really) and pay about half of that to the government in taxes.
Now, when you say "about half", you hopefully mean 38%, right? With Medicare, SS, and State you are probably up to 42% or so (~$90k cap on SS).
Ironically, if you spent a little more, your percentage of tax paid might go down, especially if you spent it on mortgage interest or charities.
Back in the days before cable, we had satellite, and basically all you got was a couple of channels, and yes, they were commercial free. Now you get commercials even on satellite and cable.
Doing things right is ALWAYS the long term low cost option. Doing things right is seldom the short term low cost option. Management is short term. Guess what management is going to do.
In your example, the hard drive costs ten times at citcuit city as wal-mart. In the case of outsourcing, the overall cost of outsourcing saves only 15% on large deployments, and much less on smaller deployments. It can even cost more to outsource than to have local workers in smaller deployments. Plus you have the headaches of trying to support a remote operation with little control over who you are dealing with.
Think about this, would you rather pay $100 for a hard drive at Circuit City, with a known support network, or $90 at Wal-mart, with nothing but a return policy?
That was a waste of money. You should have just fired the manager completely, as most IT management is redundant, since most IT workers already have enough management skills to manage themselves.
Actually, $25k is less than a company would end up paying altogether for a typical outsourced job. When all is said and done, studies have shown that companies only save about 15% on large scale deployments of Indian outsourcing. 25k is far more than 15% lower than IT industry standard.
Of course, not all of that goes to the Indian worker. Most of it goes to greedy Indian management companies, and the poor Indian sap who ends up doing the work gets more than a typical Indian market job, but not much percentage of the whole take.
The same thing used to happen in the U.S. I was working for a large consulting company that billed me out at $400 an hour, while I was paid only $30 an hour.
Well, I had this idea where we find a bunch of idiots who don't know better and convince them we've launched them into orbit. Then every week, one of them gets voted off, purportedly into the harsh vaccum of space.
Even as an adult, I would be prone to doing the exact same steps that I was shown. At least the first time, and possibly multiple times, until I had studied and determined for certain that it was really a redundant step. For example, I once was doing automated futures trading and the supervisor suggested a model of Summation from 1 to N of (x1-x0)/2 +... + (xn - xn-1)/2 . I was immediately able to reduce this to one step. However, there are other things where it is not so easy to see why the steps are in there, such as when you are installing an electrical box and you keep going back and checking to make sure the circuit breaker is really off even though you have looked at it 10 times already.
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Okay, I looked it up. The first site I came across shows US literacy rates at 92% in the 1920s. The site also lists the rate at 99% in 1970, the last decade for which they show data. I think both of these figures are a bit high, but what do I know.
Another site shows current literacy rate inthe U.S. as 99.5% according to one poll, and 95% according to another. Yet another site says that 50% of US persons are barely literate. Maybe that means they can't read Shakespeare. Or maybe it means they can read Shakespeare but prefer not to. I don't think Shakespeare's "works" (good thing copywrite law wasn't around back then, huh?) should necessarily be the bar that determines literacy. There are plenty of works within the last 100 years of equal or higher import.
I remember seeing commercials on TV even in the last few years which stated things like "half of adults in the United States can't read" which I think is a staggeringly wrong number based on my experience. But hey, it's TV, so they can say whatever they want to make you break out your checkbook. I guess the moral of that is, don't give poor people TVs, because there is far more untruth then truth.
Why shouldn't we strive not to offend or inconvenience our neighbors? It shouldn't be mandated by the government, but since people won't take it upon themselves not to be a hassle to everyone else, then somebody has to make people behave as they ought to in a civilised society. Think of how people act on the road. If someone travelling in the left lane suddenly realises they need to turn right, rather than say "I screwed up" and take the next turn, they will inconvenience or even endanger dozens of people and stop in the middle of the road and attempt to make thir right turn.
I don't have any problem with people swining their fists, but there is no reason they should need to do it right in front of my face. It inconveniences me while not benefiting them at all over swinging their fists somewhere else.
TV is still an important medium by which ideas and knowledge can be disseminated.
I'm sure all of the people at home on welfare are busy watching Public Television so they can better themselves, and not some drivel like daytime Soaps or Oprah.
80 years ago people were expected to read Shakespear in the 4th grade, now we (MAYBE) get into it by high school. We've been dumbed down folks, and if you don't think TV played a large part in that, well, you watch too much TV...
Wow, more than half the people couldn't read or write and the few that could were expected to read Shakespeare by 4th grade. Of course, now our illiteracy rate is closer to 10%, but they can't read Shakespeare until High School. I don't think that's such a bad tradeoff.
...here the Libertarians have it nailed down: My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins, barring extennuating circumstances residing entirely outside of the act itself.
The Libertarians have it wrong. Swinging your fists around within inches of my nose is an act of agression. I have no way of telling whether you are just posturing or whether you intend to hurt me until after you have hurt me. Therefore, as soon as you start swinging fists close to my face my rights are violated because I have to drop everything I am doing and pay full attention in order to make certain that I don't get hurt in case I move unexpectedly or you decide to go from posturing to fighting.
