Agreed. Two would have been enough. Tolkein wrote it as a standalone story in one volume. It doesn't need anything else. I think PJ is starting to like the smell of his own flatus so much that he doesn't want to stop eating beans, so to speak.
I think the current world record is 66, held by some guy in Norway. It might be hard to get advice from him, though. I think he's in a hospital, of all places.
The government cannot tell me that I can afford it, and they couldn't fine me. I'd be off to jail."
There is no "off to jail" in the ACA.
You'd be asked to prove that you did not have enough money to afford a plan on the exchange, then you would fall under medicaid (poverty proven, by then) and then you would pay a subsidized rate. As long as you don't opt out of carrying insurance at all, there is no "fine" or tax penalty.
"that's precisely what this law is: a government mandated fee (NOT a tax, that's also BS) for simply being alive."
Yes, it's a fee. It's a fee for a financial risk-mitigating service. It's also a fee I've been paying (in the form of higher premiums) for people who want to be alive and not pay their own bills for the services (in the emergency room, of all places) of people who keep them alive, working, having bratty kids, etc. It's also a fee that I've been paying for people who don't have the good sense to get regular medical checkups and screenings at a clinic pr Dr's office when they're well, so that their chronic diseases can be managed such that they don't have to go to the emergency room and be admitted to treat conditions that could have been prevented or controlled.
As it happens, I pay other fees for other people to be alive (for water treatment and sewer service, for public schools, for bridges and infrastructure, for firefighting coverage), but I get to share in those benefits, too, so these are fees that I pay in the form of taxes, because the good is public.
I'm quite tired of having me and every other insured person having to foot the bill so that libertarians and objectivists can enjoy some kind of idealistic existence.
I met a guy, a guy who owned his own construction business, who refused to get health insurance. He always went to the ER when he was sick, and only when he was very sick or injured. Never paid a single medical bill. He had a really nice power boat -- a big cabin cruiser. I asked him why he didn't buy insurance and he said that he could not afford to carry it for his company, and that even if he could afford it, he had concluded that he would only end up paying more than he would get out of it, should he have to rely on it. If he was deathly sick or fatally injured, nobody was going to be able to make him pay when he was dead. He said that by not paying a bill he didn't have to pay it permitted him more money to do things he liked -- like his boat. I said, "so, because I pay my insurance, you got free health care and also that boat." and he looked me straight in the eye and said "yeah, exactly".
Now that guy has to pay -=something=-, and I feel a little better about having to share air with him.
I agree completely. I liken Ron Paul to Pat Buchanan. He'll start talking and he says something that makes sense, and then he keeps talking and you begin to realize just how crazy and idiotic he really is. I actually believe that Ron Paul is bat-poop insane.
I bought 2 GE CF bulbs back in the mid-90s, these were the super-bright ones (equivalent, they said with a 100W), and one of them is still going strong as my back porch light.
Sometimes you get a bad salesperson, but the folks at microcenter are the best-informed and knowledgeable people about computer parts and tech stuff out of any brick & mortar store. Yes, they will try to sell you, but you're not forced to buy anything, and I've never really been pressured on anything I've been shopping for. They also know the store very well, and can save you time hunting around for stuff. You can use salespeople to your advantage, you know. What do you care if they sticker your stuff, anyway? It doesn't raise the price, and they get credit for being helpful. On the flip side, salespeople who want to get credit for a sale they had no part in are being unethical and it's okay to report that to management.
Agreed. I go to that same Microcenter store. The staff seems to be much better informed about what's on the shelves, they know where everything is, and the selection is great. In my mind, they beat Frys.
- Delegate and get used to it. Get your team used to doing what you tell them to do.
- If you're managing people you used to work with as a peer, realize that the relationship has changed. You are not their friend. You are their boss. This doesn't mean that you can't be nice or understanding, but it does mean that you can't let anyone on your team get away with poor performance or bad behavior because they're "a friend".
- Resist the temptation to jump in and help out with things. If you assign work to someone, do not jump in and try to help with it. You need to demonstrate that you trust the people that work for you to do the job you give them.
- You will be having a lot of confidential conversations. Get used to that. There will be many things that you will know and cannot share: either with your team or with your peers. Management can be very much like poker. You can win big by just keeping your mouth shut.
- One of the most powerful skills you can develop as a manager is not delegation or being a spreadsheet whiz or learning six sigma or anything like that. Relationship management is the skill, and it can be learned. Frequent, regular and frank contact with any peer that you rely on as a provider or customer will help you develop it.
