i've never seen so much vitriol from the left in my lifetime... especially against sarah palin. at least by my count, below-the-belt attacks were at an all time high.
you may say that "hey, obama's not responsible"... but guess what? his surrogates went on tv talking about the negatives just as fervently as the right.
before you flame me as a right wing nut, know i'm a registered democrat.
Senators, both of you have advocated getting more people to serve and to reform government of waste. I would like to know how you plan to get the smart people into government? What incentives are you going to put there in order to make government jobs not just for people that can't do anything else?
A lot more Democrats watch the show. That's the simple and very reasonable conclusion. I would bet that Republican candidates that appear on the O'Reilly Factor get a bump in their contributions as well.
As for the "elite demographic", I suppose what the summary is trying to say is that the people that watch the show have money to give. That is, it's not just Democrats that watch the show, it's RICH Democrats.
Let's face it, the Daily Show and the Colbert Report are both the equivalent to the Fox channel shows for the Democrats. Before you flame me, know I'm a Democrat.
So which is better? Some children getting left behind and some children getting ahead or no child getting left behind and no child getting ahead? Sadly, it seems like a zero-sum game.
Funny how you seem to think that the US has so much more crime. Murder, I grant you, is much more frequent here. But other statistics are worse in Europe:
It's actually better for them since it keeps a steady revenue stream instead of sales bumps. It might actually be a good thing for the user if you can use your subscription on any computer. That way, you wouldn't have to buy a subscription for the 6 computers in the house.
However, it sounds too much like a gym membership that doesn't get used. I'm going to guess that google documents and the like will see a lot more usage as these things get more and more costly. Microsoft is a monopoly trying to cash in on its market share, but those things usually aren't taken well. At some point, they will lose market share. It's inevitable since they're taking a lot of money for delivering a good that's only marginally better than what's out there for free.
It also doesn't take into account the fact that the media, fans, even to some extent opposing players and umpires want the streak to continue. At least with DiMaggio's streak, there were 4-5 games where he should not have had a hit but was creditted with one (2 errors that were scored as hits, 2 times where he should have been walked in the 9th but was pitched to, etc). For whatever reason, people want to see streaks continue and that's far MORE likely than nerves causing someone to have less of a chance to get a hit. The pitchers, the fielders, the umpires are probably MORE nervous than the hitter when there's a streak of that length.
BTW, hitting streaks are a media creation. Nobody cared about them until DiMaggio.
You could combine this system with a hot-or-not like rating system for the profile pictures. That way, women could screen for men that scored in the top 20% or something similar and the same for men. Maybe scoring a bunch of people could be a way to pay down your monthly rate to make people want to do it.
Of course, this gives people incentive to game the system, but once you look at the profile picture, it's easy to see if they were lying.
It's hard to be a "bad buyer", either you pay the amount, either you don't. No?
i think this is opening up a whole new can of worms... if you don't have a mutual feedback system, you will start seeing buyers extorting sellers. how many buyers do you think will have buyer's remorse and tell the seller that unless they take it back, they'll leave negative feedback? how about auctions that describe exactly what's in the auction that the buyer incorrectly reads and demands money back on? this happens often in used or broken items, but honestly, that's the buyer's fault if the title/description says so.
we can go further and it may get to a point where buyers refuse to leave good feedback unless they get some of the money refunded (they'll come up with some made-up reason like the packaging had a scratch). it may get to a point where the cost of selling will get high enough that they'll start dropping out.
they may be curing a cold, but may be inviting cancer.
Many say the system is broken because of fraud, which this article is suggesting, and indeed that is true. It's a very odd situation where the very poor have much much better health insurance than someone in the middle class. There are many cases of people who will call an ambulance every saturday and sleep there just so they don't have to take a cab home. Surely, preventing this sort of thing is a good thing? However, fraud like this, while obviously bad, is not the real culprit in the high costs of health care. I present two things that would make health care cost much less:
1. A ridiculous amount of cost in health care goes into bureaucracy... Something like 30%. Seriously, the number of insurance plans per insurance company numbers in the hundreds and each doctor has the burden of figuring out what's covered, what's not covered and getting paid for it. Is it any surprise that claims often have something like a 40% chance of coming back unpaid the first time around? The back and forth between an insurance company and a doctor's office can be very long and painful. It's not a surprise, then, that doctors often cite billing as the most unpleasant part of their work. Now, if we made the insurance claim a burden on the patient and not the doctor, this would clean up real fast. Note how incredibly efficient auto insurance claim adjudication has become. People would leave insurance companies in droves the first time they didn't get paid for something and the market would become much more efficient from there (same process that auto insurance has gone through). It wouldn't be a bad thing to do what a lot of current presidential candidates are saying and shift insurance choice from companies to individuals.
