Yeah, that brings up the point: What did these people do in school biology class, sit there and roll their eyes a lot? Did they sit there and fume about how WRONG WRONG WRONG it was to have any taint of evolution in biology? Did they squirm and pout in college science cources when there was no mention of a Divine Being in any action of physical law? Are they sitting there, right now, thinking the rest of us are completely nuts and will "burn in hell" for our well-supported beliefs?
The Internet genuinely is a big deal. That was one reason even smart people were fooled by the Bubble. Obviously it was going to have a huge effect. Enough of an effect to triple the value of Nasdaq companies in two years? No, as it turned out. But it was hard to say for certain at the time.
BULLSHIT. The bubble was perfectly obvious, but the "hype machine" was running at 110% throttle and didn't allow criticism of itself. People like myself were shouted down... more aptly, my voice could not be heard at all over the furious frauds being hawked to the public. Investment capital was being burned like cordwood, given far more heat than light, and the crackling sounds alone drowned out rational speech.
The exact same thing is happening right now in the current bubble of American politics. It is perfectly obvious that America is starting WWIII, but the hype machine doesn't allow examination of that, much less criticism. After 1995, criticism of the Internet was squashed in a similar fashion; due to people's greed and hatred, they fully supported an irrational environment of operation. Hence it crashed. It could only crash.
THe problem then is that justice is decided by who has the best reflexes, not who is right.
Duelling is a bit more complicated than that, but even if your point has primacy, it still doesn't stand when the current system lets money win, not being "right". Who has the fastest lawyer, Ace?
Hell, the current system of so-called "justice" doesn't even let a couple of guys resolve their differences in an actual fistfight, since police will break it up.
We should bring back duelling. If you have a real problem with another person, and you're each willing to stand those 20 paces away to make your points, then it's apt to be that a real conflict is taking place, not a faux conflict as happens each minute in America's court system. In short, duelling would get money out of the justice equation and put philosophy back in.
Firstly, vitirified nuclear waste is effectively a rock. Hence, it's dense. Hence, it should sink into the trench as well as any other rocks.
Secondly, even though the sea-bottom mud is much less dense that rock, I haven't noticed the trenches "filling up" with such sediments. Hence, it must be subducted.
Privacy is one of the most basic civil rights. One SC justice commented a long time ago that you have every right to be left alone. This includes any inspection or oversight of your life.
Liberty is based upon tolerance, and it really helps if people simply aren't very informed about the details of your life. There are too many laws; everyone's been made into one type of criminal or another. Since we've no stomach for reducing laws to more sensible minima, then privacy is going to be a very important point.
I don't know many of the details; I just knew that "spent" nuclear fuel has simply fallen below a certain threshhold for the reactor it was used in... and as you pointed out, that's far from "waste".
As for theft, we have to handle the possibilities of suicides and robots. The people stealing the material to "strike a blow against the Great Satan" could easily sacrifice their lives to enact the theft. A robotic theft is certainly higher tech, but may be the only practical way to fetch material from an ocean bottom. Of course, anyone with a real urge for fissile uranium could have mounted their own search for that bomb dropped off America's eastern coast (which was recently perhaps found).
Saying things like 472 hours of video is fairly meaningless without saying what KIND of video.
It's 472 hours of the kind of video that is required by the MPAA to convince the US Congress to slap a huge tax on each and every single one of these "pirate's library" discs... a tax which will be promptly turned over to the MPAA. If it turns out to be 120x240 pixel, CGA-depth video, then that's just a technical detail that doesn't enter into the basic equation of that damned, damned piracy of America's essential base of wealth: Hollywood movies.
(I was going to post this seperately, but decided to ride along in reply to your existing posting.)
The first question that comes to mind about nuclear "waste" is: is it really waste? Heavy atoms are still difficult to come by in Human manufacturing processes. I think that if we really want to keep such heavy atoms around in such quantities, that such "waste" should be "disposed" of in a manner that is recoverable... by geographic location and by internment process.
The second question that comes to mind, if we decide to actually "get rid" of the "waste", is: what lasts for along time? The "long term storage" locations and processes currently under consideration and development are all uniformly absurd. The public really doesn't understand how much they are being fooled about these things. We'd be lucky to get a 2 centuries of storage out of Yucca Mt. before a serious leak or theft occurs. We need a combination of internment and storage that is rated for millenia.
A space elevator would be the minimum transport system for any serious consideration of launching the material away from Earth. Until we have that, I must reject all space-launch ideas.
But note that we are talking about storage for geologic times. So, it seems natural to consider geological methods. Yucca Mt. was the outcome of that, but we can take things a step farther: why not put the nuclear material deep into the Earth? Let's call it "Earth injection". (Please put aside jokes about "fucking the Earth".)
We can use two methods for Earth injection.
1. Drill a very deep hole in continental crust... kilometers deep. Pack the hole's depth with diffuse waste. The vitrification method seems basically sound since they are effectively making rocks out of the stuff, and you can always choose the density of nuclear material in such a method. The hole is obviously conducive to receiving cylindrical objects, and the engineers can tweak the variables to produce an optimal size of hole diameter. Then the forming company can clunk kilometers of cylinder glass, in meter-long chunks. They can be inserted into the hole, and the engineers can figure out how to pack them down kilometers of pipe. A 11-kilometer long pipe,.2m in diameter, can hold over 300 cubic meters of waste (which must include the vitrifying matrix) assuming the top kilometer is the cap. Assuming 20% of the mass is actual waste material, this means each 10k hole can hold 60 cubic meters... which is enough waste to fill a container 4 meters on a side.