- Be a shield for your people. Help cut through the BS for them and defend them (as appropriate) when they're getting picked on by other groups or their dopey managers.
There's nothing special about hemp actually. Any oily seed crop will do -- rapeseed (canola), cottonseed, and mustard (especially mustard) are all great seed crops for oil.
I went to my first Whovian Festival (a DWFCA event) in 1980. I liked Tom Baker a lot (gave me the inspiration to learn how to knit, too!). After awhile, my local PBS station started airing a bunch of Pertwee episodes, and I held on through Peter Davison's run, but the station aired a lot of Troughton's run, eventually, too. Basically, I was a dedicated viewer for 10 years, with all those re-broadcasts.
I like all of them. I have not tried watching the 2005 reboot, as I don't want to spoil my remembrances of those old shows, but perhaps I'll give in at some point.
For me, the background stories about Galllifrey (and the politics of the timelords), the origins of the Daleks and Cybermen, and the development of The Master were the sources of the most interest.
I'm not going to quote your post, but you asked how one would explain the rise in wealth over the 1800s. Consider that market dynamics were almost totally local, as imports were extremely expensive. As such, the economy was working with the local supply and demand. At this time, the US was largely untapped from a resource standpoint and most of the country (even before the louisiana purchase) was rural. Land was for the taking, at almost no cost apart from the effort required to claim it. Leaving resources aside for a moment, consider the cost of labor. During this period, slavery, child labor and indentured servitude kept labor costs low --- as low as they could possibly be, from an economic standpoint. Let's leave resources aside, now, for a moment. Consider the cost of finished goods. Finished goods were almost all imported at the start of the 19th century, and they were very costly. As real manufacturing took hold in the middle of the 19th century, the margin for US-based manufacturers selling domestically could be really large. Growing in size (and growing profits) could be easily done by simply scaling up. Pricing for these items stayed relatively high, not because production volume was restricted, but because distribution volume was constrained and distribution was slow and costly. This is not analogous in any way to how the US economy operates today.
As for your assertion that the creation of the fed was responsible for inflating the money supply, you appear to be conflating present-day economic relationships (vis a vis the fed) with conditions of a much simpler time. (Things got a lot more complex in the 80s.) The actual fact is that US currency was on a precious metals standard until the Nixon administration. What this means is that every dollar was backed by a given amount of silver or gold in the reserve. In these conditions, there can be no greater inflation of the money supply than there is an increase in the amount of metals in reserve, or a corresponding increase in the market price in those metals. Economically, this is very constraining, and makes the domestic money supply vulnerable to many factors outside its control. The fed's job in the early 20th century was to help set interest rates and manage the reserve as much as possible to keep the value of currency relatively stable. That was a much simpler job, in the early 1900s.
What you're asking for, in terms of price deflation, is exactly the goal of an ideal communist economy. Read up on the deflationary spiral, or "stagflation", and you'll understand it a little better.
I work for a company that is ostensibly "Irish" and we have a handful of employees, there. The number of employees in the US is larger by at least 3-4 orders of magnitude.
Gosh, when I saw all those photos and those "superhero" people, I was filled with a brief desire to get a baseball bat, hunt them down, and club them all into unconsciousness... especially "lightbulb guy with a cane". Let's face it, if you don't have superpowers, you're just a guy in some stupid costume who can be easily beaten into unconsciousness by anyone with a baseball bat.
Disclosure: I make and apply my shaving cream with badger-hair brushes.
How about the brits offer a bounty for trapped badgers, slaughter them, and sign up with a company like Simpson to make special edition UK-made badger shaving brushes to 1) offset the cost of the bounty and 2) fund badger ranching cooperatives.
It probably has something to do with the sizable reduction in moving parts. A turbine only really has one moving part. Granted, there's a whole host of other gizmos and whatnots that are part of a car, like compressors and brakes and fans and the steeping system and other stuff, but from a powerplant perspective, you'd have to find a way to make money on something that's a lot more simple, and yet also taps into a whole new type of engine expertise for those times when repair and service are required. The infrastructure around IC engines is mature and ubiquitous. The same cannot be said for turbine engines. That would be my guess, as to why it hasn't been replaced with the turbine engine. I have a feeling that it's all about the benjamins.
Reminds me of the Rosen Motors concept. They had a flywheel that was used to store enough of a charge to actually start the thing, but it was pretty efficient. I really like the idea, and hope it takes hold.
