By the time I left MA in 1997, I well knew that the Big Dig was mostly Federally funded (which is how these project scams are sold to the public -- the money is "free" from the government, so in their vast stupidity the people jump at getting something "free"). That could have changed since then, but I doubt it. Go check your facts, Sir Geek! (Verily and forsooth.)
The term is "westawoosta" (english: "West of Worcester"). Westawoosta is Bostonian for "terra incognita", which is latin for "unknown land", which -- as far as Bostonians are concerned -- means that there's nothing worth knowing from the western edge of I495 all the way to the California border.
Oftentimes, "private profit-hungry corporations" are the ones contracted to do the work, and generate the huge cost overruns. How do you resolve this fact in your mind with what you said?
Anyway, the Big Dig was Boston's completely corrupt attempt to put a major highway underground in a metropolitan area. This was of course chosen over the 11000x more sensible "bypass bridge" idea that would have swept around Boston to the east by using an island-hopping road.
Any fool knows that as soon as you put a road underground, lane for lane, it slows down. And what with Boston's traffic being so congested in the first place, choosing the underground route was simply insane... or entirely elitist, criminal, corrupt and bribed, which was essentially the case.
The Big Dig is a poster child for a project that overspent by so many billions of dollars that the planners and politicians should by now have been hauled out and summarily shot. But we don't do that in America. No, the planners and politicians are probably instead going to be promoted and paid. And America's civilization of mediocrity expands all that much more.
More cognitive resistance on your part. I actually have to explain moderated capitalism, assface? How about this:
UNMODERATED CAPITALISM: Go into forest, hack down all the fucking trees you can, haul them out, sell them. Tell your migrant workers to take a fucking hike and don't pay them.
MODERATED CAPITALISM: Check with bevy of Federal, State, and local laws before you step into that forest. Abide by ALL of their provisions as regards labor relations, surface access, tree cutting, equipment maintenance, transportation methods, and finally sale of the proceeds.
Is THAT clear enough, cockpirate?
With the concept of "deregulation" applied from the Fascist Reagan years, and with said plan being further applied from the Neo-Liberals from the Clinton years, and now the Neo-Conservatives under another Fascist asshole named Bush, all manner of sensible regulation is being abandoned. It's not just being repealed... it's being IGNORED, like many of the provisions in the US Constitution. So, people like Jain, who should have been caught out in a matter of a few months, are now routinely ignored by the utterly pwn3d SEC. The SEC, for that matter, has been hamstrung from the early 1990s specifically to enact the rape of America's financial system to effect the transfer of trillions from the People into the pockets of the Elite (and people like Jain have merely ridden that along).
Pardon my "emotional attack", but this is so blindlingly obvious that fucknuts like yourself send my jumping in chair to hurl invective, to wit:
WHY DO FUCKHEADS LIKE YOU PRETEND THAT THE PEOPLE ARE NOT TO BE INVOLVED IN REGULATING THE PROCESS OF ECONOMICS?
Hey, I already KNOW that answer: Because shitballs like yourself want the government the hell out of anything you do (just like Jain), and you are so starry-eyed with imagined (and perversely attained) wealth that you're ready to cancel all social contracts in favor of "I've got mine, and fuck the rest of you!".
Tool. Now go and mount your mother. That's about all you're good for.
So many falsehoods, so little time to apply the 2x4 of logical correction upside your stupid fucking head.
He didn't "slip through the cracks". He walked with purpose through a gilt-edged door after swiping his American Aristocrat {tm} ID card to gain entry.
And, yes, we must toss the "whole idea of capitalism aside" if we're NOT going to moderate the excessives of the system with a necessary dose of social controls (i.e. Socialism). A Republic like we had was Republic = Capitalism + Socialism. We are now choosing to devolve the equation into
Republic - Socialism = Fascism.