2. Drill a hole like #1, but in oceanic crust. You'd face the barrier of packing the hole from a drillling ship, kilometers above on the surface of the ocean... but that would add security, since only a major government or corporation could afford to make the same investment to go back and drill your hole open.
3. Use an oceanic trench. This brings up all kinds of engineering problems, but if you can pack the material in the trench bottom, then after 1 million years it will be securely subducted under the encroaching continental plate. After 5 million years, it may come up in the volcanoes above the deep subduction zone, but with the half-life involved, it should be no more radioactive than lava is usually.
I'd like to see how vitrified blocks act in sea-bottom mud. If they are stable for thousands of years, then that's long enough for them to be deeply buried in the bottom of a trench like the Marianas, and after that the material will slowly subduct into the mantle. That means they can be pipe-dropped from a ship instead of being actually injected into a drilled hole. "Pipe-dropped" means lowering a pipe from the ship down the trench to just above one of the lowest sections of the bottom, and sliding the cylinders of vitrified waste down like a piece of mail down a mail chute. The ship could move along and dump piles of cylinders.
And for security purposes, only a major government or corporation could spend the money to undertake a mission to go into the trench, dig it up and recover material. We should be safe from it, and it should be safe from us.
That's a great plan, if you don't take into consideration that my daughter is [blah blah blah].
Tough fuck. My "great plan" still applies. You only imagine that you're stuck there for however long. Pack up and go. You are just making excuses with your daughter... and I say that since you are in deep economic trouble and are risking death (as I said quite clearly before). Do you think your death is going to serve your daughter any more than your living can? What, is your life insurance policy still active?
What, did you think I would still be here if it was something silly such as friends or school?
No, I thought it quite likely that it was some whiny little medical thing with your daughter. You've proven my suspicions correct. And "family medical" is the same fucking excuse-making of the man who is not willing to make a survival choice. I've grown completely tired of hearing these excuses, and boy oh boy, do I hear them all the goddamn time. You can find adequate or average medical care elsewhere in America for her... PERIOD. It can only be your depraved desire for "my little baby's gotta get the best care" that's led you to this foul end.
I'm sure you wouldn't go that route if you had a child of your own
Oh yes I would. I'm my own doctor, and my own vet for my cats. The American system of health care is really starting to suck fucking ass, and I'm willing to die myself -- as well as blatantly risk the lives of others -- in the attempt to kill it off. The American health care system should have been the world's best, but has been completely suborned to "money money money". Things like real health care are going to way that pensions, expensing, sick days and vacations are going: for corporate executives ONLY.
This work-sponsored health-care system is fatally ill. America used to survive without it, and I'd like to see a return to those times (since I assume that it's impossible to enact socialized medicine instead in the American Empire). But to return to the non-corporate health-care system, we'd have to kill off the medical administration class. You know: go back to family doctors who live down your street. The AMA must be killed off at least, and things like homeopathy brought back. I say all this, knowing it may well be equally impossible to enact. The American death rate may well have to rise to 250K+ more deaths per year before a new equilibrium is found for the then-diminished expectations of the American people. As I say this, I'm struck by how likely that really is, since people went from single- to double-income family units and barely complained about that terrible fate.
In 6-12 months, all of her medical concerns will be taken care of, and off I go.
You're just delaying. I have no confidence whatsoever that you'll actually pack up and move away from American Economic Dead Zone #34. Prove me wrong.
No sympathy asked for
Your points about economic sinkholes were still salient. A man who tries to find a suitable job for himself is doing the exactly right thing. But my follow-on point is that after 6 months of no success, you have to take responsibility for the failure even though the system around you is manifestly unfair. Either that, or take up arms and kill the people responsible. I told you before that this is class war, and it's gotten a lot hotter on the elite's end. Recognize that they are trying to just kill you off as some kind of excess "useless eater".
I'd hate to see the outcome if I'd replied to a sensitive subject, sheesh.
I had some sympathy for you until I read THIS bullshit line:
Wrapping up my sob-story, moving to a new state is out of the question due to personal reasons involving my daughter, so we're stuck here.
Well, then, you're just going to end up dead soon. I hope you enjoy the next 2 years of your life, since that's probably all you have left. Chances are you will get sick during that period and just die.
I hear this whining all the fucking time, and I have to call bullshit on all of it. You don't owe anyone anything if doing so places you in serious jeopardy. What, is the daughter in school? Fuck her preferences; she'll have to make new friends. Is she at some institution? Fuck her needs; you can send video email. Does she need special care? Fuck her; let some underpaid orderly wipe her mouth. (Note: What, don't other states offer care for this kind of thing? Stop making excuses.)
No one is chained to a place which threatens to destroy them. You have to stop being an idiot and recover your pride. You have to remember that you have a will to survive and a desire for self-defense.
I am living one of America's deepest economic hellpits (Toledo OH), and right on schedule the scumbag Capitalists here are making moves to throw me into poverty as they did from 1998 to 2002. Since I stopped pretending that this is not class warfare, I've saved money like a fiend for the last 2.5 years and will use my capital and mobility to fight back, by moving to where the fucking jobs are, leaving Toledo to rot down to the Detroit-humus level of compost.
I know all about mailing, faxing and handing out hundreds of resumes, and not getting 1 response. That's Toledo's economic picture in a nutshell. But Toledo's not going to change, since people are so numbed by various complacent or vicious philosophies. I can only surmise from your testimony that your area is similar.
