Ron Paul's just about the perfect candidate for a stereotypical evil wealthy businessman.
Which is why all the investment banks, pharmaceutical companies, hedge funds, and other large organizations full of evil, wealthy businessmen that would allegedly greatly benefit from Ron Paul's platform are dumping millions of dollars into his campaign funds...
Follow the money to determine which candidate is perfect for a stereotypical, evil wealthy businessman.
It took me five seconds to remember the New York Times Editorial that cites exactly what you're looking for NY Times Op Ed
I found the following particularly interesting:
"According to Google’s figures, if donations to all religious organizations are excluded, liberals give slightly more to charity than conservatives do. But Mr. Brooks says that if measuring by the percentage of income given, conservatives are more generous than liberals even to secular causes."
So this announcement from the government advising people to purchase a new Windows Operating System occurs only days after Microsoft's stock was impacted due to poor Operating System sales Microsoft Stock news
"Frightening expansion of government" is the key.
Get ready everyone. The more you let government control health care, the more they will control our lives.
How can the left not see this as an issue? You give government more and more control of health care, the following situation is guaranteed:
We'll have another wonderful period where we get a right-wing nutjob as president and a congress full of equally insane nutjobs that want to force everyone to follow their personal vision of morality. They will have control of health care. BOOM. Abortion becomes illegal (or not a preferred option, thus costing over 50K) . Stem cell treatments will be prevented. Heck, some of them would probably want all forms of birth control to be made illegal. Could you imagine GW Bush and his congress having control of health care? How does this NOT scare anyone?
Please note that I am completely against how healthcare works right now. You don't know the cost of the service before you get it, making it ripe for preferential treatment and fraud. Too many people are put into bankruptcy due to health care costs. Something does need to change.
The Health Care bill that was passed unfortunately is a disgrace and does nothing to fix the issue of cost. The cost of labor in the US is artificially high due to health care costs and thus makes it even harder for us to recover in a global economy, but the health care bill doesn't address this...during a time of high unemployment.
The day the bill passed, stock prices for various corporations that sell insurance or prescription medicine went up. If you can't see that this was nothing but more corporatism, I have some promising Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers stock to sell you.
Mod Parent Up. This is a very important point. How long does it take to transmit a single packet's worth of electrons onto the wire? How long to get it over even a simple 1m length of fiber/cable? And how many packets are part of a given trade?
It's like measuring down to the thousandths of a mL using a standard graduated cylinder.
I drew the same conclusion. The quants deal with markets in which their decisions can change the landscape of the playing field. In predicting winners of sports games, they have no such influence. It's not an apples to apples comparison.
I like your analogy!
Absolutely. Well said.
To take this further, last year the Wall Street Journal had an excellent editorial that showed the majority of foreclosure issues were not sub-prime mortgages, but normal, prime mortgages. The real culprit was "zero money down". It appears that the need to spend well outside one's means was not limited to people with bad credit. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124657539489189043.html
I am surprised that these studies haven't been taken further. One would hope that if we were to try and prevent such a crisis from recurring, we would analyze the the actual root cause of the problem and devise a solution for it
How much evidence is there to show that America closely observed other nations' health care systems and tried to take the best from each in this 2000 page bill? I believe these were the steps taken by South Korea when they started their reform. I read many parts of the bill and I'm still trying to figure out what on earth they have to do with health care, let alone better health care.
I agree that the American system is a disaster, but many are worried we're going to get a large, clunky, bureaucratic health care system that ends up causing more problems than solutions.
The funniest part so far is that many people who have been pushing so hard for nationalized health care are up in arms regarding the abortion amendment. If you give complete power over to the state, the state can do whatever they want and you will have no recourse...other than leaving the country. This is why it's a good idea not to give such power to the state, especially if its Congress is full of crazies from both sides of the spectrum.
Get ready for more nonsense like congress preventing our only health insurance provider (soon to be the government) from allowing any medical treatment that involves stem cells. It could happen. Politics will grow deeper between the doctor and the patient. If this doesn't scare you, I don't know what does.
Again, there has to be some solutions to the American Health Care debacle, but I'm not seeing many good ideas coming from Congress.
Then you go ahead and pay more. Donate extra amounts of your hard earned money to the government. I and many others will not stop you...
But you're really asking that everyone pay more, not just you. That's where the problem lies. I don't want to pay more for anything of which I lack control. I have no issues with charity and donate to charity freely. Government is forcing charity on us these days, and often it is not efficient and not for causes I support.
If a liberty is listed in the Bill of Rights, it is an essential liberty. This FISA Bill is clearly violating the 4th Amendment.