As for alternatives: We were LIVING in the preferred alternative, you unbelievable jackass. America's moderated capitalism was a pretty good system of general prosperity. The middle class was big and particularly independent. However, tools like you have bought into the basic idea of "I'm gonna get mine, so fuck everyone else". People like Jain walked off with your grandmother's retirement money, and you honestly can't even bring yourself to attack the injustice in the system that allowed him to do it... because the root cause of that injustice is people exactly like YOU.
Hey, he stole that money fair and square. But if you dare to bring up how this demonstrates the weakness in monetary capitalism, you get labeled everything from Communist to Terrorist, and then you enter the huge American Marginal Zone of ideas.
Yes, that is the lesson here: the stock market is a con job and capitalism sucks.
The ensuing introspection that progressives like me are trying to promote is that we should stop thinking that paper and electrons have primacy over the gathering of materials, performing skilled labor upon them, and producing real products.
Since I'm NOT talking about gaming the financial system to make millions, no doubt that all you're hearing from me above is blah-blah-blah. Money is your religion... hence, enjoy your collapsed stock portfolio, and all the collapsed portfolios you're quite stupidly going to have in the future in your continued belief that paper and electrons are worth more than real work.
I could see a large food service corp. launching one of these on a nationwide scale
Yes, what with gas and insurance being even cheaper nowadays. {rolls eyes}
Home delivery services will ALWAYS be niche-related. These niches are primarily (1) urban, (2) rich, or (3) subsidized. Hence, the customer who will most prompt a home delivery event is a disabled retiree living in the city. The antitihesis of that would be the healthy suburban or rural worker... in short, the vast majority of Americans.
Hence, pervasive home delivery of groceries (note: a tiny-margin business) is a fantasy. Please stop thinking that such a fantasy can ever become true.
Local stations often enough have a "fraudbusters" segment. However, with the overall corporate-izing of news stations, it should be rare to see anyone going after a pervasive corporate practice like rebates. After all, how many news stations take an issue with payday loans?
Yes, if. However, I'm seeing some forces that are proving highly resistant to the necessary price collapses. One, people are utterly in love with their expensive homes. They want the price to be high, even when they are socked with high bills. Two, local governments have completely given up on taxing businesses, hence they CANNOT also surrender taxing individuals. No, I'm afraid that for the next generation, local governments will refuse to cooperate with most efforts to reduce the assessed values for the tax rolls. Like most aberrations, we will probably end up with even more arcane financial mechanisms that will allow people to sell homes for prices that are less than the ones listed at the local assessor's office. I speculate that it will become a terminology issue, where the real estate brokers will call the price "market value" and the assessor's office will have their own "real value". Real value >> market value.
Weirder things have happened. What's constant across our speculations is that the public is so meek that they will not fight to produce the results you predict... which is why I doubt them.
Yes, you COULD live in it... but NO, if you can't afford the property taxes that are based upon its hyperinflated value. Please don't forget that important qualifier.
A lien? I would have liked to have done that for some fraction (hey, I'm not greedy, and I understand business risks) of the $15K I loaned a businessman, but he bankrupted on me and I was left with no recourse.
Your sentiments are leading you astray. Over half of personal bankruptcies are triggered by illness, unemployment, and divorce... but the overall level of debt is always a personal choice, and if that level is too high, any paroxysm in one's life will trigger the debt crisis.
Although it will be tough, millions of Americans will have to (for instance) junk their SUvs. There are over 22 million on the road as we speak here, and that's about 20 million more than is needed. Let the wealthy have their yachts, summer homes and SUVs; the rest of us will have to find peace with our 14' boats, rented cottages, and Ford Escorts. "Living within your means" is the forgotten virtue of America's middle class.
Considering the surge in expenses in fuels and life-saving services, I'd also say that austerity is now MANDATORY for the middle class. If you want to survive, you MUST spend less money and prepare for days of coming scarcity.
What you've said about class war is completely true. The class war is actually at a high level of engagement, yet people are commonly walking around, pretending that they don't hear the shots and -- as well -- are pretending they don't see the screaming wounded. As I love to say nowadays to anyone who'll listen: It's about time we admit we're being FIRED ON, so let's either fire back or get out of the combat zone.
