What bank CEOs did was idiotic and a byproduct of Greenspan's Randian/laissez faire outlook on "self-regulation".
I am curious what you see that is "Randian" or "laissez faire" about Greenspan or his actions. Sure, he was a free-marketeer back in the 60s, but the dude had absolute power over the monetary policy of the entire country. There is nothing laissez-faire about that. Rand was in favor of ending the Federal Reserve altogether - the Greenspan of the last decade was out for gaining political power, not acting on principle.
With that said, the real outrage is that some of the CEOs of failed banks made millions off there own failures.
That is definitely true. Those companies should have gone into bankruptcy, not be rescued from their bad decisions.
You deny that you have free will, but your notion of what constitutes "free will" is not something anyone is asserting. It is a strawman.
Free will doesn't allow you to escape reality. Your mind doesn't exist *in* your brain - it *is* your brain. Any modification to your brain modifies your mind, and can certainly impact your ability to reason. Whether the damage is done with a bullet, an axe, or a disruptive magnetic field, makes no difference.
It would be absurd to demand - as you do - that in order for one to be considered to have "free will", one's mind must be capable of making the same choice regardless of the damage done to the brain. That is not free will - it is magic.
This research has nothing to do with free will. Free will doesn't free you from the confines of reality. If reality dictated that you have a B-field generator permanently strapped to your head, and you also happen to have knowledge of this research, it would be irrational for you *not* take those facts into consideration in determining whether you can make proper ethical judgments.
More fundamentally, an *improper* moral judgment presumes the ability to judge, which presumes free will.
A determinist can never convince anyone of anything, as the concept of conviction is genetically dependent on the concept of choice.
Again, the links you reference make no differentiation between the types of meats being eaten. If they were just munching down on standard meat from the grocery store, which is almost all grain-fed, then they were getting an improper omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acid ratio, which can cause problems. But those same problems already exist in the standard American diet.
A proper diet should fix those problems, and the way to do that is to eat meat that has a more natural ratio of omega-6 to omega-3, namely grass-fed meat (and eggs, and cheese, etc). Alternatively, one could supplement omega-3 to correct this ratio.
Were the people who have had problems on low-carb diets supplementing omega-3, or were they just assuming that all fat is the same (the same assumption this bogus study makes)?
Maybe I'm just cynical, but if those nutritionists gave good advice, they wouldn't be in business long. The truth would spread and become common sense, and then we would have no need for nutritionists.:)
Be aware of the risks of organ damage and aware of what you intake and you will be fine.
Err... organ damage? What exactly are you referring to? I've read quite a bit on this subject, and have never encountered any claim to organ damage, anywhere. You may be confusing ketosis with ketoacidosis.
Problem with the low-carb diet is that it is hard to maintain. HARD to maintain.
Really? I've been going over a year and a half now. On the contrary, everything I've read indicates that it's the simplest to maintain, as compared to calorie restriction, which is definitely the most difficult.
All casual foods are ridiculously high in carbs.
Ahh, well assuming you actually are trying to be healthy, you will definitely have to buy your own food and prepare your own meals. "Hard to maintain" - ? Still, I don't agree.
Funny, I lost 40 lbs eating high-fat low-carb food, purposely not exercising, and eating whenever I was hungry. And my blood pressure went down to normal from its high of 145/95, so I could stop taking blood pressure medication as well. I'm healthier than I've ever been.
Of course, unlike these rats, I did not eat cheesecake, frosting or other foods high in refined carbs. But this POS study doesn't bother to differentiate between high-fat/high-carb, high-fat/low-carb, etc, let alone about the balance or type of fatty acids present in the food (e.g. grass-fed bacon vs. grain-fed). This is not science, not even close.
I'm not disagreeing with your logic, but wanted to point out that by so over-reaching in their denial claims the insurance industry brought this upon themselves.