2. The real reason why health care in the US costs so much as opposed to, say, Canada, is the innovation. The health care economy in the US is almost entirely driven by innovation. New drugs and new machines cost lots of money. The market needs to correct this by changing to a more efficiency driven economy. Instead of creating something better than MRI machines, make the cost of MRI machines lower. Again, shifting the burden of the claim processing to the patient would make this much more efficient.
Isn't this common for a lot of geniuses? They achieve greatness early and go crazy later. The line between genius and insanity is very thin, Bobby Fischer being a great example.
Very interesting point and very consistent as well, I might add.
However, there is that small problem of countries gone wild. Our current militaristic policies are there for a good reason. Had we not stepped into WWII, Hitler very well may have succeeded. But he was clearly evil, you say... But where do you draw the line? According to your argument, we shouldn't have interfered with Hitler's government or try to "spread freedom" to France or Poland. In fact, that's exactly the argument that many people at that time made. Do we only interfere when countries attack other countries? Only when the government exterminates people? It's a very tricky question that's not so easily resolved with one overriding principle.
> You're part of the "9-11 Truth" committee... you think HIV doesn't cause AIDS... you think MMR vaccine causes autism... and > your presidential candidate of choice is Ron Paul.
Let me answer. I think 9-11 truth is a bunch of crock. I do think HIV causes AIDS. I think autism is genetic and I support Clinton and McCain (registered Democrat, btw). I'm going to make a guess here and say that you're an incredibly poor guesser and very quick to jump to opinions. That means you're either a liberal Democrat or an extreme conservative Republican, but given the AIDS/Ron Paul remark, I'm going to guess that you're a liberal Democrat and a troll.
That's why they started using the new term "climate change". If it gets cooler, they'll say "see, the climate is changing". They'll come up with some weather model that predicts a short-term cooldown but a long term warming. Either that or they'll use a different set of data to say that the warming is happening and that cooling is an illusion.
Just watch, when billions are at stake, dis-crediting will prove incredibly difficult.
Oh, they'll be dead before that. Artists are leaving record companies in droves. They'll start producing their own music and hiring niche marketing agencies to create demand instead. Even now, the smart ones are already moving in the marketing/concert promoter direction.
You sound like the guy that said 640K should be enough memory for anyone. Of course word processing/web browsing and email are the things that people use computers for, but that's not all that they'll use it for. Music/photo/video organization and editing, TV/media center applications are all things the general public will use computers for, but aren't quite primetime yet. These will need more power and you're right, there will be better applications in the future.
The real problem seems to be that it's in everyone's best interest to not be jerks, but if everyone's not a jerk, any selfish individual can be a jerk and do (marginally) better than everyone else. The situation with traffic we have now is the worst scenario of all... Everyone's being a jerk, causing the worst outcomes for all.
Let me see what you say here... You want all the copyrights and patents for software to go away, yet have good books/movies/software produced? You want no commercials on TV, but still something to watch? You want insurance companies to not pre-qualify applicants but still want a rate that's affordable? You think that America is degenerating because you're not getting everything you want. You want to eat fudge and lose 20 pounds.
Fact of the matter is, all those things you mention are there for a reason. You take those away, something else bad happens. Don't just say X is bad and therefore should be taken away. X is also good and you have to make sure that the good is preserved.
This is why I hate op-eds. They only point out the bad without saying anything good and make the solution sound too simplistic. It's also why I hate both extremes of politics.
Again, I think the Nobel prize committee wanted to send George Bush a message: "You are wreaking destruction and death; see how much better some other people are spending their energies." So this was as much an anti-war Nobel as it was a peace Nobel.
Much like the Dixie Chicks winning all those Grammies, this was a statement against Bush than for Gore.
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positive campaign? i really hope you're kidding.
i've never seen so much vitriol from the left in my lifetime... especially against sarah palin. at least by my count, below-the-belt attacks were at an all time high.
you may say that "hey, obama's not responsible"... but guess what? his surrogates went on tv talking about the negatives just as fervently as the right.
before you flame me as a right wing nut, know i'm a registered democrat.
