I don't have time to go into depth on this, but the "oil crisis" in 1973 wasn't technically caused by the oil embargo (because oil is a commodity). It was actually caused by OPEC's cut in production, which is a little different.
Some of the other replies to this have already addressed it, but I wanted to clarify one thing Europeans often don't really understand about the U.S.
In the U.S., our government can't just tell us what to do. The power relationship doesn't work like that. In France, if the Ministry of Education decides it wants all fourth graders taught calculus, it sends out a directive to the schools, which are expected to implement the program. In the U.S., if the Department of Education issued the same "directive," it would get a good chuckle out of thousands of local school district superintendants, and then get pitched into the nearest garbage receptacle.
This system (or, more accurately, this conception of the relationship between a government and those it governs) has its disadvantages. However, I'm sure you can see it has its advantages as well.
"France has a lot of nuclear power plants (75% of the nation's electricity)"
What does France do with its nuclear waste?
- Alaska Jack
Re:Jealous vs. Envious
on
Press freedom
·
· Score: 1
My god you're an idiot.
I never said those who "hate the U.S. for its freedoms" are "most of the Islamic world." I quite clearly said we're talking about a specific group of Islamofascists: Osama Bin Laden and his ilk who, in many written statements and recorded tapes, have made it quite clear that they *do indeed* hate Western style freedoms.
I know this is difficult to wrap your brain around, but there are some people who don't value the same things you do. Nazis, for example, or KKK members. As far as Wahabbism is concerned, you only need three things to be truly free: A copy of the Koran, a prayer mat and a compass. You are then free to function as a human being the way Allah intended. Everything else is just a distraction to lead you into the enslavement of sin.
It's ironic that you said these Islamofascists hate the U.S. because they "bomb innocent civilians in the name of political gain." Ironic because, of course, the terrorists' entire body of tactics is aimed at doing precisely that.
As far as your final point (if you had one -- it's kind of murky) it's f*$king tragic when innocent people die, whether from war or other causes. But innocent people ALWAYS die in wars -- it's just in the nature of war. So that leaves us with three choices:
1) Never fight, which history tells us means you will be quickly enslaved;
2) Kill all the "other guys" that you can, and worry about the morality of it later (this approach was used throughout human history, up until about 50 years ago); or
3) Go through historically unprecedented efforts to avoid killing civilians, even when it sometimes hampers your war effort, which is what the U.S. is doing today.
Now, the final mystery: Why have I spent so much time responding to your Slashdot-kiddie-level foreign policy analysis?
- Alaska Jack
Re:Jealous vs. Envious
on
Press freedom
·
· Score: 1
uhh, I don't know how to tell you this, but perhaps you should do a little less Googling and a little more actual Ring of TFA.
Unlike you, I actually took the 5 seconds it took to read the sentences before and after the ones you searched for. In *both* cases, the writers are claiming that THIS IS SOMETHING OTHER PEOPLE BELIEVE, they're not saying they believe it themselves. In fact, quite the opposite: They both ridicule the idea.
And of course, I didn't say no wingnut *ever* said other people are "jealous" of American freedoms. What I dispute is the claim the GP made that Americans "frequently" say that. I'm pretty well read, and I've *never* heard anyone say it. So I should think the burden of proof would be on the poster to show how this is somehow a widely accepted idea in America.
- Alaska Jack
Re:Free Speech in Denmark??
on
Press freedom
·
· Score: 1
OH FOR PETE'S SAKE.
This is the third time I've seen this referenced in this thread, and I'm only at level 4!
DLR is completely right about why this is preposterous. For more, go here:
Re:Pundits are not reporters...
on
Press freedom
·
· Score: 1
I've never said this on SlashDot before, but you are absolutely, unequivocally, 100 percent wrong.
I've worked in and around journalism my whole life. Here's a little secret: JOURNALISTS ARE NOT SOME SUPER-SPECIAL, EXTRA-PRIVILEGED CLASS OF PEOPLE.