Doing things fairly means being fair to both sides in a contract situation. If that's not what you're after, then you're after supremacy by one side or the other... and that's just warfare by another name. People end up getting killed when the name changes to "war". Careful what you wish for. Vox populi is bound to be a lot louder than you've ever heard in your life.
Other than that, your opinion has sound points ("don't borrow", perhaps "supply basic welfare") that are sorely needed in public debate, lest a FoxNewsish Hyper-elite conservatism washes over most of America. I'd give my left nut to meet a REAL Republican, one well versed in fiscal conservatism... but such a voice is stilled in the rampant attacks by the people who (literally) want to own everything.
Unfortunately, charging extortionate interest rates is viewed as an aspect of a free market by the corporate set (e.g. most Congressional members).
We The People have two powers: the power to vote with ballots, and the power to vote with money. It's terrible that neither powers are used to put corporations back in their proper place (i.e. serving public needs under public charter).
I've given up on the idea that the public will place the government back under populist controls. However, we can bankrupt these corporations if we choose, by simplifying our economic lives and by avoiding rampant consumerism. The question is... will we?
Re:Looking at the distribution ...
on
Women Leaving I.T.
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I am of two minds about that kind of thing. One, it will give us a better idea of gender ratios to even start addressing inequities. Two, to effect equality, we are supposed to ignore gender. How do we pay attention to gender without producing discrimination?
There are FEWER arrogant assholes in electrical engineering? You must be trolling. Engineering departments are rife in general with arrogance. (There's a theory that this is a good thing, since it's a training method for competence. Then again....)
When you crash and burn companies (and in Argentina's case, entire economies) just to make money out of it, you're going to have to set some of those profits aside for guns and body armor. THAT is why this system is nothing to emulate. But I do admire your boldness in stating your financial viciousness; many others would have said nothing, content to let the rest of us believe they are good people.
I suppose all those ridiculously rich VCs got their money either through luck or because our economic system rewards morons.
Yes, that's correct. Real skill in making sustainable investments had little to do with this class. But still, in the worldview of "guys with money did something right", there's no way to disprove your data. Guys with money are simply your fucking heroes. Their money is your proof. Too bad you have little idea how they got it, or understand the circumstances by which that happened.
but labeling them all morons is hyperbolic and, well, moronic
No, calling them "morons" is completely honest, but that label is wholly inconsistent with the current state of the American Hypercapitalist Empire. You simply cannot accept the idea of such a moronic class, while also accepting the idea that your society's elite viciousness is some sort of virtue.
Look, when Lucretia Bigass goes down to the local convenience store and buys her lottery ticket, you probably consider her to be a moron. I do. Mathematically, lotteries are "sucker bets" and you are actually better off EATING that dollar bill than spending it on a lottery ticket.
YET... when some VC jumps on the investment bandwagon along with all the other VCs, effectively buying a lottery ticket since they have all the same qualifiers of "gambling at poor odds", you somehow DON'T think that that act shows they are a moron.
In the same vein, you probably don't even think that buying stocks is gambling. But since you have no control of the stock price, and furthermore have no practical sense of the information that affects the stock price, it's GAMBLING... and we're back to that lottery-ticket thing, and then inescapably to the "moron" label.
By the way, your comment about "in excess of x10" illustrates the fact that you're basing your opinions on popular mythology and not any real knowledge.
By the way, I'm basing my comments off of plenty of personal experience in Boston MA in the 1990s, as well as absorbing hundreds of anecdotes over the years from books and interviews. But keep fightin' that reality, Ace. Maybe one day you'll die, smug, thinkin' that if you only had one more year to fight, that you'll actually win.
I can only end this posting with my usual insightful statement:
The stock market is a religion, and like all religions, it is highly resistant to logic and data.
The funny thing about laziness is that it can spark the development of tools to increase productivity of tasks. After all, automating a manual task is the very essence of a lazy desire. The question is, can we get this desire for laziness to motivate us?