So get the fuck out before it kills you, you goddamn numbskull. You and your American brethren have worshipped "private property" for a long time, so here you are crucified on it. If you refuse to engage in active Socialism and confiscate the shit of the Capitalists who have impoverished you, and also refuse to leave your local wasteland and go to where the jobs are... then you truly deserve to end up dead under a bridge. This is a war, and you've been fired on; so... SHOOT BACK, YOU STUPID BASTARD!
I've honestly lost count of how many times people have said here in the Midwest that they support Bush since he's "a devout Christian". But of course, about 50 million people are going to vote for Kerry because he's the endorsed Democrat... so it looks overall like a lot of stupidity is floating the boat of this election.
President Chokes on Question, Not Pretzel, This Time
By BRAD FORD AP Business Writer
NEW YORK (AP) -- President Bush received a light facial wound today at 1130am when he fielded questions from the New Voters Project website and accidentally fell from his chair.
The President was finishing his 4th question, when another by a user named "marshac" was given to him by the system administrator. The question revolved around the reformation of the Social Security system.
President Bush was observed to be silent and still for a couple of seconds, then convulsed and fell from his seat. He lightly bumped his face against a table leg during the incident.
"I could have sworn he was laughing, but didn't want to show it," said Kelly Arungen, an organizer of the event who was nearby in the studio. "But I could be wrong ... after all, he is the President," she continued.
President Bush was treated for his facial wound and was released an hour later from Walter Reed hospital. He will award himself a Purple Heart for the incident since America is at war.
How can we know that you'll keep your promises once you've got the job?
You already know the answer to that question. Because the American body politic constantly forgives the lies, there's little point in your candidate using the same lying method to explain the methodology of lies... it's up to us to adopt Zero Tolerance for dishonest and dishonorable behavior in public offices.
Now, if you'll pardon me, I'll be over there in the corner turning blue. {haawwwp... urk!}
They quit paying the consultants expenses in a ploy to save the money for Wang and Kumar [...] Send them both to the slammer for theft and misconduct.
Not while you worship a Capitalist system that generally rewards Wang and Kumar for their "financial acumen and hard-nosed sense of business". Even the execs sent to jail generally keep much of the wealth that you assert they stole. As long as you believe that property rights are so much stronger than the rights of real victims, and so much larger than social welfare, this perversion will continue.
My condolences on your net 2% loss in income over the last year. I am sure all of the chronically unemployed people will morn your loss. Oh, and those with permanent disabilities will surely bemoan the vicissitudes of modern corporate employment with you, of this I am sure. Plus those overseas outsorced employees who do the work of a $50,000/yr American for a little less than than the cost of you shoe budget and live in sod huts will contrive to share your pain as well.
From 1997 to 1999 I was underemployed. From 2000 to 2002 I was essentially unemployed. My savings vanished, I lost my home, all my stuff was put into storage, and if it were not for the kindness of a friend, I would have lived in a truck instead of a room out of his basement.
In short, go fuck yourself. Do you know what it's like to live in a home without heat in the winter? To choose between food and gasoline? To catch pneumonia so badly that you move like an old man? This is America, not some Third World shitpit peppered with bullet holes. There's no rational reason for what I went through except class warfare. And it's time I admit that I've been fired on; the war was declared a long time ago; and I must return the attack against the upper class (and vicious middle class, probably much like yourself) before I actually end up dead. (Hint: pneumonia can kill you.)
I've just recovered my proper place in the firmament: a modestly-living, middle class, educated American. I deserve things. Nobody owes me a living, but by god the Capitalists owe me the opportunity to work for it. And that means 40 hours per week, chum...
... or I will shoot them. America's wealth has been in a large part possible from its stability. You can get your cargo (or family piled in a vacation car) from coast to coast without being shot at, bombed, kidnapped for ransom or lost in some bomb crater. There's a price for that stability: don't fuck the middle class. If you create legions of poor, well, they have little to lose in hijacking "your" stuff. In fact, what's "yours" is largely what society says it is. If you create a society where warlords can rule, they will. If you think social Darwinism is OK, then you have no understanding what will really happen to YOU under those rules.
The mud-hutters in India have my sympathy. But they have their OWN nation, with their OWN population, OWN resources, and OWN market. They can lift themselves up by their OWN hard work and create the middle class that is so necessary for a modern civilization.
If you couldn't see through your shroud of bitterness there was just a hint of sarcasm there. After reading your post the feeling I came away with is that you are someone who feels that they are entitled to things and that the world owes them something. I could be wrong, but a minor setback should be encouragement for you and a learning experience, not grounds for excessive animosity. Heaven forbid that you have a real setback in life, you might do something rash.
The Capitalists have done something very rash on their own. THEY (not "we") are looting America of OUR (not "their") wealth. Like I said before, war was declared a long time ago and it's foolish to dismiss my figurative bullet wounds as things I did or deserved. If a man goes hungry because he chooses to drink a lot of cheap wine, then he deserves it. If a man goes hungry because he sends out ~300 resumes and ends up tossing meat out of the back of a truck for $6.50/hr, then society is at fault. People aren't tools (they eat and need to pay a mortgage) to be discarded when you lack the vision to put them to use. That's what a fucking employer is: one who employs. It is the responsibility of the Capitalists to put their capital to gainful use. Or We The People should and will take it away from them... violently, if necessary
The people with degrees in my position at work are experiencing the same problems. Lay off the Rush Limbaugh a while and you start to smell the truth wafting off American's workforce: a Bachelor's degree doesn't matter anymore. People are finding that security in a workplace (other than that obtained from elite connections) generally comes from a Master's-level degree. So what are you going to say now, huh? That we all have to get 6 years of schooling to be qualified to work in America's corporations? Fuckface.