Additionally, this bill grants retroactive immunity, which goes against Section 9 of the Constitution:
"No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed."
Let me know what safety, if any, I am getting from this bill. I doubt that I am gaining anything and this will most likely lead to a bunch of government-paid voyeurs peering into everyone's personal lives as seen in "O.B.I.T."
"The machines are everywhere! Oh you'll find them all, you're a zealous people. And you'll make a great show of smashing a few of them. But for every one you destroy, hundreds of others will be built. And they will demoralize you, break your spirits, create such rifts and tensions in your society that no one will be able to repair them! Oh, you're a savage, despairing planet; and when we come here to live, you friendless, demoralized flotsam will fall without even a single shot being fired. Senator, enjoy the few years left you. There is no answer. You're all of the same dark persuasion! You demand - insist on knowing every private thought and hunger of everyone: your families, your neighbors, everyone - but yourselves."
Until a large, dispersed group of people break into a large number of these machines and rig the elections so that "Homer J Simpson" is the presedential victor in multiple states, we aren't going to see the government persue a real alternative to these proprietary magic voting machines.
I wonder how many people will say "Woo hoo!" and how many will say "D'oh".
There are previous laws stating that people have to drive with both hands on the wheel. Now there are laws that state you cannot drive with a cell phone in your hand.
The Grandparent and Parent are right, but the Parent doesn't understand it: People do want clarity... and that's why many of us are asking for less laws. There's no clarity in the current quagmire of laws, many of which are redundant or "forgot to be removed" (see Boston's old law about arresting Native Americans).
We're engineers and computer scientists here. Many of us like strong definitions and standards. We like to strive for efficiency. We like progress. The current legal system appears to lack most of these qualities. When we hear about the need for new laws, "brilliant" ideas such as "we need to ban violent video games" come to mind.
Politicians are lawyers and that's the bottom line of the problem. Much of what is needed to fix the current mindset of law would require the politicians to turn against lawyers (their friends and former selves) and each other. I don't see it happening anytime soon.
So how about a compromise? There will always be pushes for new laws; however, there are too many old, broken laws. Either force a sunset provision for every new law (where at the expiration date the law can be extended, but only after a conscious effort has been made to review it), mandate that "for every new law created, 2 others must be removed", or do BOTH.
Re:Since other aspects are sufficiently covered ..
on
IT and Divorce?
·
· Score: 1
And who could forget their many incarnations of "TRON", especially the one that used the voice expansion. I really liked "Minotaur" for the IntelliVision. Very challenging.
I sat down with a group of engineers living in the Boston area (Civil, Mechanical, Electrical, etc), and we discussed the Big Dig tragedy. The civl engineer insisted that the design itself would work, but it would require the the drilling be done properly, all holes then cleaned correctly, and then the epoxy set set correctly. He then went on to say that this apparently did not happen.
What was more interesting was the ensuing conversation. What was brought up was that if everyone knew that this project was going to be given to contractors who were likely to cut corners, would this have been the best design? Judging from the results of cut corners (the local boston news has been covering that some holes have no epoxy in them and other blatant implementation failures), this design was not "fool-proof" enough given who was implementing the project.
We then brought up our own personal experiences in our respective fields where the best design was not the cleanest design, but the design in which if some one implemented it wrong, there'd be no unforseen consequences (such as making a routing change in one branch office, only to black hole traffic destined for another office). I wonder how many people here have been faced with projects where one of the bigger criteria was to make the implementation "fool-proof".
The first time Deckard meets Rachel, they have an interesting dialogue, which Tyrell interrupts with "Is this to be an empathy test?".
I always took this as Tyrell knowing they were both Replicants.
To expand on this point:
What most people don't seem to grasp is the quality of the average government worker. They are human. They will make typos, they will misunderstand things, they will be lazy, etc. There will be instances of "Buttle vs. Tuttle", in which case the innocent will be accidentally treated like the guilty.
This should be our biggest fear when faced with the erosion of our rights and more intrusive actions by the government. You could have done nothing wrong, but still have something to worry about. Now they have more avenues of data....to make more mistakes on.
Slashdot Mirror
Ron Paul's just about the perfect candidate for a stereotypical evil wealthy businessman.
Which is why all the investment banks, pharmaceutical companies, hedge funds, and other large organizations full of evil, wealthy businessmen that would allegedly greatly benefit from Ron Paul's platform are dumping millions of dollars into his campaign funds...
Follow the money to determine which candidate is perfect for a stereotypical, evil wealthy businessman.
New Poll!