I think that's it's pretty clear to many Slashdotters that NASA is bureaucratizing itself to death.
I'm equally sure many administrators at NASA think that this viewpoint is laughably layman... and since they are perfectly willing to come into work every day, with a desk, phone and computer, while NOTHING AT ALL is launched or flying again that day, then we can see their biases.
Like any cancerous bureaucracy, NASA is proposing the cuts for 2 reasons:
1. Scare Tactic. Instead of administrators cutting the number of administrators, administrators instead cut at the actual functioning of the organization: missions, projects, tasks and workers. This produces the desired fear effect and their budgets may be sustained thereby. (My city has been doing this kind of thing for years, and it bringing out the method a lot lately due to the collapse of the economy.)
2. Smart Morons. Modern business methods have infected much of American culture. Hence, we get a NASA administrator thinking that a 30-yr-old program that is still ongoing is something that should be shut down early... just to save a sum of money that could be easily covered by the everyday excesses of the bureaucratic class. In effect, the body is thinking about eating a couple of fingers while lard hangs off its belly, just so the brain can continue to believe in its own supremacy.
I've been predicting that America will cash out much of the accomplishment of its culture since it no longer wants to take risks or take lesser profits for general prosperity. As how my prediction affects NASA, the agency will continue to let equipment de-orbit, will continue to cancel programs, and will continue to advance the unintentional program to make itself completely irrelevant. The Shuttles are dead (even if they return to fly, they won't last long). Nothing will replace the Shuttles anyway. Mir is gone. Hubble is going to go. The Webb Telescope will never be launched.
And the collapse of supersonic commerical transport only continues to demonstrate from all this that Western civilization is giving up the ghost. Accomplishment is being abandoned. Nothing is replacing all this, either. The future in space is almost undoubtedly Chinese.
Slashdot Mirror
Oops! I forgot who was likely to read that. I meant: Calamari, which is some sort of squid caught in some Pacific Ocean thingy out west somewhere.
By the time I left MA in 1997, I well knew that the Big Dig was mostly Federally funded (which is how these project scams are sold to the public -- the money is "free" from the government, so in their vast stupidity the people jump at getting something "free"). That could have changed since then, but I doubt it. Go check your facts, Sir Geek! (Verily and forsooth.)
The term is "westawoosta" (english: "West of Worcester"). Westawoosta is Bostonian for "terra incognita", which is latin for "unknown land", which -- as far as Bostonians are concerned -- means that there's nothing worth knowing from the western edge of I495 all the way to the California border.
Oftentimes, "private profit-hungry corporations" are the ones contracted to do the work, and generate the huge cost overruns. How do you resolve this fact in your mind with what you said?
Er ... "big dig" and "fill us in" ... nyuk nyuk!
... or entirely elitist, criminal, corrupt and bribed, which was essentially the case.
Anyway, the Big Dig was Boston's completely corrupt attempt to put a major highway underground in a metropolitan area. This was of course chosen over the 11000x more sensible "bypass bridge" idea that would have swept around Boston to the east by using an island-hopping road.
Any fool knows that as soon as you put a road underground, lane for lane, it slows down. And what with Boston's traffic being so congested in the first place, choosing the underground route was simply insane
The Big Dig is a poster child for a project that overspent by so many billions of dollars that the planners and politicians should by now have been hauled out and summarily shot. But we don't do that in America. No, the planners and politicians are probably instead going to be promoted and paid. And America's civilization of mediocrity expands all that much more.
More cognitive resistance on your part. I actually have to explain moderated capitalism, assface? How about this:
... it's being IGNORED, like many of the provisions in the US Constitution. So, people like Jain, who should have been caught out in a matter of a few months, are now routinely ignored by the utterly pwn3d SEC. The SEC, for that matter, has been hamstrung from the early 1990s specifically to enact the rape of America's financial system to effect the transfer of trillions from the People into the pockets of the Elite (and people like Jain have merely ridden that along).
UNMODERATED CAPITALISM: Go into forest, hack down all the fucking trees you can, haul them out, sell them. Tell your migrant workers to take a fucking hike and don't pay them.