When I say "Capitalist" in this sense, I'm not talking about the Elbert Hubbard style of Capitalist (in which real Capitalism is the natural consequence of people with savings and homes). I'm talking about "looting" or "predatory" Capitalists... practicing hypercapitalism... the kind of people who think a liquor store serves greater economic good than a grocery store simply because the liquor store has higher margins. If hypercapitalism finds that boiled babies' blood is the best thing to put in the tank of an SUV, then by god the open market should supply boiled babies' blood to those who need it.
This is the kind of thing that I will not join. It has also infected otherwise prosperous sectors like the automobile and home industries. Things in these areas are being priced to sell and re-sell, not to be of practical use. I'm 37, and have never "purchased" or "leased" a new car... and at the current rate, I'm never going to do so. The automobile that I'd buy new will never be made.
But your point is particularly apt. Complaints about Capitalists don't do me any good unless I provide alternatives. In a strong sense, I've always pursued alternatives. Every time I repair my own vehicle, and repair another's, provides that option. But it's becoming more and painfully clear that alternatives have to become my lifestyle. Slavery waits around each corner, stalking me, waiting for me to relax so it can pounce and open my budgetary jugular, bleeding my wealth for the predators to lap up with abandon. Complancency leads to victimhood. {shudder} I refuse to let that happen.
Yeah, I know, you'd rather program [or insert job here] than work in business, but that's where the money is.
That's only true in two overlapping instances:
1. You want more than a modest middle-class existence.
2. You want short term gains.
It should stand as true that if the US devolves to a rich+poor nation with the middle class reduced to statistical noise, then either that future is fantastical (can't happen) or will be a fascist state (living hell). Consumer buying can't be buoyed up by a vanished middle class, and the poor are not credit worthy unless a fascist-like government authorizes and enforces massive debts upon them -- state-sponsored slavery, if you will.
I don't want options 1 or 2. There's nothing wrong with working for a living. There's also nothing wrong with demanding and securing a proper share of the proceeds of one's labor. In the individual corporation sense, the latter is never a problem, sure. But there's also nothing wrong with collective work, under public regulation, for the general public good as well as private profit. However, if private profiting cannot be satisfied (under an onslaught of uncontrolled greed), then no measure of "public good" will result.
Do you mean niggardly?
No, I said and meant "nigger", along the lines of "nigger rich".
I presume you've been reading the John Taylor Gatto book "The Underground History of American Education"
No, I keep catching quotes of it, and have the online link to the book, but haven't invested the time yet. I have long quote from him on my website.
I've recently (4+ years) realized that teaching would be very fulfilling. A great thing about teaching a la your idea would be the personal connection from myself to the parents -- not to dismiss the students, but the parents are the ones with the money.
Yeah, believe me, I've talked to a local electrician (whom I've gotten to know well from working in the bank) and I've concluded that I may as well dump this IT shit with all the glass ceilings imposed by a lack of degree and certification, and just become an electrician's apprentice. Within 2 years I'd be making at least $18/hr, and that'll rise up to $28/hr in 5 years with my work ethic. I have every expectation that I'll have to work for my living, but this IT shit is turning into a depression in my work history. If I have to deal with scumbag businessmen, I'd rather get paid more money.
Of course, if I do that, I leave IT to the tender mercies of MCSEs, CNEs, A+s, and various twits with 4- and 6-year degrees that can't think their way out of a paper bag. I'm not willing to give up yet. My next assault on my lack of prosperity revolves around the idea that I'm in the wrong location, and I should seek a better IT market than Toledo Fucking Loser Ohio. Toledo is so bad, that even places in Ann Arbor (45min drive) don't bother advertising their jobs in the Toledo paper.
And of course salaries can go up if there are less people to employ. A given amount of money divided less ways is more per person
Yes, of course. When I worked for a bank, they paid 27.5c/mi for our varied running around fixing all the tech equipment in their banking centers. What happened 2 months after they outsourced all us IT field guys to some scumbag "IT Services" company (which, I might add, pays 22c/mi)? Yes, the bank upped their mileage compensation to the IRS standard 37.5c/mi. After all, with all the field guys gone, all you have left are banking-center managers and various executives imposing mileage.
Fuckers! I hope the general public sees what's going on and demands at least a share of the savings, as lower fees, increased APR on their accounts, etc.
The jobs essentially didn't materialize in the American common view since a lot of expansion happened overseas. Companies also had to recover from a vast array of unwise investment (well, gambling really). Since overseas expansion is so lucrative, and since corporations continue to use gambling in place of sensible investment (i.e. they are throwing money at financial instruments many levels removed from productive economic activity), then the jobs STILL haven't materialized.
In effect, GWB and his cronies have managed to get the American taxpayer to once again fund an expansion of elite properties, and to give the elite even more money to play the market with depsite the losses common Americans underwent.
Kerry's going to be no different when it comes to raping the American public in this manner of unparalleled concentration of wealth. We're going to be seeing some REAL hunger and homelessness a laAmerica in the 1930s before people wise up and toss the "looting Capitalists" out of all levels of office, regaining some Socialism to assert popular controls on those thorny entities we call corporations.
Slashdot Mirror
Monopoly or not, Microsoft knows how to build a solid OS.