Want to be a journalist? Type up something. Publish it on line. Guess what? You're a journalist. I didn't say you were a GOOD one, but you're still a journalist.
Here's another way to look at it.
1. You say "do not imagine yourself to ever be in the same class as the people who put thier lives on the line to actually tell the rest of the world what is happening."
2. Percentage of professional journalists who actually "put thier lives on the line":.001
3. So by this standard, you *are* in the same class as 99.999 percent of professional journalists.
As for news reporting, most individual blogs don't break news. But so what: A) As an aggregate, blogs do indeed break a good deal of news you'd never get from the mainstream media; and B) like the stuff on blogs, the bulk of stuff a news outlet publishes has already been published by some other news outlet already.
Maybe I was too harsh in my opening statement (or "lede," as we like to say in the biz) but the fact is, you couldn't be more wrong. The decentralization of the news industry is the best thing to happen to it in decades.
- Alaska Jack
Re:Jealous vs. Envious
on
Press freedom
·
· Score: 1
This is utterly idiotic.
"They hate us for our freedom" is not a *claim* made about *everybody*. It is an *observation* made about a specific group of Islamofascists who most certainly *do* hate us for our freedoms, and make no bones about it.
They are quite open about the fact that they hate the godlessness of our society; the way we allow our women to behave; the way we dress; the way our culture is saturated with sex; our failure to worship Allah correctly; the way we vote for our leaders instead of allowing religious leaders to select the most holy among them, etc.
For the purposes of making this point, it's not even necessary for me to debate any of their specific arguments. All I have to do is point out that they do indeed hate Western liberal style freedoms. You know that "Caliphate" Osama Bin Laden talks about restoring? Well guess what, buddy: "Caliphs" aren't elected officials.
- Alaska Jack
Re:Jealous vs. Envious
on
Press freedom
·
· Score: 1
I'm just curious about you personally. When you see a claim made in a newspaper or magazine, do you
a) trust it more; or b) trust it less
when it is backed up by a source, or quote, or anything whatsoever.
- Alaska Jack
Re:Jealous vs. Envious
on
Press freedom
·
· Score: 1
If "it's on record," then surely you don't mind telling us WHERE on record.
I've done a Google search (Bush jealous freedom OR freedoms), and I'm sorry, but I can't find it anywhere.
Just a hunch -- I suspect that instead of "The President himself has said it, on several occasions," you probably meant to type "I think the President..." or "I am under the impression the President..." or perhaps "I can imagine the President..." or something of that nature. But I could be wrong.
- Alaska Jack
Re:Jealous vs. Envious
on
Press freedom
·
· Score: 1
When I read this, I had the exact same reaction as some of your other commenters.
Which is to say: "Huh?"
I've never heard a single American ever (much less "frequently") claim that "others are 'jealous' of their freedom."
Several respondents have claimed Bush, etc., but they don't actually give us a quote. Come on, back this stuff up with facts!
- jc
Re:American cliche's redux
on
Press freedom
·
· Score: 1
Your rant is pretty weird.
I'm a pretty well-traveled guy -- not the stereotypical cellar-dwelling SlashDotter -- and never in my life have I heard one single American say one single thing about Switzerland that might even somehow be construed as slightly disparaging. I mean, really, I'd be hard-pressed to think of *anything* anyone has ever said about Switzerland.
This goes as well to the guy who replied to your poing about the Cayman Islands saying we don't expect as much out of brown people. By implication, he was agreeing with your idea that Americans are consumed with hatred for Switzerland. This is utterly preposterous.
(A side note -- you say "Swiss decided to become neutral, as it kept them from having to go through the ravages of the first and second world wars." This is also ludicrous. You think Hitler didn't invade Switzerland because it was neutral? Hitler didn't invade Switzerland because it wasn't strategically important, and would have been more trouble than it was worth. Swiss neutrality had nothing to do with it. If Poland had declared "neutrality," would it have stopped Germany from invading?)