MODERATED CAPITALISM: Check with bevy of Federal, State, and local laws before you step into that forest. Abide by ALL of their provisions as regards labor relations, surface access, tree cutting, equipment maintenance, transportation methods, and finally sale of the proceeds.
Is THAT clear enough, cockpirate?
With the concept of "deregulation" applied from the Fascist Reagan years, and with said plan being further applied from the Neo-Liberals from the Clinton years, and now the Neo-Conservatives under another Fascist asshole named Bush, all manner of sensible regulation is being abandoned. It's not just being repealed
Pardon my "emotional attack", but this is so blindlingly obvious that fucknuts like yourself send my jumping in chair to hurl invective, to wit:
WHY DO FUCKHEADS LIKE YOU PRETEND THAT THE PEOPLE ARE NOT TO BE INVOLVED IN REGULATING THE PROCESS OF ECONOMICS?
Hey, I already KNOW that answer: Because shitballs like yourself want the government the hell out of anything you do (just like Jain), and you are so starry-eyed with imagined (and perversely attained) wealth that you're ready to cancel all social contracts in favor of "I've got mine, and fuck the rest of you!".
Tool. Now go and mount your mother. That's about all you're good for.
So many falsehoods, so little time to apply the 2x4 of logical correction upside your stupid fucking head.
... because the root cause of that injustice is people exactly like YOU.
He didn't "slip through the cracks". He walked with purpose through a gilt-edged door after swiping his American Aristocrat {tm} ID card to gain entry.
And, yes, we must toss the "whole idea of capitalism aside" if we're NOT going to moderate the excessives of the system with a necessary dose of social controls (i.e. Socialism). A Republic like we had was Republic = Capitalism + Socialism. We are now choosing to devolve the equation into Republic - Socialism = Fascism.
As for alternatives: We were LIVING in the preferred alternative, you unbelievable jackass. America's moderated capitalism was a pretty good system of general prosperity. The middle class was big and particularly independent. However, tools like you have bought into the basic idea of "I'm gonna get mine, so fuck everyone else". People like Jain walked off with your grandmother's retirement money, and you honestly can't even bring yourself to attack the injustice in the system that allowed him to do it
Hey, he stole that money fair and square. But if you dare to bring up how this demonstrates the weakness in monetary capitalism, you get labeled everything from Communist to Terrorist, and then you enter the huge American Marginal Zone of ideas.
Yes, that is the lesson here: the stock market is a con job and capitalism sucks.
... hence, enjoy your collapsed stock portfolio, and all the collapsed portfolios you're quite stupidly going to have in the future in your continued belief that paper and electrons are worth more than real work.
The ensuing introspection that progressives like me are trying to promote is that we should stop thinking that paper and electrons have primacy over the gathering of materials, performing skilled labor upon them, and producing real products.
Since I'm NOT talking about gaming the financial system to make millions, no doubt that all you're hearing from me above is blah-blah-blah. Money is your religion
Tool.
I could see a large food service corp. launching one of these on a nationwide scale
... in short, the vast majority of Americans.
Yes, what with gas and insurance being even cheaper nowadays. {rolls eyes}
Home delivery services will ALWAYS be niche-related. These niches are primarily (1) urban, (2) rich, or (3) subsidized. Hence, the customer who will most prompt a home delivery event is a disabled retiree living in the city. The antitihesis of that would be the healthy suburban or rural worker
Hence, pervasive home delivery of groceries (note: a tiny-margin business) is a fantasy. Please stop thinking that such a fantasy can ever become true.
Local stations often enough have a "fraudbusters" segment. However, with the overall corporate-izing of news stations, it should be rare to see anyone going after a pervasive corporate practice like rebates. After all, how many news stations take an issue with payday loans?