... in 1997.
... actually many dollars over budget.
I agree. Windows XP is exactly what we needed
That's why I run Linux at home while my company runs XP at work. A day late, but not a dollar short
I switched to Opera a few years ago and have been *much* happier.
Here we can agree. I paid for an Opera license and have never regretted it.
What problems did Nader cause in Florida? The last I heard, he was simply on the ballot and people were free to vote for him.
Yeah, that brings up the point: What did these people do in school biology class, sit there and roll their eyes a lot? Did they sit there and fume about how WRONG WRONG WRONG it was to have any taint of evolution in biology? Did they squirm and pout in college science cources when there was no mention of a Divine Being in any action of physical law? Are they sitting there, right now, thinking the rest of us are completely nuts and will "burn in hell" for our well-supported beliefs?
The Internet genuinely is a big deal. That was one reason even smart people were fooled by the Bubble. Obviously it was going to have a huge effect. Enough of an effect to triple the value of Nasdaq companies in two years? No, as it turned out. But it was hard to say for certain at the time.
... more aptly, my voice could not be heard at all over the furious frauds being hawked to the public. Investment capital was being burned like cordwood, given far more heat than light, and the crackling sounds alone drowned out rational speech.
BULLSHIT. The bubble was perfectly obvious, but the "hype machine" was running at 110% throttle and didn't allow criticism of itself. People like myself were shouted down
The exact same thing is happening right now in the current bubble of American politics. It is perfectly obvious that America is starting WWIII, but the hype machine doesn't allow examination of that, much less criticism. After 1995, criticism of the Internet was squashed in a similar fashion; due to people's greed and hatred, they fully supported an irrational environment of operation. Hence it crashed. It could only crash.
THe problem then is that justice is decided by who has the best reflexes, not who is right.
Duelling is a bit more complicated than that, but even if your point has primacy, it still doesn't stand when the current system lets money win, not being "right". Who has the fastest lawyer, Ace?
Hell, the current system of so-called "justice" doesn't even let a couple of guys resolve their differences in an actual fistfight, since police will break it up.
We should bring back duelling. If you have a real problem with another person, and you're each willing to stand those 20 paces away to make your points, then it's apt to be that a real conflict is taking place, not a faux conflict as happens each minute in America's court system. In short, duelling would get money out of the justice equation and put philosophy back in.
Firstly, vitirified nuclear waste is effectively a rock. Hence, it's dense. Hence, it should sink into the trench as well as any other rocks.
Secondly, even though the sea-bottom mud is much less dense that rock, I haven't noticed the trenches "filling up" with such sediments. Hence, it must be subducted.
Privacy is one of the most basic civil rights. One SC justice commented a long time ago that you have every right to be left alone. This includes any inspection or oversight of your life.
Liberty is based upon tolerance, and it really helps if people simply aren't very informed about the details of your life. There are too many laws; everyone's been made into one type of criminal or another. Since we've no stomach for reducing laws to more sensible minima, then privacy is going to be a very important point.
I don't know many of the details; I just knew that "spent" nuclear fuel has simply fallen below a certain threshhold for the reactor it was used in ... and as you pointed out, that's far from "waste".
As for theft, we have to handle the possibilities of suicides and robots. The people stealing the material to "strike a blow against the Great Satan" could easily sacrifice their lives to enact the theft. A robotic theft is certainly higher tech, but may be the only practical way to fetch material from an ocean bottom. Of course, anyone with a real urge for fissile uranium could have mounted their own search for that bomb dropped off America's eastern coast (which was recently perhaps found).
Saying things like 472 hours of video is fairly meaningless without saying what KIND of video.
... a tax which will be promptly turned over to the MPAA. If it turns out to be 120x240 pixel, CGA-depth video, then that's just a technical detail that doesn't enter into the basic equation of that damned, damned piracy of America's essential base of wealth: Hollywood movies.
It's 472 hours of the kind of video that is required by the MPAA to convince the US Congress to slap a huge tax on each and every single one of these "pirate's library" discs
(I was going to post this seperately, but decided to ride along in reply to your existing posting.)
... by geographic location and by internment process.
... kilometers deep. Pack the hole's depth with diffuse waste. The vitrification method seems basically sound since they are effectively making rocks out of the stuff, and you can always choose the density of nuclear material in such a method. The hole is obviously conducive to receiving cylindrical objects, and the engineers can tweak the variables to produce an optimal size of hole diameter. Then the forming company can clunk kilometers of cylinder glass, in meter-long chunks. They can be inserted into the hole, and the engineers can figure out how to pack them down kilometers of pipe. A 11-kilometer long pipe, .2m in diameter, can hold over 300 cubic meters of waste (which must include the vitrifying matrix) assuming the top kilometer is the cap. Assuming 20% of the mass is actual waste material, this means each 10k hole can hold 60 cubic meters ... which is enough waste to fill a container 4 meters on a side.
... but that would add security, since only a major government or corporation could afford to make the same investment to go back and drill your hole open.
The first question that comes to mind about nuclear "waste" is: is it really waste? Heavy atoms are still difficult to come by in Human manufacturing processes. I think that if we really want to keep such heavy atoms around in such quantities, that such "waste" should be "disposed" of in a manner that is recoverable
The second question that comes to mind, if we decide to actually "get rid" of the "waste", is: what lasts for along time? The "long term storage" locations and processes currently under consideration and development are all uniformly absurd. The public really doesn't understand how much they are being fooled about these things. We'd be lucky to get a 2 centuries of storage out of Yucca Mt. before a serious leak or theft occurs. We need a combination of internment and storage that is rated for millenia.