Senators, both of you have advocated getting more people to serve and to reform government of waste. I would like to know how you plan to get the smart people into government? What incentives are you going to put there in order to make government jobs not just for people that can't do anything else?
A lot more Democrats watch the show. That's the simple and very reasonable conclusion. I would bet that Republican candidates that appear on the O'Reilly Factor get a bump in their contributions as well.
As for the "elite demographic", I suppose what the summary is trying to say is that the people that watch the show have money to give. That is, it's not just Democrats that watch the show, it's RICH Democrats.
Let's face it, the Daily Show and the Colbert Report are both the equivalent to the Fox channel shows for the Democrats. Before you flame me, know I'm a Democrat.
So which is better? Some children getting left behind and some children getting ahead or no child getting left behind and no child getting ahead? Sadly, it seems like a zero-sum game.
Funny how you seem to think that the US has so much more crime. Murder, I grant you, is much more frequent here. But other statistics are worse in Europe:
http://www.crimeandconsequences.com/2008/04/crime_punishment_in_the_us_and_1.html
Robberies have gone DOWN in the US since welfare reform, to the point where it's below other EU-country levels.
It's actually better for them since it keeps a steady revenue stream instead of sales bumps. It might actually be a good thing for the user if you can use your subscription on any computer. That way, you wouldn't have to buy a subscription for the 6 computers in the house.
However, it sounds too much like a gym membership that doesn't get used. I'm going to guess that google documents and the like will see a lot more usage as these things get more and more costly. Microsoft is a monopoly trying to cash in on its market share, but those things usually aren't taken well. At some point, they will lose market share. It's inevitable since they're taking a lot of money for delivering a good that's only marginally better than what's out there for free.
It also doesn't take into account the fact that the media, fans, even to some extent opposing players and umpires want the streak to continue. At least with DiMaggio's streak, there were 4-5 games where he should not have had a hit but was creditted with one (2 errors that were scored as hits, 2 times where he should have been walked in the 9th but was pitched to, etc). For whatever reason, people want to see streaks continue and that's far MORE likely than nerves causing someone to have less of a chance to get a hit. The pitchers, the fielders, the umpires are probably MORE nervous than the hitter when there's a streak of that length.
BTW, hitting streaks are a media creation. Nobody cared about them until DiMaggio.
can't they just do what pbs and npr do? get corporations to "sponsor" and put really unobtrusive advertising...
if it's there, it'll get used, probably for a purpose that's just the twinkle in some person's eye right now. think innovation, man!
just like other forms of taxation, there should be some exceptions for non-profits.
You could combine this system with a hot-or-not like rating system for the profile pictures. That way, women could screen for men that scored in the top 20% or something similar and the same for men. Maybe scoring a bunch of people could be a way to pay down your monthly rate to make people want to do it.
Of course, this gives people incentive to game the system, but once you look at the profile picture, it's easy to see if they were lying.
It's hard to be a "bad buyer", either you pay the amount, either you don't. No?
i think this is opening up a whole new can of worms... if you don't have a mutual feedback system, you will start seeing buyers extorting sellers. how many buyers do you think will have buyer's remorse and tell the seller that unless they take it back, they'll leave negative feedback? how about auctions that describe exactly what's in the auction that the buyer incorrectly reads and demands money back on? this happens often in used or broken items, but honestly, that's the buyer's fault if the title/description says so.
we can go further and it may get to a point where buyers refuse to leave good feedback unless they get some of the money refunded (they'll come up with some made-up reason like the packaging had a scratch). it may get to a point where the cost of selling will get high enough that they'll start dropping out.
they may be curing a cold, but may be inviting cancer.
Full disclosure, I'm in the industry.
Many say the system is broken because of fraud, which this article is suggesting, and indeed that is true. It's a very odd situation where the very poor have much much better health insurance than someone in the middle class. There are many cases of people who will call an ambulance every saturday and sleep there just so they don't have to take a cab home. Surely, preventing this sort of thing is a good thing? However, fraud like this, while obviously bad, is not the real culprit in the high costs of health care. I present two things that would make health care cost much less:
1. A ridiculous amount of cost in health care goes into bureaucracy... Something like 30%. Seriously, the number of insurance plans per insurance company numbers in the hundreds and each doctor has the burden of figuring out what's covered, what's not covered and getting paid for it. Is it any surprise that claims often have something like a 40% chance of coming back unpaid the first time around? The back and forth between an insurance company and a doctor's office can be very long and painful. It's not a surprise, then, that doctors often cite billing as the most unpleasant part of their work. Now, if we made the insurance claim a burden on the patient and not the doctor, this would clean up real fast. Note how incredibly efficient auto insurance claim adjudication has become. People would leave insurance companies in droves the first time they didn't get paid for something and the market would become much more efficient from there (same process that auto insurance has gone through). It wouldn't be a bad thing to do what a lot of current presidential candidates are saying and shift insurance choice from companies to individuals.