Yes, if. However, I'm seeing some forces that are proving highly resistant to the necessary price collapses. One, people are utterly in love with their expensive homes. They want the price to be high, even when they are socked with high bills. Two, local governments have completely given up on taxing businesses, hence they CANNOT also surrender taxing individuals. No, I'm afraid that for the next generation, local governments will refuse to cooperate with most efforts to reduce the assessed values for the tax rolls. Like most aberrations, we will probably end up with even more arcane financial mechanisms that will allow people to sell homes for prices that are less than the ones listed at the local assessor's office. I speculate that it will become a terminology issue, where the real estate brokers will call the price "market value" and the assessor's office will have their own "real value". Real value >> market value.
... which is why I doubt them.
Weirder things have happened. What's constant across our speculations is that the public is so meek that they will not fight to produce the results you predict
Yes, you COULD live in it ... but NO, if you can't afford the property taxes that are based upon its hyperinflated value. Please don't forget that important qualifier.
"All our lawyers are currently suing other customers. Your money is very important to us. Please hold for the next available legal representative."
.Sig Material.
This is pure gold, and should enter the Eternal Archive of Potential
A lien? I would have liked to have done that for some fraction (hey, I'm not greedy, and I understand business risks) of the $15K I loaned a businessman, but he bankrupted on me and I was left with no recourse.
Your sentiments are leading you astray. Over half of personal bankruptcies are triggered by illness, unemployment, and divorce ... but the overall level of debt is always a personal choice, and if that level is too high, any paroxysm in one's life will trigger the debt crisis.
Although it will be tough, millions of Americans will have to (for instance) junk their SUvs. There are over 22 million on the road as we speak here, and that's about 20 million more than is needed. Let the wealthy have their yachts, summer homes and SUVs; the rest of us will have to find peace with our 14' boats, rented cottages, and Ford Escorts. "Living within your means" is the forgotten virtue of America's middle class.
Considering the surge in expenses in fuels and life-saving services, I'd also say that austerity is now MANDATORY for the middle class. If you want to survive, you MUST spend less money and prepare for days of coming scarcity.
What you've said about class war is completely true. The class war is actually at a high level of engagement, yet people are commonly walking around, pretending that they don't hear the shots and -- as well -- are pretending they don't see the screaming wounded. As I love to say nowadays to anyone who'll listen: It's about time we admit we're being FIRED ON, so let's either fire back or get out of the combat zone.
fuck fair
... and that's just warfare by another name. People end up getting killed when the name changes to "war". Careful what you wish for. Vox populi is bound to be a lot louder than you've ever heard in your life.
... but such a voice is stilled in the rampant attacks by the people who (literally) want to own everything.
Doing things fairly means being fair to both sides in a contract situation. If that's not what you're after, then you're after supremacy by one side or the other
Other than that, your opinion has sound points ("don't borrow", perhaps "supply basic welfare") that are sorely needed in public debate, lest a FoxNewsish Hyper-elite conservatism washes over most of America. I'd give my left nut to meet a REAL Republican, one well versed in fiscal conservatism
Unfortunately, charging extortionate interest rates is viewed as an aspect of a free market by the corporate set (e.g. most Congressional members).
... will we?
We The People have two powers: the power to vote with ballots, and the power to vote with money. It's terrible that neither powers are used to put corporations back in their proper place (i.e. serving public needs under public charter).
I've given up on the idea that the public will place the government back under populist controls. However, we can bankrupt these corporations if we choose, by simplifying our economic lives and by avoiding rampant consumerism. The question is
I agree, and have a favorite one-liner about it:
I'll care about copyrights when the copyright on Mickey Mouse expires.
I am of two minds about that kind of thing. One, it will give us a better idea of gender ratios to even start addressing inequities. Two, to effect equality, we are supposed to ignore gender. How do we pay attention to gender without producing discrimination?
There are FEWER arrogant assholes in electrical engineering? You must be trolling. Engineering departments are rife in general with arrogance. (There's a theory that this is a good thing, since it's a training method for competence. Then again ....)
When you crash and burn companies (and in Argentina's case, entire economies) just to make money out of it, you're going to have to set some of those profits aside for guns and body armor. THAT is why this system is nothing to emulate. But I do admire your boldness in stating your financial viciousness; many others would have said nothing, content to let the rest of us believe they are good people.