A space elevator would be the minimum transport system for any serious consideration of launching the material away from Earth. Until we have that, I must reject all space-launch ideas.
But note that we are talking about storage for geologic times. So, it seems natural to consider geological methods. Yucca Mt. was the outcome of that, but we can take things a step farther: why not put the nuclear material deep into the Earth? Let's call it "Earth injection". (Please put aside jokes about "fucking the Earth".)
We can use two methods for Earth injection.
1. Drill a very deep hole in continental crust
2. Drill a hole like #1, but in oceanic crust. You'd face the barrier of packing the hole from a drillling ship, kilometers above on the surface of the ocean
3. Use an oceanic trench. This brings up all kinds of engineering problems, but if you can pack the material in the trench bottom, then after 1 million years it will be securely subducted under the encroaching continental plate. After 5 million years, it may come up in the volcanoes above the deep subduction zone, but with the half-life involved, it should be no more radioactive than lava is usually.
I'd like to see how vitrified blocks act in sea-bottom mud. If they are stable for thousands of years, then that's long enough for them to be deeply buried in the bottom of a trench like the Marianas, and after that the material will slowly subduct into the mantle. That means they can be pipe-dropped from a ship instead of being actually injected into a drilled hole. "Pipe-dropped" means lowering a pipe from the ship down the trench to just above one of the lowest sections of the bottom, and sliding the cylinders of vitrified waste down like a piece of mail down a mail chute. The ship could move along and dump piles of cylinders.
And for security purposes, only a major government or corporation could spend the money to undertake a mission to go into the trench, dig it up and recover material. We should be safe from it, and it should be safe from us.
That's a great plan, if you don't take into consideration that my daughter is [blah blah blah].
... and I say that since you are in deep economic trouble and are risking death (as I said quite clearly before). Do you think your death is going to serve your daughter any more than your living can? What, is your life insurance policy still active?
... PERIOD. It can only be your depraved desire for "my little baby's gotta get the best care" that's led you to this foul end.
Tough fuck. My "great plan" still applies. You only imagine that you're stuck there for however long. Pack up and go. You are just making excuses with your daughter
What, did you think I would still be here if it was something silly such as friends or school?
No, I thought it quite likely that it was some whiny little medical thing with your daughter. You've proven my suspicions correct. And "family medical" is the same fucking excuse-making of the man who is not willing to make a survival choice. I've grown completely tired of hearing these excuses, and boy oh boy, do I hear them all the goddamn time. You can find adequate or average medical care elsewhere in America for her
I'm sure you wouldn't go that route if you had a child of your own
Oh yes I would. I'm my own doctor, and my own vet for my cats. The American system of health care is really starting to suck fucking ass, and I'm willing to die myself -- as well as blatantly risk the lives of others -- in the attempt to kill it off. The American health care system should have been the world's best, but has been completely suborned to "money money money". Things like real health care are going to way that pensions, expensing, sick days and vacations are going: for corporate executives ONLY.
This work-sponsored health-care system is fatally ill. America used to survive without it, and I'd like to see a return to those times (since I assume that it's impossible to enact socialized medicine instead in the American Empire). But to return to the non-corporate health-care system, we'd have to kill off the medical administration class. You know: go back to family doctors who live down your street. The AMA must be killed off at least, and things like homeopathy brought back. I say all this, knowing it may well be equally impossible to enact. The American death rate may well have to rise to 250K+ more deaths per year before a new equilibrium is found for the then-diminished expectations of the American people. As I say this, I'm struck by how likely that really is, since people went from single- to double-income family units and barely complained about that terrible fate.
In 6-12 months, all of her medical concerns will be taken care of, and off I go.
You're just delaying. I have no confidence whatsoever that you'll actually pack up and move away from American Economic Dead Zone #34. Prove me wrong.
No sympathy asked for
Your points about economic sinkholes were still salient. A man who tries to find a suitable job for himself is doing the exactly right thing. But my follow-on point is that after 6 months of no success, you have to take responsibility for the failure even though the system around you is manifestly unfair. Either that, or take up arms and kill the people responsible. I told you before that this is class war, and it's gotten a lot hotter on the elite's end. Recognize that they are trying to just kill you off as some kind of excess "useless eater".
I'd hate to see the outcome if I'd replied to a sensitive subject, sheesh.
Try me.
I had some sympathy for you until I read THIS bullshit line:
... then you truly deserve to end up dead under a bridge. This is a war, and you've been fired on; so ... SHOOT BACK, YOU STUPID BASTARD!
Wrapping up my sob-story, moving to a new state is out of the question due to personal reasons involving my daughter, so we're stuck here.
Well, then, you're just going to end up dead soon. I hope you enjoy the next 2 years of your life, since that's probably all you have left. Chances are you will get sick during that period and just die.
I hear this whining all the fucking time, and I have to call bullshit on all of it. You don't owe anyone anything if doing so places you in serious jeopardy. What, is the daughter in school? Fuck her preferences; she'll have to make new friends. Is she at some institution? Fuck her needs; you can send video email. Does she need special care? Fuck her; let some underpaid orderly wipe her mouth. (Note: What, don't other states offer care for this kind of thing? Stop making excuses.)
No one is chained to a place which threatens to destroy them. You have to stop being an idiot and recover your pride. You have to remember that you have a will to survive and a desire for self-defense.