There can be no justification for the use of force. In reality, the insurance companies may have thought they could get away with it, due to their political lobbying. But then that is another wrong that should not have occurred. The simple fact is that the government should not be able to intervene into the economy. That would immediately put all lobbyists out of business, and insurance companies would have to survive on their own, without coercion from the government.
The proper response to government-forced benefits given to one group is not to give government-forced benefits to another group. No, the proper response is to ban government force from the marketplace altogether, making everyone responsible for their own choices.
People always had a choice. Nobody is forced to buy Microsoft's products. But most people want a good deal, and so buy whatever is cheapest. To them, browser choice is not as important as having more money to spend on other pursuits. So it is voluntary trade to mutual benefit, and thus is win-win. Now that Microsoft is forced to advertise for its competitors, it is no longer win-win.
You do realize that if insurance companies do not discriminate against pre-existing conditions, they cannot possibly stay in business. If everyone waits until they are sick to even buy insurance, there will not be an insurance fund from which to draw to cover costs. The entire idea of *insurance* requires that pre-existing conditions not be covered. Imagine if you could get auto-insurance after getting into a wreck, or flood insurance *after* the flood occurs. Nobody would bother buying insurance, and as a result, insurance could not exist. Sure, the bill imposes fines to prevent people from remaining uninsured, but for many people those fines are cheaper than actually getting insurance.
Can I pay for a Chinese man to power-level me through school?
The Chinese continue to buy US Govt debt, which allows the government to continue guaranteeing student loans, so technically, they already are.
Of course, without that intervention, tuition costs would be much lower, so you wouldn't need outside assistance. A few decades ago, a year of tuition at Stanford cost the average American a month's salary, and now costs the average American over a year's salary. Thank you, govt guarantee, for removing the incentive to lower prices!
Wouldn't an easier plan to destroy the credibility of wikileaks be to overflow it with bogus leaks and fake whistleblowers, flooding them with misinformation?
To convince you otherwise, check out Science journal writer and dietary research analyst Gary Taubes' epic treatise Good Calories, Bad Calories, which examines the ~150 year history of dietary research on obesity, and concludes that the type of food may be the primary factor.
He also examines this notion that you can simply reduce the number of calories, and see long-term weight loss. Not only does reducing calories prove nearly impossible in the long-term, simple calorie reduction does not improve heart disease risk factors, which is the primary purpose of reducing obesity. I would be curious what exactly you cut out of your diet, and what your lipid profile looks like (e.g. triglycerides, number of HDL, size of VLDL). Skinny does not automatically mean healthy.
Except of course that most obesity is caused by insulin resistance, which in turn is caused by continual spiking of insulin from increased blood glucose, which in turn is caused by continual consumption of highly-refined carbs. So while fat people certainly eat fatty foods (as does everyone else), the root cause of their obesity is the refined carbs in their diet, not the fat.
Scalping is a legitimate profession that serves a useful spot in the market. They provide convenience for customers, and help event ticket pricers determine what people are willing to pay. Not to mention the "scalpers" who are individuals trying to get their money back, for whatever reason - whether due to time conflict, or emergency financial situation, etc.
Or rather, scalping *would* be a legitimate profession, if people would embrace them, rather than try to shut them down.
The reason insurance has become attached to employment is entirely due to tax incentives put in place by the government, making it more costly not to tie insurance to employment.
So this would be an argument against government intervention, not an argument for more intervention.
they are too busy focusing on overcoming problems associated with rising sea levels, increasingly erratic monsoons, and declines in glacial meltwater.
Yep, so climate changes all the time, and harboring under the belief that it doesn't, and basing your life around that belief, is likely to lead to failure.
And more specifically, the reason I consider it the biggest such failure is because of the impact it has had on the Indian people and their government. They are now pissed off to find out it was all bogus, because they had been shaping policy and society around this belief.
Slashdot Mirror
Nice. Every day is made brighter when graced with American Psycho references.
What bank CEOs did was idiotic and a byproduct of Greenspan's Randian/laissez faire outlook on "self-regulation".