Anyway, it is classic human psychology to resent the biggest guy on the block, assume he has it out for you, etc. Your whole post seems to reflect this (though of course one cannot evaluate a person's psyche on the basis of one SlashDot post.)
I'll close with an observation about neutrality: The Swiss have, as you said, minded their own business and not done anything to the U.S. Now, you notice that the U.S. hasn't done anything to Switzerland, either. Think about that.
- Alaska Jack
PS As it should be obvious from my post, I have nothing against Switzerland either. As far as I can see it seems like a fine country.
Re:How did they decide?
on
Press freedom
·
· Score: 1
I've worked in and around journalism my whole life, and I just wanted to add a point you may not have thought of (and may not expect, coming from me).
Re: Judith Miller -- U.S. courts don't recognize any special protection for journalists. That is, journalists don't have any kind of "special" rights above and beyond what everyone else has.
Judith Miller has been subpoenaed for information the government knows is in her possession. This is normal in any kind of trial. My journalist friends would blanch to hear me say this, but the fact that Miller is a journalist does not somehow entitle her to keep this information from investigators. She feels a *professional* obligation to protect her sources, and I understand that, but the bottom line is that it's not a question of "rights." The American people have decided that telling something to a reporter is not the same as telling something to your doctor or lawyer.
- Alaska Jack
Re:Isn't Murdoch Australian?
on
Press freedom
·
· Score: 1
Eugene Volokh, the libertarian law professor from UCLA, has written extensively about the sort of thing your LiveJournal link describes.
As he has often pointed out, these types of complaints don't make much sense. It is the Secret Service's *job* to investigate possible threats to the president. Because those possible threats come in a wide variety of forms and degrees, the SS policy is simply to investigate all of them. The alternative is to have someone selectively decide which to investigate and which to ignore, which I think most reasonable people would agree invites a far *greater* degree of abuse.
Again, as Volokh has often pointed out, you (or me or whoever) don't have the right to not be simply questioned by the police. You can always refuse to answer, or call your lawyer, or whatever. But in general, that's what we as a society *want* our police to do -- nose around and ask questions.
I certainly agree that law enforcement agents should be polite and professional when doing so, but from reading the LiveJournal link, it sounds like that, in fact, is exactly how they behaved.
It may also be helpful to remember that SS policy is exactly the same under a democratic president as under a republican.
So unless there is more to the story than I realize, I must find your proposition that the blogosphere is "under threat" unconvincing.
"And it pains us Europeans to see the great country that after the Nazi years helped us get back on our feet slide in the direction that we learned to dispise."-
Has it occurred to you that the current U.S. government is far more liberal than the one we had under Roosevelt? In fact, I can't think of one single metric that would suggest otherwise. From the welfare state to freedoms of the press to civil liberties to, well, anything, it's just not even close.
The Roosevelt administration, remember, instituted some of the most authoritative and draconian policies in American history, far more so than anything even suggested under the current administration.
1. I have absolutlely no personal interest in any of the gadgets the article described. So I'm not biased that way.
2. Perhaps you could explain to me exactly how a system is unsafe, that prevents a TV from being on when the vehicle is driven more than three miles per hour. What if European/Japanese cars, thus equipped, showed no appreciable increase in accidents. Would you change your mind?
I basically agree with this, but RandomCoil (the parent) was right too.
You are right in that Britain did experience a high level of terrorism. But remember, RandomCoil was responding to a poster who essentially said the U.S. was overreacting to terrorism. He is right, in the sense that the people and government of the U.K. were in fact quite concerned and involved with fighting the terrorism, and did a lot of things that, at the time, were also condemned as "overreacting." I mean, it's not like the U.K. was all blase' about it or anything.
So I think you're both right. As to which is more disturbing, well, I suspect that strongly correlates to whether it was your nation or not that was attacked in any particular incident.