I am living one of America's deepest economic hellpits (Toledo OH), and right on schedule the scumbag Capitalists here are making moves to throw me into poverty as they did from 1998 to 2002. Since I stopped pretending that this is not class warfare, I've saved money like a fiend for the last 2.5 years and will use my capital and mobility to fight back, by moving to where the fucking jobs are, leaving Toledo to rot down to the Detroit-humus level of compost.
I know all about mailing, faxing and handing out hundreds of resumes, and not getting 1 response. That's Toledo's economic picture in a nutshell. But Toledo's not going to change, since people are so numbed by various complacent or vicious philosophies. I can only surmise from your testimony that your area is similar.
So get the fuck out before it kills you, you goddamn numbskull. You and your American brethren have worshipped "private property" for a long time, so here you are crucified on it. If you refuse to engage in active Socialism and confiscate the shit of the Capitalists who have impoverished you, and also refuse to leave your local wasteland and go to where the jobs are
I've honestly lost count of how many times people have said here in the Midwest that they support Bush since he's "a devout Christian". But of course, about 50 million people are going to vote for Kerry because he's the endorsed Democrat ... so it looks overall like a lot of stupidity is floating the boat of this election.
How can we know that you'll keep your promises once you've got the job?
... it's up to us to adopt Zero Tolerance for dishonest and dishonorable behavior in public offices.
... urk!}
You already know the answer to that question. Because the American body politic constantly forgives the lies, there's little point in your candidate using the same lying method to explain the methodology of lies
Now, if you'll pardon me, I'll be over there in the corner turning blue. {haawwwp
What will you do to keep me, successful student, productive citizen, and pot smoker, out of jail?
What will HE do? Nothing. What must YOU do? Move to cocaine or oxycontin.
When the hype is running full steam, you have no hope of getting a dissenting voice in edgewise.
... and the law has been throughly corrupted.
When the hype is lower, you can successfully post a dissenting opinion on Slashdot.
But you will never find dissent impacting company operations. That's the job of the law
They quit paying the consultants expenses in a ploy to save the money for Wang and Kumar [...] Send them both to the slammer for theft and misconduct.
Not while you worship a Capitalist system that generally rewards Wang and Kumar for their "financial acumen and hard-nosed sense of business". Even the execs sent to jail generally keep much of the wealth that you assert they stole. As long as you believe that property rights are so much stronger than the rights of real victims, and so much larger than social welfare, this perversion will continue.
OK, Ace, you asked for it.
...
... or I will shoot them. America's wealth has been in a large part possible from its stability. You can get your cargo (or family piled in a vacation car) from coast to coast without being shot at, bombed, kidnapped for ransom or lost in some bomb crater. There's a price for that stability: don't fuck the middle class. If you create legions of poor, well, they have little to lose in hijacking "your" stuff. In fact, what's "yours" is largely what society says it is. If you create a society where warlords can rule, they will. If you think social Darwinism is OK, then you have no understanding what will really happen to YOU under those rules.
... violently, if necessary
My condolences on your net 2% loss in income over the last year. I am sure all of the chronically unemployed people will morn your loss. Oh, and those with permanent disabilities will surely bemoan the vicissitudes of modern corporate employment with you, of this I am sure. Plus those overseas outsorced employees who do the work of a $50,000/yr American for a little less than than the cost of you shoe budget and live in sod huts will contrive to share your pain as well.
From 1997 to 1999 I was underemployed. From 2000 to 2002 I was essentially unemployed. My savings vanished, I lost my home, all my stuff was put into storage, and if it were not for the kindness of a friend, I would have lived in a truck instead of a room out of his basement.
In short, go fuck yourself. Do you know what it's like to live in a home without heat in the winter? To choose between food and gasoline? To catch pneumonia so badly that you move like an old man? This is America, not some Third World shitpit peppered with bullet holes. There's no rational reason for what I went through except class warfare. And it's time I admit that I've been fired on; the war was declared a long time ago; and I must return the attack against the upper class (and vicious middle class, probably much like yourself) before I actually end up dead. (Hint: pneumonia can kill you.)
I've just recovered my proper place in the firmament: a modestly-living, middle class, educated American. I deserve things. Nobody owes me a living, but by god the Capitalists owe me the opportunity to work for it. And that means 40 hours per week, chum
The mud-hutters in India have my sympathy. But they have their OWN nation, with their OWN population, OWN resources, and OWN market. They can lift themselves up by their OWN hard work and create the middle class that is so necessary for a modern civilization.
If you couldn't see through your shroud of bitterness there was just a hint of sarcasm there. After reading your post the feeling I came away with is that you are someone who feels that they are entitled to things and that the world owes them something. I could be wrong, but a minor setback should be encouragement for you and a learning experience, not grounds for excessive animosity. Heaven forbid that you have a real setback in life, you might do something rash.
The Capitalists have done something very rash on their own. THEY (not "we") are looting America of OUR (not "their") wealth. Like I said before, war was declared a long time ago and it's foolish to dismiss my figurative bullet wounds as things I did or deserved. If a man goes hungry because he chooses to drink a lot of cheap wine, then he deserves it. If a man goes hungry because he sends out ~300 resumes and ends up tossing meat out of the back of a truck for $6.50/hr, then society is at fault. People aren't tools (they eat and need to pay a mortgage) to be discarded when you lack the vision to put them to use. That's what a fucking employer is: one who employs. It is the responsibility of the Capitalists to put their capital to gainful use. Or We The People should and will take it away from them
The people with degrees in my position at work are experiencing the same problems. Lay off the Rush Limbaugh a while and you start to smell the truth wafting off American's workforce: a Bachelor's degree doesn't matter anymore. People are finding that security in a workplace (other than that obtained from elite connections) generally comes from a Master's-level degree. So what are you going to say now, huh? That we all have to get 6 years of schooling to be qualified to work in America's corporations? Fuckface.