I am curious what you see that is "Randian" or "laissez faire" about Greenspan or his actions. Sure, he was a free-marketeer back in the 60s, but the dude had absolute power over the monetary policy of the entire country. There is nothing laissez-faire about that. Rand was in favor of ending the Federal Reserve altogether - the Greenspan of the last decade was out for gaining political power, not acting on principle.
With that said, the real outrage is that some of the CEOs of failed banks made millions off there own failures.
That is definitely true. Those companies should have gone into bankruptcy, not be rescued from their bad decisions.
You deny that you have free will, but your notion of what constitutes "free will" is not something anyone is asserting. It is a strawman.
Free will doesn't allow you to escape reality. Your mind doesn't exist *in* your brain - it *is* your brain. Any modification to your brain modifies your mind, and can certainly impact your ability to reason. Whether the damage is done with a bullet, an axe, or a disruptive magnetic field, makes no difference.
It would be absurd to demand - as you do - that in order for one to be considered to have "free will", one's mind must be capable of making the same choice regardless of the damage done to the brain. That is not free will - it is magic.
"They blew up Congress!! Hahaha!"
The scarcest of resources is human ingenuity. Fiat currency can be printed indefinitely.
This research has nothing to do with free will. Free will doesn't free you from the confines of reality. If reality dictated that you have a B-field generator permanently strapped to your head, and you also happen to have knowledge of this research, it would be irrational for you *not* take those facts into consideration in determining whether you can make proper ethical judgments.
More fundamentally, an *improper* moral judgment presumes the ability to judge, which presumes free will.
A determinist can never convince anyone of anything, as the concept of conviction is genetically dependent on the concept of choice.
free will
I don't think that term means what you think it means...
Again, the links you reference make no differentiation between the types of meats being eaten. If they were just munching down on standard meat from the grocery store, which is almost all grain-fed, then they were getting an improper omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acid ratio, which can cause problems. But those same problems already exist in the standard American diet.
A proper diet should fix those problems, and the way to do that is to eat meat that has a more natural ratio of omega-6 to omega-3, namely grass-fed meat (and eggs, and cheese, etc). Alternatively, one could supplement omega-3 to correct this ratio.
Were the people who have had problems on low-carb diets supplementing omega-3, or were they just assuming that all fat is the same (the same assumption this bogus study makes)?
Maybe I'm just cynical, but if those nutritionists gave good advice, they wouldn't be in business long. The truth would spread and become common sense, and then we would have no need for nutritionists. :)
Be aware of the risks of organ damage and aware of what you intake and you will be fine.
Err... organ damage? What exactly are you referring to? I've read quite a bit on this subject, and have never encountered any claim to organ damage, anywhere. You may be confusing ketosis with ketoacidosis.
Problem with the low-carb diet is that it is hard to maintain. HARD to maintain.
Really? I've been going over a year and a half now. On the contrary, everything I've read indicates that it's the simplest to maintain, as compared to calorie restriction, which is definitely the most difficult.
All casual foods are ridiculously high in carbs.
Ahh, well assuming you actually are trying to be healthy, you will definitely have to buy your own food and prepare your own meals. "Hard to maintain" - ? Still, I don't agree.
Funny, I lost 40 lbs eating high-fat low-carb food, purposely not exercising, and eating whenever I was hungry. And my blood pressure went down to normal from its high of 145/95, so I could stop taking blood pressure medication as well. I'm healthier than I've ever been.
Of course, unlike these rats, I did not eat cheesecake, frosting or other foods high in refined carbs. But this POS study doesn't bother to differentiate between high-fat/high-carb, high-fat/low-carb, etc, let alone about the balance or type of fatty acids present in the food (e.g. grass-fed bacon vs. grain-fed). This is not science, not even close.
When the moderators are trolls, who moderates the moderators?!
I'm not disagreeing with your logic, but wanted to point out that by so over-reaching in their denial claims the insurance industry brought this upon themselves.