When you saw the news that CmdrTaco was resigning your first thought was:
1) So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish: 99.99%
2) Some other option
3) Yet another option
4) A fourth option
5) CowboyNeal
Seriously, I think the collective all thought option 1 at the same time.
We all are individuals.
-NS
It took me five seconds to remember the New York Times Editorial that cites exactly what you're looking for
NY Times Op Ed
I found the following particularly interesting: "According to Google’s figures, if donations to all religious organizations are excluded, liberals give slightly more to charity than conservatives do. But Mr. Brooks says that if measuring by the percentage of income given, conservatives are more generous than liberals even to secular causes."
As long as you aren't using local-only service, you are no longer paying that tax on your landline:
Wikipedia - Federal Telephone Excise Tax
I found the following article from the New Yorker to provide considerable information about what led up to the charges:
New Yorker: The Secret Sharer
So this announcement from the government advising people to purchase a new Windows Operating System occurs only days after Microsoft's stock was impacted due to poor Operating System sales
Microsoft Stock news
"Frightening expansion of government" is the key.
Get ready everyone. The more you let government control health care, the more they will control our lives.
How can the left not see this as an issue? You give government more and more control of health care, the following situation is guaranteed:
We'll have another wonderful period where we get a right-wing nutjob as president and a congress full of equally insane nutjobs that want to force everyone to follow their personal vision of morality. They will have control of health care. BOOM. Abortion becomes illegal (or not a preferred option, thus costing over 50K) . Stem cell treatments will be prevented. Heck, some of them would probably want all forms of birth control to be made illegal. Could you imagine GW Bush and his congress having control of health care? How does this NOT scare anyone?
Please note that I am completely against how healthcare works right now. You don't know the cost of the service before you get it, making it ripe for preferential treatment and fraud. Too many people are put into bankruptcy due to health care costs. Something does need to change. The Health Care bill that was passed unfortunately is a disgrace and does nothing to fix the issue of cost. The cost of labor in the US is artificially high due to health care costs and thus makes it even harder for us to recover in a global economy, but the health care bill doesn't address this...during a time of high unemployment.
The day the bill passed, stock prices for various corporations that sell insurance or prescription medicine went up. If you can't see that this was nothing but more corporatism, I have some promising Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers stock to sell you.
Mod Parent Up. This is a very important point. How long does it take to transmit a single packet's worth of electrons onto the wire? How long to get it over even a simple 1m length of fiber/cable? And how many packets are part of a given trade?
It's like measuring down to the thousandths of a mL using a standard graduated cylinder.
I drew the same conclusion. The quants deal with markets in which their decisions can change the landscape of the playing field. In predicting winners of sports games, they have no such influence. It's not an apples to apples comparison. I like your analogy!
Absolutely. Well said. To take this further, last year the Wall Street Journal had an excellent editorial that showed the majority of foreclosure issues were not sub-prime mortgages, but normal, prime mortgages. The real culprit was "zero money down". It appears that the need to spend well outside one's means was not limited to people with bad credit.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124657539489189043.html
I am surprised that these studies haven't been taken further. One would hope that if we were to try and prevent such a crisis from recurring, we would analyze the the actual root cause of the problem and devise a solution for it
How do we mod a comment past +5? I don't usually chuckle out loud at a comment, but this one was genius.
How much evidence is there to show that America closely observed other nations' health care systems and tried to take the best from each in this 2000 page bill? I believe these were the steps taken by South Korea when they started their reform. I read many parts of the bill and I'm still trying to figure out what on earth they have to do with health care, let alone better health care.
I agree that the American system is a disaster, but many are worried we're going to get a large, clunky, bureaucratic health care system that ends up causing more problems than solutions.
The funniest part so far is that many people who have been pushing so hard for nationalized health care are up in arms regarding the abortion amendment. If you give complete power over to the state, the state can do whatever they want and you will have no recourse...other than leaving the country. This is why it's a good idea not to give such power to the state, especially if its Congress is full of crazies from both sides of the spectrum.
Get ready for more nonsense like congress preventing our only health insurance provider (soon to be the government) from allowing any medical treatment that involves stem cells. It could happen. Politics will grow deeper between the doctor and the patient. If this doesn't scare you, I don't know what does.
Again, there has to be some solutions to the American Health Care debacle, but I'm not seeing many good ideas coming from Congress.
Call me old fashioned ... but I think we should worship the sun and moon as powerful gods, and fear them.
Then you go ahead and pay more. Donate extra amounts of your hard earned money to the government. I and many others will not stop you...