1. "It's just a fact." a) you don't cite the source, and b) I'm suspicious of this figure anyway. Things like that are just too hard to quantify. I work with complex systems all the time, and I'm keenly aware of the difficulty is scaling variables up that high. For example, how could you possibly account for the burning of wood for home fires? There is simply no way to accurately gauge this consumption.
2. "Imports more than it exports." Again, impossible to quantify. For example, what about services? What about know-how? The U.S. is the most prodigous supplier of innovation the world has ever known, together with perhaps Renaissance Italy, modern Japan and perhaps 19th-Century England. So to what degree, exactly, has the world benefited from the invention of the transistor?
To put it another way: You can calculate the value of a bottle of medicine sent from the U.S. to a country abroad. But you can't calculate the value of lives saves as the result of U.S.-based pharmaceutical R&D. I'm sorry, but this whole exercise is a pretty superficial endeavor. You want a certain result, you look for it, and *bingo*, there it is.
3. The US hardly exports energy-intensive goods, like steel or cars.
Same problem of superficial analysis. We import cars, BUT WE EXPORT MONEY IN EXCHANGE FOR THOSE CARS. And where we *export* things, we get criticized to. For example, we export Big Macs and get criticized for ramming our culture down the throats of the world.
You seem to be criticizing things like steel tariffs. I agree with this, but it must also be noted that your criticism is all over the map. Tariffs are a barrier to consumption. If there were no tariffs, steel would be cheaper here. We'd import more of it, and consume *more* of it (plus the energy required to process it).
4. So far so good, but you reference to the U.S. worldwide protection "racket" just makes me ill. That "racket" is the reason you are writing your smug SlashDot critiques in English and not in German or Russian. U.S. cemeteries all across Europe testify to that "racket."
Europe has been under a Pax America for the last 50 years. Before that, well, let's see what the oh-so-civilized Europeans were up to: World War One, World War II, The Hundred Years War, The Spanish Civil War, the Crimean War, the Wars of the Roses, The bosnian conflict, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. Also, "racket" is an unusual term in that normally the "victims" pay some sort of tribute to the racketeers. Funny, but I don't remember the Marshall Plan that way.
Three countries were divided in half after WWII. One half of each fell under the U.S. "racket." In which respective half would you prefer to live?
South Korea or North Korea?
West Germany or East Germany?
Taiwan or Communist China?
5. Given your inane remark, it comes as no surprise that your elaboration is riddled with non-sequiturs. "There always were more European than US tanks defending the Fulda gap." You mean tanks operating under the auspices of the U.S.-organized NATO? And clearly, I was simply using *tanks* as a metaphor for the massive U.S. defense subsidy of Western Europe, from boots on the ground to F-15s patrolling the skies overhead. Whether or not you consider that subsidy a "racket," it is indisputable that it allowed WE countries to divert their resources to other matters: Developing prosperous economies, healthy polities and the political freedom to bitch about the U.S. every chance they get.
I basically agree with this, and wanted to add one thing.
I see this "25 percent of the world's resources" line constantly parroted by environmentalists, or those predisposed to... well, let's not say anti-Americanism; perhaps just those inclined to believe the worst about America.
You point out that even if true, the statistic has to be stacked up next to the U.S.'s *output*. I think that's true. I also think you need to consider the nature of the output.
U.S. goods and services are used all over the world. And I'm not just talking about trade. There are also things like defense.
For 50 years it was U.S. Army tanks standing between the Red Army and the Fulda Gap. As I've pointed out in other/. posts, these tanks represented a MASSIVE U.S. subsidy of Western Europe's defense. They provided the peaceful conditions Western Europe needed, after a millenia of warfare, to develop stable, prosperous polities.
Those tanks are made out of steel. Steel factories produce pollution. I guess the point is pretty clear, so I won't belabor it.
I started drinking red wine -- usually a small glass every other day -- when all the information came out about how good it was for you. As you note, it can become an expensive taste, so I've become quite an expert in the cheap stuff.