There can be no justification for the use of force. In reality, the insurance companies may have thought they could get away with it, due to their political lobbying. But then that is another wrong that should not have occurred. The simple fact is that the government should not be able to intervene into the economy. That would immediately put all lobbyists out of business, and insurance companies would have to survive on their own, without coercion from the government.
The proper response to government-forced benefits given to one group is not to give government-forced benefits to another group. No, the proper response is to ban government force from the marketplace altogether, making everyone responsible for their own choices.
People always had a choice. Nobody is forced to buy Microsoft's products. But most people want a good deal, and so buy whatever is cheapest. To them, browser choice is not as important as having more money to spend on other pursuits. So it is voluntary trade to mutual benefit, and thus is win-win. Now that Microsoft is forced to advertise for its competitors, it is no longer win-win.
You do realize that if insurance companies do not discriminate against pre-existing conditions, they cannot possibly stay in business. If everyone waits until they are sick to even buy insurance, there will not be an insurance fund from which to draw to cover costs. The entire idea of *insurance* requires that pre-existing conditions not be covered. Imagine if you could get auto-insurance after getting into a wreck, or flood insurance *after* the flood occurs. Nobody would bother buying insurance, and as a result, insurance could not exist. Sure, the bill imposes fines to prevent people from remaining uninsured, but for many people those fines are cheaper than actually getting insurance.
Can I pay for a Chinese man to power-level me through school?
The Chinese continue to buy US Govt debt, which allows the government to continue guaranteeing student loans, so technically, they already are.
Of course, without that intervention, tuition costs would be much lower, so you wouldn't need outside assistance. A few decades ago, a year of tuition at Stanford cost the average American a month's salary, and now costs the average American over a year's salary. Thank you, govt guarantee, for removing the incentive to lower prices!
Wouldn't an easier plan to destroy the credibility of wikileaks be to overflow it with bogus leaks and fake whistleblowers, flooding them with misinformation?
Will people now have to get clearance from the NSA/FBI/DOD in order to get a nose job?
To convince you otherwise, check out Science journal writer and dietary research analyst Gary Taubes' epic treatise Good Calories, Bad Calories , which examines the ~150 year history of dietary research on obesity, and concludes that the type of food may be the primary factor.
He also examines this notion that you can simply reduce the number of calories, and see long-term weight loss. Not only does reducing calories prove nearly impossible in the long-term, simple calorie reduction does not improve heart disease risk factors, which is the primary purpose of reducing obesity. I would be curious what exactly you cut out of your diet, and what your lipid profile looks like (e.g. triglycerides, number of HDL, size of VLDL). Skinny does not automatically mean healthy.
Except of course that most obesity is caused by insulin resistance, which in turn is caused by continual spiking of insulin from increased blood glucose, which in turn is caused by continual consumption of highly-refined carbs. So while fat people certainly eat fatty foods (as does everyone else), the root cause of their obesity is the refined carbs in their diet, not the fat.
Scalping is a legitimate profession that serves a useful spot in the market. They provide convenience for customers, and help event ticket pricers determine what people are willing to pay. Not to mention the "scalpers" who are individuals trying to get their money back, for whatever reason - whether due to time conflict, or emergency financial situation, etc.
Or rather, scalping *would* be a legitimate profession, if people would embrace them, rather than try to shut them down.
The reason insurance has become attached to employment is entirely due to tax incentives put in place by the government, making it more costly not to tie insurance to employment.
So this would be an argument against government intervention, not an argument for more intervention.
So you didn't follow the contract, chose not to add the kid to your insurance until some time after his birth, and now blame everyone but yourself?
they are too busy focusing on overcoming problems associated with rising sea levels, increasingly erratic monsoons, and declines in glacial meltwater.
Yep, so climate changes all the time, and harboring under the belief that it doesn't, and basing your life around that belief, is likely to lead to failure.
And more specifically, the reason I consider it the biggest such failure is because of the impact it has had on the Indian people and their government. They are now pissed off to find out it was all bogus, because they had been shaping policy and society around this belief.