But you're really asking that everyone pay more, not just you. That's where the problem lies. I don't want to pay more for anything of which I lack control. I have no issues with charity and donate to charity freely. Government is forcing charity on us these days, and often it is not efficient and not for causes I support.
Blindly trusting anyone that's trying to sell you something is foolish. Salesmen are the catalyst in the equation involving fools and money.
If a liberty is listed in the Bill of Rights, it is an essential liberty. This FISA Bill is clearly violating the 4th Amendment.
Additionally, this bill grants retroactive immunity, which goes against Section 9 of the Constitution:
"No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed."
Let me know what safety, if any, I am getting from this bill. I doubt that I am gaining anything and this will most likely lead to a bunch of government-paid voyeurs peering into everyone's personal lives as seen in "O.B.I.T."
"The machines are everywhere! Oh you'll find them all, you're a zealous people. And you'll make a great show of smashing a few of them. But for every one you destroy, hundreds of others will be built. And they will demoralize you, break your spirits, create such rifts and tensions in your society that no one will be able to repair them! Oh, you're a savage, despairing planet; and when we come here to live, you friendless, demoralized flotsam will fall without even a single shot being fired. Senator, enjoy the few years left you. There is no answer. You're all of the same dark persuasion! You demand - insist on knowing every private thought and hunger of everyone: your families, your neighbors, everyone - but yourselves."
I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor.
Until a large, dispersed group of people break into a large number of these machines and rig the elections so that "Homer J Simpson" is the presedential victor in multiple states, we aren't going to see the government persue a real alternative to these proprietary magic voting machines.
I wonder how many people will say "Woo hoo!" and how many will say "D'oh".
There are previous laws stating that people have to drive with both hands on the wheel. Now there are laws that state you cannot drive with a cell phone in your hand.
The Grandparent and Parent are right, but the Parent doesn't understand it: People do want clarity... and that's why many of us are asking for less laws. There's no clarity in the current quagmire of laws, many of which are redundant or "forgot to be removed" (see Boston's old law about arresting Native Americans).
We're engineers and computer scientists here. Many of us like strong definitions and standards. We like to strive for efficiency. We like progress. The current legal system appears to lack most of these qualities. When we hear about the need for new laws, "brilliant" ideas such as "we need to ban violent video games" come to mind.
Politicians are lawyers and that's the bottom line of the problem. Much of what is needed to fix the current mindset of law would require the politicians to turn against lawyers (their friends and former selves) and each other. I don't see it happening anytime soon.
So how about a compromise? There will always be pushes for new laws; however, there are too many old, broken laws. Either force a sunset provision for every new law (where at the expiration date the law can be extended, but only after a conscious effort has been made to review it), mandate that "for every new law created, 2 others must be removed", or do BOTH.
brilliant!
And who could forget their many incarnations of "TRON", especially the one that used the voice expansion. I really liked "Minotaur" for the IntelliVision. Very challenging.
Ah, but this some one has a piece of paper that says they do, which sadly seems to be enough to impress the others who don't have these things.
I sat down with a group of engineers living in the Boston area (Civil, Mechanical, Electrical, etc), and we discussed the Big Dig tragedy. The civl engineer insisted that the design itself would work, but it would require the the drilling be done properly, all holes then cleaned correctly, and then the epoxy set set correctly. He then went on to say that this apparently did not happen.
What was more interesting was the ensuing conversation. What was brought up was that if everyone knew that this project was going to be given to contractors who were likely to cut corners, would this have been the best design? Judging from the results of cut corners (the local boston news has been covering that some holes have no epoxy in them and other blatant implementation failures), this design was not "fool-proof" enough given who was implementing the project.
We then brought up our own personal experiences in our respective fields where the best design was not the cleanest design, but the design in which if some one implemented it wrong, there'd be no unforseen consequences (such as making a routing change in one branch office, only to black hole traffic destined for another office). I wonder how many people here have been faced with projects where one of the bigger criteria was to make the implementation "fool-proof".
The first time Deckard meets Rachel, they have an interesting dialogue, which Tyrell interrupts with "Is this to be an empathy test?".
I always took this as Tyrell knowing they were both Replicants.
To expand on this point:
What most people don't seem to grasp is the quality of the average government worker. They are human. They will make typos, they will misunderstand things, they will be lazy, etc. There will be instances of "Buttle vs. Tuttle", in which case the innocent will be accidentally treated like the guilty.
This should be our biggest fear when faced with the erosion of our rights and more intrusive actions by the government. You could have done nothing wrong, but still have something to worry about. Now they have more avenues of data....to make more mistakes on.