The best I have tried is the Yellowtail Shiraz, available from Costco in a magnum bottle for about $10. Do you have favorite?
Slashdot Mirror
I don't have time to go into depth on this, but the "oil crisis" in 1973 wasn't technically caused by the oil embargo (because oil is a commodity). It was actually caused by OPEC's cut in production, which is a little different.
But your larger point is still taken.
- Alaska Jack
Some of the other replies to this have already addressed it, but I wanted to clarify one thing Europeans often don't really understand about the U.S.
In the U.S., our government can't just tell us what to do. The power relationship doesn't work like that. In France, if the Ministry of Education decides it wants all fourth graders taught calculus, it sends out a directive to the schools, which are expected to implement the program. In the U.S., if the Department of Education issued the same "directive," it would get a good chuckle out of thousands of local school district superintendants, and then get pitched into the nearest garbage receptacle.
This system (or, more accurately, this conception of the relationship between a government and those it governs) has its disadvantages. However, I'm sure you can see it has its advantages as well.
- Alaska Jack
"France has a lot of nuclear power plants (75% of the nation's electricity)"
What does France do with its nuclear waste?
- Alaska Jack
My god you're an idiot.
I never said those who "hate the U.S. for its freedoms" are "most of the Islamic world." I quite clearly said we're talking about a specific group of Islamofascists: Osama Bin Laden and his ilk who, in many written statements and recorded tapes, have made it quite clear that they *do indeed* hate Western style freedoms.
I know this is difficult to wrap your brain around, but there are some people who don't value the same things you do. Nazis, for example, or KKK members. As far as Wahabbism is concerned, you only need three things to be truly free: A copy of the Koran, a prayer mat and a compass. You are then free to function as a human being the way Allah intended. Everything else is just a distraction to lead you into the enslavement of sin.
It's ironic that you said these Islamofascists hate the U.S. because they "bomb innocent civilians in the name of political gain." Ironic because, of course, the terrorists' entire body of tactics is aimed at doing precisely that.
As far as your final point (if you had one -- it's kind of murky) it's f*$king tragic when innocent people die, whether from war or other causes. But innocent people ALWAYS die in wars -- it's just in the nature of war. So that leaves us with three choices:
1) Never fight, which history tells us means you will be quickly enslaved;
2) Kill all the "other guys" that you can, and worry about the morality of it later (this approach was used throughout human history, up until about 50 years ago); or
3) Go through historically unprecedented efforts to avoid killing civilians, even when it sometimes hampers your war effort, which is what the U.S. is doing today.
Now, the final mystery: Why have I spent so much time responding to your Slashdot-kiddie-level foreign policy analysis?
- Alaska Jack
uhh, I don't know how to tell you this, but perhaps you should do a little less Googling and a little more actual Ring of TFA.
Unlike you, I actually took the 5 seconds it took to read the sentences before and after the ones you searched for. In *both* cases, the writers are claiming that THIS IS SOMETHING OTHER PEOPLE BELIEVE, they're not saying they believe it themselves. In fact, quite the opposite: They both ridicule the idea.
And of course, I didn't say no wingnut *ever* said other people are "jealous" of American freedoms. What I dispute is the claim the GP made that Americans "frequently" say that. I'm pretty well read, and I've *never* heard anyone say it. So I should think the burden of proof would be on the poster to show how this is somehow a widely accepted idea in America.
- Alaska Jack
OH FOR PETE'S SAKE.
1 06 56238
This is the third time I've seen this referenced in this thread, and I'm only at level 4!
DLR is completely right about why this is preposterous. For more, go here:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=127395&cid=
Oops, satire. Your first sentence almost got me. Pretty funny.
- Alaska Jack
Yes
I've never said this on SlashDot before, but you are absolutely, unequivocally, 100 percent wrong.
.001
I've worked in and around journalism my whole life. Here's a little secret: JOURNALISTS ARE NOT SOME SUPER-SPECIAL, EXTRA-PRIVILEGED CLASS OF PEOPLE.