When I say "Capitalist" in this sense, I'm not talking about the Elbert Hubbard style of Capitalist (in which real Capitalism is the natural consequence of people with savings and homes). I'm talking about "looting" or "predatory" Capitalists ... practicing hypercapitalism ... the kind of people who think a liquor store serves greater economic good than a grocery store simply because the liquor store has higher margins. If hypercapitalism finds that boiled babies' blood is the best thing to put in the tank of an SUV, then by god the open market should supply boiled babies' blood to those who need it.
... and at the current rate, I'm never going to do so. The automobile that I'd buy new will never be made.
This is the kind of thing that I will not join. It has also infected otherwise prosperous sectors like the automobile and home industries. Things in these areas are being priced to sell and re-sell, not to be of practical use. I'm 37, and have never "purchased" or "leased" a new car
But your point is particularly apt. Complaints about Capitalists don't do me any good unless I provide alternatives. In a strong sense, I've always pursued alternatives. Every time I repair my own vehicle, and repair another's, provides that option. But it's becoming more and painfully clear that alternatives have to become my lifestyle. Slavery waits around each corner, stalking me, waiting for me to relax so it can pounce and open my budgetary jugular, bleeding my wealth for the predators to lap up with abandon. Complancency leads to victimhood. {shudder} I refuse to let that happen.
Yeah, I know, you'd rather program [or insert job here] than work in business, but that's where the money is.
That's only true in two overlapping instances:
1. You want more than a modest middle-class existence.
2. You want short term gains.
It should stand as true that if the US devolves to a rich+poor nation with the middle class reduced to statistical noise, then either that future is fantastical (can't happen) or will be a fascist state (living hell). Consumer buying can't be buoyed up by a vanished middle class, and the poor are not credit worthy unless a fascist-like government authorizes and enforces massive debts upon them -- state-sponsored slavery, if you will.
I don't want options 1 or 2. There's nothing wrong with working for a living. There's also nothing wrong with demanding and securing a proper share of the proceeds of one's labor. In the individual corporation sense, the latter is never a problem, sure. But there's also nothing wrong with collective work, under public regulation, for the general public good as well as private profit. However, if private profiting cannot be satisfied (under an onslaught of uncontrolled greed), then no measure of "public good" will result.
Do you mean niggardly?
No, I said and meant "nigger", along the lines of "nigger rich".
I presume you've been reading the John Taylor Gatto book "The Underground History of American Education"
No, I keep catching quotes of it, and have the online link to the book, but haven't invested the time yet. I have long quote from him on my website.
I've recently (4+ years) realized that teaching would be very fulfilling. A great thing about teaching a la your idea would be the personal connection from myself to the parents -- not to dismiss the students, but the parents are the ones with the money.
Yeah, believe me, I've talked to a local electrician (whom I've gotten to know well from working in the bank) and I've concluded that I may as well dump this IT shit with all the glass ceilings imposed by a lack of degree and certification, and just become an electrician's apprentice. Within 2 years I'd be making at least $18/hr, and that'll rise up to $28/hr in 5 years with my work ethic. I have every expectation that I'll have to work for my living, but this IT shit is turning into a depression in my work history. If I have to deal with scumbag businessmen, I'd rather get paid more money.
Of course, if I do that, I leave IT to the tender mercies of MCSEs, CNEs, A+s, and various twits with 4- and 6-year degrees that can't think their way out of a paper bag. I'm not willing to give up yet. My next assault on my lack of prosperity revolves around the idea that I'm in the wrong location, and I should seek a better IT market than Toledo Fucking Loser Ohio. Toledo is so bad, that even places in Ann Arbor (45min drive) don't bother advertising their jobs in the Toledo paper.
And of course salaries can go up if there are less people to employ. A given amount of money divided less ways is more per person
Yes, of course. When I worked for a bank, they paid 27.5c/mi for our varied running around fixing all the tech equipment in their banking centers. What happened 2 months after they outsourced all us IT field guys to some scumbag "IT Services" company (which, I might add, pays 22c/mi)? Yes, the bank upped their mileage compensation to the IRS standard 37.5c/mi. After all, with all the field guys gone, all you have left are banking-center managers and various executives imposing mileage.
Fuckers! I hope the general public sees what's going on and demands at least a share of the savings, as lower fees, increased APR on their accounts, etc.
The jobs essentially didn't materialize in the American common view since a lot of expansion happened overseas. Companies also had to recover from a vast array of unwise investment (well, gambling really). Since overseas expansion is so lucrative, and since corporations continue to use gambling in place of sensible investment (i.e. they are throwing money at financial instruments many levels removed from productive economic activity), then the jobs STILL haven't materialized.
In effect, GWB and his cronies have managed to get the American taxpayer to once again fund an expansion of elite properties, and to give the elite even more money to play the market with depsite the losses common Americans underwent.
Kerry's going to be no different when it comes to raping the American public in this manner of unparalleled concentration of wealth. We're going to be seeing some REAL hunger and homelessness a la America in the 1930s before people wise up and toss the "looting Capitalists" out of all levels of office, regaining some Socialism to assert popular controls on those thorny entities we call corporations.