"People weren't thinking about how to fabricate a wire in three dimensional space,' said Min-Feng Yu, a professor of mechanical science and engineering.". Yep. That's why wires have been two-dimensional up to now.
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Agreed. Two would have been enough. Tolkein wrote it as a standalone story in one volume. It doesn't need anything else. I think PJ is starting to like the smell of his own flatus so much that he doesn't want to stop eating beans, so to speak.
I think the current world record is 66, held by some guy in Norway. It might be hard to get advice from him, though. I think he's in a hospital, of all places.
The government cannot tell me that I can afford it, and they couldn't fine me. I'd be off to jail."
There is no "off to jail" in the ACA.
You'd be asked to prove that you did not have enough money to afford a plan on the exchange, then you would fall under medicaid (poverty proven, by then) and then you would pay a subsidized rate. As long as you don't opt out of carrying insurance at all, there is no "fine" or tax penalty.
I commend you, sir. You have hit the nail squarely on the head. If I had the points, I'd mod you insightful.
"that's precisely what this law is: a government mandated fee (NOT a tax, that's also BS) for simply being alive."
Yes, it's a fee. It's a fee for a financial risk-mitigating service. It's also a fee I've been paying (in the form of higher premiums) for people who want to be alive and not pay their own bills for the services (in the emergency room, of all places) of people who keep them alive, working, having bratty kids, etc. It's also a fee that I've been paying for people who don't have the good sense to get regular medical checkups and screenings at a clinic pr Dr's office when they're well, so that their chronic diseases can be managed such that they don't have to go to the emergency room and be admitted to treat conditions that could have been prevented or controlled.
As it happens, I pay other fees for other people to be alive (for water treatment and sewer service, for public schools, for bridges and infrastructure, for firefighting coverage), but I get to share in those benefits, too, so these are fees that I pay in the form of taxes, because the good is public.
I'm quite tired of having me and every other insured person having to foot the bill so that libertarians and objectivists can enjoy some kind of idealistic existence.
I met a guy, a guy who owned his own construction business, who refused to get health insurance. He always went to the ER when he was sick, and only when he was very sick or injured. Never paid a single medical bill. He had a really nice power boat -- a big cabin cruiser. I asked him why he didn't buy insurance and he said that he could not afford to carry it for his company, and that even if he could afford it, he had concluded that he would only end up paying more than he would get out of it, should he have to rely on it. If he was deathly sick or fatally injured, nobody was going to be able to make him pay when he was dead. He said that by not paying a bill he didn't have to pay it permitted him more money to do things he liked -- like his boat. I said, "so, because I pay my insurance, you got free health care and also that boat." and he looked me straight in the eye and said "yeah, exactly".
Now that guy has to pay -=something=-, and I feel a little better about having to share air with him.
Thankfully, I have Microcenter in my city.
I agree completely. I liken Ron Paul to Pat Buchanan. He'll start talking and he says something that makes sense, and then he keeps talking and you begin to realize just how crazy and idiotic he really is. I actually believe that Ron Paul is bat-poop insane.
I bought 2 GE CF bulbs back in the mid-90s, these were the super-bright ones (equivalent, they said with a 100W), and one of them is still going strong as my back porch light.
The radio series "This American Life" did a story about a guy who traveled to India and lost his marbles on Mefloquine. Look for "Contents Unknown".
Sometimes you get a bad salesperson, but the folks at microcenter are the best-informed and knowledgeable people about computer parts and tech stuff out of any brick & mortar store. Yes, they will try to sell you, but you're not forced to buy anything, and I've never really been pressured on anything I've been shopping for. They also know the store very well, and can save you time hunting around for stuff. You can use salespeople to your advantage, you know. What do you care if they sticker your stuff, anyway? It doesn't raise the price, and they get credit for being helpful. On the flip side, salespeople who want to get credit for a sale they had no part in are being unethical and it's okay to report that to management.
Agreed. I go to that same Microcenter store. The staff seems to be much better informed about what's on the shelves, they know where everything is, and the selection is great. In my mind, they beat Frys.
There's nothing special about hemp actually. Any oily seed crop will do -- rapeseed (canola), cottonseed, and mustard (especially mustard) are all great seed crops for oil.
I, too, drive an S2000 -- a 2005 silverstone. Great car.