Want to be a journalist? Type up something. Publish it on line. Guess what? You're a journalist. I didn't say you were a GOOD one, but you're still a journalist.
Here's another way to look at it.
1. You say "do not imagine yourself to ever be in the same class as the people who put thier lives on the line to actually tell the rest of the world what is happening."
2. Percentage of professional journalists who actually "put thier lives on the line":
3. So by this standard, you *are* in the same class as 99.999 percent of professional journalists.
As for news reporting, most individual blogs don't break news. But so what: A) As an aggregate, blogs do indeed break a good deal of news you'd never get from the mainstream media; and B) like the stuff on blogs, the bulk of stuff a news outlet publishes has already been published by some other news outlet already.
Maybe I was too harsh in my opening statement (or "lede," as we like to say in the biz) but the fact is, you couldn't be more wrong. The decentralization of the news industry is the best thing to happen to it in decades.
- Alaska Jack
This is utterly idiotic.
"They hate us for our freedom" is not a *claim* made about *everybody*. It is an *observation* made about a specific group of Islamofascists who most certainly *do* hate us for our freedoms, and make no bones about it.
They are quite open about the fact that they hate the godlessness of our society; the way we allow our women to behave; the way we dress; the way our culture is saturated with sex; our failure to worship Allah correctly; the way we vote for our leaders instead of allowing religious leaders to select the most holy among them, etc.
For the purposes of making this point, it's not even necessary for me to debate any of their specific arguments. All I have to do is point out that they do indeed hate Western liberal style freedoms. You know that "Caliphate" Osama Bin Laden talks about restoring? Well guess what, buddy: "Caliphs" aren't elected officials.
- Alaska Jack
I'm just curious about you personally. When you see a claim made in a newspaper or magazine, do you
a) trust it more; or
b) trust it less
when it is backed up by a source, or quote, or anything whatsoever.
- Alaska Jack
If "it's on record," then surely you don't mind telling us WHERE on record.
I've done a Google search (Bush jealous freedom OR freedoms), and I'm sorry, but I can't find it anywhere.
Just a hunch -- I suspect that instead of "The President himself has said it, on several occasions," you probably meant to type "I think the President..." or "I am under the impression the President..." or perhaps "I can imagine the President..." or something of that nature. But I could be wrong.
- Alaska Jack
When I read this, I had the exact same reaction as some of your other commenters.
Which is to say: "Huh?"
I've never heard a single American ever (much less "frequently") claim that "others are 'jealous' of their freedom."
Several respondents have claimed Bush, etc., but they don't actually give us a quote. Come on, back this stuff up with facts!
- jc
Your rant is pretty weird.
I'm a pretty well-traveled guy -- not the stereotypical cellar-dwelling SlashDotter -- and never in my life have I heard one single American say one single thing about Switzerland that might even somehow be construed as slightly disparaging. I mean, really, I'd be hard-pressed to think of *anything* anyone has ever said about Switzerland.
This goes as well to the guy who replied to your poing about the Cayman Islands saying we don't expect as much out of brown people. By implication, he was agreeing with your idea that Americans are consumed with hatred for Switzerland. This is utterly preposterous.
(A side note -- you say "Swiss decided to become neutral, as it kept them from having to go through the ravages of the first and second world wars." This is also ludicrous. You think Hitler didn't invade Switzerland because it was neutral? Hitler didn't invade Switzerland because it wasn't strategically important, and would have been more trouble than it was worth. Swiss neutrality had nothing to do with it. If Poland had declared "neutrality," would it have stopped Germany from invading?)
Anyway, it is classic human psychology to resent the biggest guy on the block, assume he has it out for you, etc. Your whole post seems to reflect this (though of course one cannot evaluate a person's psyche on the basis of one SlashDot post.)
I'll close with an observation about neutrality: The Swiss have, as you said, minded their own business and not done anything to the U.S. Now, you notice that the U.S. hasn't done anything to Switzerland, either. Think about that.