I suppose all those ridiculously rich VCs got their money either through luck or because our economic system rewards morons.
... when some VC jumps on the investment bandwagon along with all the other VCs, effectively buying a lottery ticket since they have all the same qualifiers of "gambling at poor odds", you somehow DON'T think that that act shows they are a moron.
... and we're back to that lottery-ticket thing, and then inescapably to the "moron" label.
Yes, that's correct. Real skill in making sustainable investments had little to do with this class. But still, in the worldview of "guys with money did something right", there's no way to disprove your data. Guys with money are simply your fucking heroes. Their money is your proof. Too bad you have little idea how they got it, or understand the circumstances by which that happened.
but labeling them all morons is hyperbolic and, well, moronic
No, calling them "morons" is completely honest, but that label is wholly inconsistent with the current state of the American Hypercapitalist Empire. You simply cannot accept the idea of such a moronic class, while also accepting the idea that your society's elite viciousness is some sort of virtue.
Look, when Lucretia Bigass goes down to the local convenience store and buys her lottery ticket, you probably consider her to be a moron. I do. Mathematically, lotteries are "sucker bets" and you are actually better off EATING that dollar bill than spending it on a lottery ticket.
YET
In the same vein, you probably don't even think that buying stocks is gambling. But since you have no control of the stock price, and furthermore have no practical sense of the information that affects the stock price, it's GAMBLING
By the way, your comment about "in excess of x10" illustrates the fact that you're basing your opinions on popular mythology and not any real knowledge.
By the way, I'm basing my comments off of plenty of personal experience in Boston MA in the 1990s, as well as absorbing hundreds of anecdotes over the years from books and interviews. But keep fightin' that reality, Ace. Maybe one day you'll die, smug, thinkin' that if you only had one more year to fight, that you'll actually win.
I can only end this posting with my usual insightful statement:
The stock market is a religion, and like all religions, it is highly resistant to logic and data.
The funny thing about laziness is that it can spark the development of tools to increase productivity of tasks. After all, automating a manual task is the very essence of a lazy desire. The question is, can we get this desire for laziness to motivate us?
I think that's it's pretty clear to many Slashdotters that NASA is bureaucratizing itself to death. I'm equally sure many administrators at NASA think that this viewpoint is laughably layman ... and since they are perfectly willing to come into work every day, with a desk, phone and computer, while NOTHING AT ALL is launched or flying again that day, then we can see their biases.
... just to save a sum of money that could be easily covered by the everyday excesses of the bureaucratic class. In effect, the body is thinking about eating a couple of fingers while lard hangs off its belly, just so the brain can continue to believe in its own supremacy.
Like any cancerous bureaucracy, NASA is proposing the cuts for 2 reasons:
1. Scare Tactic. Instead of administrators cutting the number of administrators, administrators instead cut at the actual functioning of the organization: missions, projects, tasks and workers. This produces the desired fear effect and their budgets may be sustained thereby. (My city has been doing this kind of thing for years, and it bringing out the method a lot lately due to the collapse of the economy.)
2. Smart Morons. Modern business methods have infected much of American culture. Hence, we get a NASA administrator thinking that a 30-yr-old program that is still ongoing is something that should be shut down early
I've been predicting that America will cash out much of the accomplishment of its culture since it no longer wants to take risks or take lesser profits for general prosperity. As how my prediction affects NASA, the agency will continue to let equipment de-orbit, will continue to cancel programs, and will continue to advance the unintentional program to make itself completely irrelevant. The Shuttles are dead (even if they return to fly, they won't last long). Nothing will replace the Shuttles anyway. Mir is gone. Hubble is going to go. The Webb Telescope will never be launched.
And the collapse of supersonic commerical transport only continues to demonstrate from all this that Western civilization is giving up the ghost. Accomplishment is being abandoned. Nothing is replacing all this, either. The future in space is almost undoubtedly Chinese.