I went to my first Whovian Festival (a DWFCA event) in 1980. I liked Tom Baker a lot (gave me the inspiration to learn how to knit, too!). After awhile, my local PBS station started airing a bunch of Pertwee episodes, and I held on through Peter Davison's run, but the station aired a lot of Troughton's run, eventually, too. Basically, I was a dedicated viewer for 10 years, with all those re-broadcasts.
I like all of them. I have not tried watching the 2005 reboot, as I don't want to spoil my remembrances of those old shows, but perhaps I'll give in at some point.
For me, the background stories about Galllifrey (and the politics of the timelords), the origins of the Daleks and Cybermen, and the development of The Master were the sources of the most interest.
I'm not going to quote your post, but you asked how one would explain the rise in wealth over the 1800s. Consider that market dynamics were almost totally local, as imports were extremely expensive. As such, the economy was working with the local supply and demand. At this time, the US was largely untapped from a resource standpoint and most of the country (even before the louisiana purchase) was rural. Land was for the taking, at almost no cost apart from the effort required to claim it. Leaving resources aside for a moment, consider the cost of labor. During this period, slavery, child labor and indentured servitude kept labor costs low --- as low as they could possibly be, from an economic standpoint. Let's leave resources aside, now, for a moment. Consider the cost of finished goods. Finished goods were almost all imported at the start of the 19th century, and they were very costly. As real manufacturing took hold in the middle of the 19th century, the margin for US-based manufacturers selling domestically could be really large. Growing in size (and growing profits) could be easily done by simply scaling up. Pricing for these items stayed relatively high, not because production volume was restricted, but because distribution volume was constrained and distribution was slow and costly. This is not analogous in any way to how the US economy operates today.
As for your assertion that the creation of the fed was responsible for inflating the money supply, you appear to be conflating present-day economic relationships (vis a vis the fed) with conditions of a much simpler time. (Things got a lot more complex in the 80s.) The actual fact is that US currency was on a precious metals standard until the Nixon administration. What this means is that every dollar was backed by a given amount of silver or gold in the reserve. In these conditions, there can be no greater inflation of the money supply than there is an increase in the amount of metals in reserve, or a corresponding increase in the market price in those metals. Economically, this is very constraining, and makes the domestic money supply vulnerable to many factors outside its control. The fed's job in the early 20th century was to help set interest rates and manage the reserve as much as possible to keep the value of currency relatively stable. That was a much simpler job, in the early 1900s.
What you're asking for, in terms of price deflation, is exactly the goal of an ideal communist economy. Read up on the deflationary spiral, or "stagflation", and you'll understand it a little better.
I work for a company that is ostensibly "Irish" and we have a handful of employees, there. The number of employees in the US is larger by at least 3-4 orders of magnitude.
Gosh, when I saw all those photos and those "superhero" people, I was filled with a brief desire to get a baseball bat, hunt them down, and club them all into unconsciousness... especially "lightbulb guy with a cane". Let's face it, if you don't have superpowers, you're just a guy in some stupid costume who can be easily beaten into unconsciousness by anyone with a baseball bat.
EAR TRUMPET.
http://www.oldsouthbooks.com/images/DSC00481.JPG
You are welcome.
Disclosure: I make and apply my shaving cream with badger-hair brushes.
How about the brits offer a bounty for trapped badgers, slaughter them, and sign up with a company like Simpson to make special edition UK-made badger shaving brushes to 1) offset the cost of the bounty and 2) fund badger ranching cooperatives.
Mmmmm. Smaller government. I think I'll throw a Tea Party.
It probably has something to do with the sizable reduction in moving parts. A turbine only really has one moving part. Granted, there's a whole host of other gizmos and whatnots that are part of a car, like compressors and brakes and fans and the steeping system and other stuff, but from a powerplant perspective, you'd have to find a way to make money on something that's a lot more simple, and yet also taps into a whole new type of engine expertise for those times when repair and service are required. The infrastructure around IC engines is mature and ubiquitous. The same cannot be said for turbine engines. That would be my guess, as to why it hasn't been replaced with the turbine engine. I have a feeling that it's all about the benjamins.
Reminds me of the Rosen Motors concept. They had a flywheel that was used to store enough of a charge to actually start the thing, but it was pretty efficient. I really like the idea, and hope it takes hold.
Just put an ATI-branded Radeon 5870 in a new rig last week.
"People weren't thinking about how to fabricate a wire in three dimensional space,' said Min-Feng Yu, a professor of mechanical science and engineering.". Yep. That's why wires have been two-dimensional up to now.