- Alaska Jack
PS As it should be obvious from my post, I have nothing against Switzerland either. As far as I can see it seems like a fine country.
I've worked in and around journalism my whole life, and I just wanted to add a point you may not have thought of (and may not expect, coming from me).
Re: Judith Miller -- U.S. courts don't recognize any special protection for journalists. That is, journalists don't have any kind of "special" rights above and beyond what everyone else has.
Judith Miller has been subpoenaed for information the government knows is in her possession. This is normal in any kind of trial. My journalist friends would blanch to hear me say this, but the fact that Miller is a journalist does not somehow entitle her to keep this information from investigators. She feels a *professional* obligation to protect her sources, and I understand that, but the bottom line is that it's not a question of "rights." The American people have decided that telling something to a reporter is not the same as telling something to your doctor or lawyer.
- Alaska Jack
Eugene Volokh, the libertarian law professor from UCLA, has written extensively about the sort of thing your LiveJournal link describes.
As he has often pointed out, these types of complaints don't make much sense. It is the Secret Service's *job* to investigate possible threats to the president. Because those possible threats come in a wide variety of forms and degrees, the SS policy is simply to investigate all of them. The alternative is to have someone selectively decide which to investigate and which to ignore, which I think most reasonable people would agree invites a far *greater* degree of abuse.
Again, as Volokh has often pointed out, you (or me or whoever) don't have the right to not be simply questioned by the police. You can always refuse to answer, or call your lawyer, or whatever. But in general, that's what we as a society *want* our police to do -- nose around and ask questions.
I certainly agree that law enforcement agents should be polite and professional when doing so, but from reading the LiveJournal link, it sounds like that, in fact, is exactly how they behaved.
It may also be helpful to remember that SS policy is exactly the same under a democratic president as under a republican.
So unless there is more to the story than I realize, I must find your proposition that the blogosphere is "under threat" unconvincing.
- Alaska Jack
"And it pains us Europeans to see the great country that after the Nazi years helped us get back on our feet slide in the direction that we learned to dispise."-
Has it occurred to you that the current U.S. government is far more liberal than the one we had under Roosevelt? In fact, I can't think of one single metric that would suggest otherwise. From the welfare state to freedoms of the press to civil liberties to, well, anything, it's just not even close.
The Roosevelt administration, remember, instituted some of the most authoritative and draconian policies in American history, far more so than anything even suggested under the current administration.
- Alaska Jack
I suspect a lot of people are also killed by hypertension brought on by the lack of a sense of humor.
- Alaska Jack
1. I have absolutlely no personal interest in any of the gadgets the article described. So I'm not biased that way.
2. Perhaps you could explain to me exactly how a system is unsafe, that prevents a TV from being on when the vehicle is driven more than three miles per hour. What if European/Japanese cars, thus equipped, showed no appreciable increase in accidents. Would you change your mind?
- Alaska Jack
I basically agree with this, but RandomCoil (the parent) was right too.
You are right in that Britain did experience a high level of terrorism. But remember, RandomCoil was responding to a poster who essentially said the U.S. was overreacting to terrorism. He is right, in the sense that the people and government of the U.K. were in fact quite concerned and involved with fighting the terrorism, and did a lot of things that, at the time, were also condemned as "overreacting." I mean, it's not like the U.K. was all blase' about it or anything.
So I think you're both right. As to which is more disturbing, well, I suspect that strongly correlates to whether it was your nation or not that was attacked in any particular incident.
- Alaska Jack
I just have a simple question.
In Europe and Japan, has the result, in fact, been "carnage?"
- Alaska Jack
The big, dark secret of the drug industry is that they just aren't very good at finding cures.
Compared to what?
- Alaska Jack
1. "It's just a fact." a) you don't cite the source, and b) I'm suspicious of this figure anyway. Things like that are just too hard to quantify. I work with complex systems all the time, and I'm keenly aware of the difficulty is scaling variables up that high. For example, how could you possibly account for the burning of wood for home fires? There is simply no way to accurately gauge this consumption.