2. The real reason why health care in the US costs so much as opposed to, say, Canada, is the innovation. The health care economy in the US is almost entirely driven by innovation. New drugs and new machines cost lots of money. The market needs to correct this by changing to a more efficiency driven economy. Instead of creating something better than MRI machines, make the cost of MRI machines lower. Again, shifting the burden of the claim processing to the patient would make this much more efficient.
Isn't this common for a lot of geniuses? They achieve greatness early and go crazy later. The line between genius and insanity is very thin, Bobby Fischer being a great example.
I'm just waiting for the wii guy to do the same thing for like $5
Very interesting point and very consistent as well, I might add.
However, there is that small problem of countries gone wild. Our current militaristic policies are there for a good reason. Had we not stepped into WWII, Hitler very well may have succeeded. But he was clearly evil, you say... But where do you draw the line? According to your argument, we shouldn't have interfered with Hitler's government or try to "spread freedom" to France or Poland. In fact, that's exactly the argument that many people at that time made. Do we only interfere when countries attack other countries? Only when the government exterminates people? It's a very tricky question that's not so easily resolved with one overriding principle.
> You're part of the "9-11 Truth" committee... you think HIV doesn't cause AIDS... you think MMR vaccine causes autism... and
> your presidential candidate of choice is Ron Paul.
Let me answer. I think 9-11 truth is a bunch of crock. I do think HIV causes AIDS. I think autism is genetic and I support Clinton and McCain (registered Democrat, btw). I'm going to make a guess here and say that you're an incredibly poor guesser and very quick to jump to opinions. That means you're either a liberal Democrat or an extreme conservative Republican, but given the AIDS/Ron Paul remark, I'm going to guess that you're a liberal Democrat and a troll.
That's why they started using the new term "climate change". If it gets cooler, they'll say "see, the climate is changing". They'll come up with some weather model that predicts a short-term cooldown but a long term warming. Either that or they'll use a different set of data to say that the warming is happening and that cooling is an illusion.
Just watch, when billions are at stake, dis-crediting will prove incredibly difficult.
Oh, they'll be dead before that. Artists are leaving record companies in droves. They'll start producing their own music and hiring niche marketing agencies to create demand instead. Even now, the smart ones are already moving in the marketing/concert promoter direction.
You sound like the guy that said 640K should be enough memory for anyone. Of course word processing/web browsing and email are the things that people use computers for, but that's not all that they'll use it for. Music/photo/video organization and editing, TV/media center applications are all things the general public will use computers for, but aren't quite primetime yet. These will need more power and you're right, there will be better applications in the future.
The real problem seems to be that it's in everyone's best interest to not be jerks, but if everyone's not a jerk, any selfish individual can be a jerk and do (marginally) better than everyone else. The situation with traffic we have now is the worst scenario of all... Everyone's being a jerk, causing the worst outcomes for all.
I've got to believe that using this with photoshop is the best use...
Let me see what you say here... You want all the copyrights and patents for software to go away, yet have good books/movies/software produced? You want no commercials on TV, but still something to watch? You want insurance companies to not pre-qualify applicants but still want a rate that's affordable? You think that America is degenerating because you're not getting everything you want. You want to eat fudge and lose 20 pounds.
Fact of the matter is, all those things you mention are there for a reason. You take those away, something else bad happens. Don't just say X is bad and therefore should be taken away. X is also good and you have to make sure that the good is preserved.
This is why I hate op-eds. They only point out the bad without saying anything good and make the solution sound too simplistic. It's also why I hate both extremes of politics.
Changes in resource access can also cause conflict to dissipate. The assumption that it will always be a negative consequence is a stupid one.
Again, I think the Nobel prize committee wanted to send George Bush a message: "You are wreaking destruction and death; see how much better some other people are spending their energies." So this was as much an anti-war Nobel as it was a peace Nobel.
Much like the Dixie Chicks winning all those Grammies, this was a statement against Bush than for Gore.