Distance between the two is exactly what I implied with Density. The Earth's curst could have been a mile or two farther from the center of mass back then. Perhaps even more. Plus the amount of ash and heavier material in the air would mean that parts of the gravitational attraction of the earth would actually be ABOVE the surface. Technically, this is true now as well, but would have been more common in a more volcanic era. Still, a few miles of difference in radius of the Earth, and a few million tons of ash in the air is not likely to affect the weight of a surface animal much.
It is possible that the Earth was less dense, though not by much. There could have been heavier particles in the air than we see today due to volcanism, and also, earthquakes and the like over time could have compacted the Earth to a denser sphere, although I would doubt it would have more than a 5% or 10% effect on the weight of a creature at the surface even over millions of years.
Fish can hover with very little energy required because they have a "swim bladder" which is essentially a ballast tank like on a submarine. They can control their vertical height in the water via planing (by physically swimming up or down), but their swim bladder is used to maintain a certain level without much effort. :)
Birds can glide for long periods of time because wind resistance at typical animal velocities is very low, as compared to water resistance at the same velocity. Further, gliding is not possible for fish as they can not trade height for speed since they use a swim bladder to control height rather than having to actually beat their fins to maintain a height in the water. If a bird stops flapping, it will sink. It a fish stops flapping, it will still sit at the same level, unless it loses control of its bladder
No, I remember when my PC had a whole 5 MEGA bytes of hard drive capacity and I wondered how I could fill it up.
I'm really old.
The first PC that I had that had a hard drive had something like 7 MB. Before that, it was just two floppies. And the one before that was just ONE floppy. "Please insert OS disk", "Please insert Lotus 1-2-3 Program Disk", "Please insert OS disk".
And I am not particularly old.
It still pales in comparison to the overhyping of the Segway Scooter.
That's news to me. I believe that God created the Earth, but don't believe that the Earth is only 6,000 years old.
No, as I posted, it taps out at $90k. For 2006, it will cap at $94200.
Well, once you get it done, it will be out of date. I get notifications from my state about three times a week saying this county or that city has lowered/raised/instituted/redacted their tax rate, and the occasional one saying, "we're sorry, we reported such and such county/city has done X, but they've really done Y". The only way to keep on track of this for 50 states is to be a huge company, or to hire it out at additional expense.
I make about 500K a year (really) and pay about half of that to the government in taxes.
Now, when you say "about half", you hopefully mean 38%, right? With Medicare, SS, and State you are probably up to 42% or so (~$90k cap on SS).
Ironically, if you spent a little more, your percentage of tax paid might go down, especially if you spent it on mortgage interest or charities.
Sadly, I doubt that we could land on the moon today. However, I believe that we used to be able to go to the moon.
But the advertisers pass on the cost to you through the product. I'd rather the producers take all the risk.
Back in the days before cable, we had satellite, and basically all you got was a couple of channels, and yes, they were commercial free. Now you get commercials even on satellite and cable.
Doing things right is ALWAYS the long term low cost option. Doing things right is seldom the short term low cost option. Management is short term. Guess what management is going to do.
In your example, the hard drive costs ten times at citcuit city as wal-mart. In the case of outsourcing, the overall cost of outsourcing saves only 15% on large deployments, and much less on smaller deployments. It can even cost more to outsource than to have local workers in smaller deployments. Plus you have the headaches of trying to support a remote operation with little control over who you are dealing with.
Think about this, would you rather pay $100 for a hard drive at Circuit City, with a known support network, or $90 at Wal-mart, with nothing but a return policy?
That was a waste of money. You should have just fired the manager completely, as most IT management is redundant, since most IT workers already have enough management skills to manage themselves.
Actually, $25k is less than a company would end up paying altogether for a typical outsourced job. When all is said and done, studies have shown that companies only save about 15% on large scale deployments of Indian outsourcing. 25k is far more than 15% lower than IT industry standard.
Of course, not all of that goes to the Indian worker. Most of it goes to greedy Indian management companies, and the poor Indian sap who ends up doing the work gets more than a typical Indian market job, but not much percentage of the whole take.
The same thing used to happen in the U.S. I was working for a large consulting company that billed me out at $400 an hour, while I was paid only $30 an hour.
In my last job, we mapped x.12 EDI formats into XML. Ugh!
Well, I had this idea where we find a bunch of idiots who don't know better and convince them we've launched them into orbit. Then every week, one of them gets voted off, purportedly into the harsh vaccum of space.
And hopefully she will someday mature enough to stop following the atheistic foundation that she is immitating now and make up her own mind.
Even as an adult, I would be prone to doing the exact same steps that I was shown. At least the first time, and possibly multiple times, until I had studied and determined for certain that it was really a redundant step. For example, I once was doing automated futures trading and the supervisor suggested a model of Summation from 1 to N of (x1-x0)/2 + ... + (xn - xn-1)/2 . I was immediately able to reduce this to one step. However, there are other things where it is not so easy to see why the steps are in there, such as when you are installing an electrical box and you keep going back and checking to make sure the circuit breaker is really off even though you have looked at it 10 times already.