2. "Imports more than it exports." Again, impossible to quantify. For example, what about services? What about know-how? The U.S. is the most prodigous supplier of innovation the world has ever known, together with perhaps Renaissance Italy, modern Japan and perhaps 19th-Century England. So to what degree, exactly, has the world benefited from the invention of the transistor?
To put it another way: You can calculate the value of a bottle of medicine sent from the U.S. to a country abroad. But you can't calculate the value of lives saves as the result of U.S.-based pharmaceutical R&D. I'm sorry, but this whole exercise is a pretty superficial endeavor. You want a certain result, you look for it, and *bingo*, there it is.
3. The US hardly exports energy-intensive goods, like steel or cars.
Same problem of superficial analysis. We import cars, BUT WE EXPORT MONEY IN EXCHANGE FOR THOSE CARS. And where we *export* things, we get criticized to. For example, we export Big Macs and get criticized for ramming our culture down the throats of the world.
You seem to be criticizing things like steel tariffs. I agree with this, but it must also be noted that your criticism is all over the map. Tariffs are a barrier to consumption. If there were no tariffs, steel would be cheaper here. We'd import more of it, and consume *more* of it (plus the energy required to process it).
4. So far so good, but you reference to the U.S. worldwide protection "racket" just makes me ill. That "racket" is the reason you are writing your smug SlashDot critiques in English and not in German or Russian. U.S. cemeteries all across Europe testify to that "racket."
Europe has been under a Pax America for the last 50 years. Before that, well, let's see what the oh-so-civilized Europeans were up to: World War One, World War II, The Hundred Years War, The Spanish Civil War, the Crimean War, the Wars of the Roses, The bosnian conflict, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. Also, "racket" is an unusual term in that normally the "victims" pay some sort of tribute to the racketeers. Funny, but I don't remember the Marshall Plan that way.
Three countries were divided in half after WWII. One half of each fell under the U.S. "racket." In which respective half would you prefer to live?
South Korea or North Korea?
West Germany or East Germany?
Taiwan or Communist China?
5. Given your inane remark, it comes as no surprise that your elaboration is riddled with non-sequiturs. "There always were more European than US tanks defending the Fulda gap." You mean tanks operating under the auspices of the U.S.-organized NATO? And clearly, I was simply using *tanks* as a metaphor for the massive U.S. defense subsidy of Western Europe, from boots on the ground to F-15s patrolling the skies overhead. Whether or not you consider that subsidy a "racket," it is indisputable that it allowed WE countries to divert their resources to other matters: Developing prosperous economies, healthy polities and the political freedom to bitch about the U.S. every chance they get.
- Alaska JackI basically agree with this, and wanted to add one thing.
... well, let's not say anti-Americanism; perhaps just those inclined to believe the worst about America.
/. posts, these tanks represented a MASSIVE U.S. subsidy of Western Europe's defense. They provided the peaceful conditions Western Europe needed, after a millenia of warfare, to develop stable, prosperous polities.
I see this "25 percent of the world's resources" line constantly parroted by environmentalists, or those predisposed to
You point out that even if true, the statistic has to be stacked up next to the U.S.'s *output*. I think that's true. I also think you need to consider the nature of the output.
U.S. goods and services are used all over the world. And I'm not just talking about trade. There are also things like defense.
For 50 years it was U.S. Army tanks standing between the Red Army and the Fulda Gap. As I've pointed out in other
Those tanks are made out of steel. Steel factories produce pollution. I guess the point is pretty clear, so I won't belabor it.
- Alaska Jack
I started drinking red wine -- usually a small glass every other day -- when all the information came out about how good it was for you. As you note, it can become an expensive taste, so I've become quite an expert in the cheap stuff.
The best I have tried is the Yellowtail Shiraz, available from Costco in a magnum bottle for about $10. Do you have favorite?
- Alaska Jack