I live in Portland and it's a nice city. Yes, it IS the controlling majority for the state. Why? Because a LOT of the people live there? Crazy, I know.... Most of the poeple I work with are actually conservatives though... or libertarians. Lets face it, the MAX is a good thing. I use it a lot, just to avoid parking. Oh, and it goes through Portland, Gresham, Beaverton, and Hillsboro... so... yeah. I don't see many businesses leaving. The city has a great DIY/startup vibe and people WANT to work here, because it's kind of an awesome place. Ok, some of the cyclists do ride a little stupid. Police are fined when the shoot an unarmed suspect, which is frankly how it should be... Ok, and I don't think anyone actually cares about the Mayor, but that was pretty stupid of him.
If you hate it so much, why don't you move away? 36 years is a long time to stay somewhere you hate.
http://wyden.senate.gov/contact/ Write him and tell him you appreciate it. Especially since it's not even time for elections yet...:D
If you don't live in Oregon, write your rep and tell them that you see something like this and that it actually matters to you... And that you'll remember this come time to vote.
http://www.contactingthecongress.org/
"No, they are not "sucking money out of the system". They are CIRCULATING money in the system."
Except that we see the statistics that 10% of our population has 2/3 of the wealth. It's NOT circulating. That's why the middle class is disappearing today.
From Wikipedia....
"In the United States at the end of 2001, 10% of the population owned 71% of the wealth and the top 1% owned 38%. On the other hand, the bottom 40% owned less than 1% of the nation's wealth.[14]""
When you have a very few large companies, who lobby excessively to get their way.... You have no free market. The minute ANY company gets large enough to strangle it's competition in the crib, it does so, by any means it can.
The "Free Market" and "Supply and Demand" are oversimplified models that are taught in Econ101...
Worse is the frankly silly idea that because those companies bribed the government to get their way, the government is at fault. Government is not the problem. It's the only thing standing in the way of a Corpratocracy.
Now, I'll agree that gov. subsidies are silly when we don't get our share. If my tax money paid for lines to be ran across public property, I don't want to hear any noise about how unfair it is to force those companies to open "their" lines.
And then comes the odd idea that there are only two solutions... Total free market no regulation or socialism... Which is silly and again, oversimplified.
I'm getting really sick of conservatives blaming government for what is obviously corporate practices.
So, if you don't like BP, don't sit here griping at a screen. Vote with your dollar. It seems to have more effect than our political votes.
Look up BP on wikipedia and don't shop at their subsidiaries.
BP seems to own Arco, AmPm, and Castrol. Looks like Conoco and Amoco too. I suggest that the next time you pull in to get gas, or get an oil change, you take a look at who you're buying from.:D
Why are you wanting people to kill themselves? Huh? Who said that?
Why do you dislike these people so much? Because they push their values on me.
Do you dislike them because they are promoting Christian values? Don't lie, don't steal, don't kill, honor your parents, etc... These are Christian values, yes... but they're pretty much every religion's values. They're pretty much HUMAN values. Christianity doesn't own them. I dislike Christians because they tell me that the meek shall inherit the earth and that god loves everyone and then in the same sentence they tell me that God is going to send homosexuals to hell for all eternity and the poor can go !@#$ themselves.
If you do, do you dislike that they believe that God so loved the world that he sent his only Son so that who ever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life? Uhm... whatever.
Do you dislike them because they try to live like Christ but recognize that when they fail, which they inevitably do, they go back to God and ask for forgiveness? Dude, if they had that kind of humility, I'd like them a LOT more. And I've met some who do, and they are AWESOME people.
Do you dislike them because they believe in a God that you don't believe exists? Worship the family cat for all I care. Just keep it on your side of the fence.
Or do you dislike them because simply because you do not like others who don't believe in what you believe? I don't care what someone believes, as long as they keep it to themselves. The beauty of a liberal society is that you're free to be as conservative as you want. If you decide you must wear a funny hat to hide your head from God... Hey, no worries. Have at it. Everyone wins. Now if we flip it, I get stoned for existing..... !@#$ that.
Ok, this is important... I'm seeing a lot of arguing.
The science here is pretty basic, really. We're pumping out a lot of CO2, and it's causing a greenhouse effect. The earth as a whole is getting warmer, and it's weirding things out a little. We're worried about it. It's a complicated system that we're dealing with, and the math isn't straightforward. We can predict climate level stuff over the long haul, but short term predictions are useless, because weather is just way to complicated.
There seem to be a lot of naysayers. Lets really look at this though....
FOR: CO2 is a greenhouse gas. we produce a lot of it. Not much to question here. These are facts.
AGAINST: Man can't affect the environment! Debunked. Remember the hole in the freak'in ozone layer? It doesn't get a lot of press, but we did that. Or go to LA during a smog alert and breath deeply... Or look at the giant mound of plastic bits the size of Texas in the ocean, or look at the fish stocks running out on the coasts, or... Etc etc etc.
We don't produce enough! We're just a drop in the bucket compared to what Mom Nature spits out, so we can't be having an effect. Debunked. Yes, mom nature puts out a lot of CO2. And theoretically that has systems in place to deal with it. Our extra does not. Oh, and it's cumulative addition... The extra takes a LONG time to be gotten rid of. Think it's not a big deal? Eat an extra candy bar every day. It's only 300 calories... Compared to the 3000 you're already eating, no big deal right? Yeah, but if you don't work extra to get rid of it, you'll gain about 25lbs in a year.
Follow the money! Climate researchers are just trying to get grants! Yes.... grants... what a wonderful way to get money, to constantly scrap and scrimp. Those researchers are just trying to live it up. Not like the companies that are desperately trying to not get regulated, and have Hooker and Blow money to spare. Seriously.... Debunked.
We're coming out of an ice age! Yes, we are. This is the only criticism I've seen so far that has real merit. Yes, it's supposed to be getting warmer, but NOT THIS FAST. Remeber that the shift in ice ages takes a LOOOOOOOOOONG time. Seeing rapid warming inside of decades is NOT supposed to happen. And it is kind of weird how it started speeding up right around the time humans started burning coal en masse. yeah, yeah, correlation, causation. If it's not us, and it's not the earth, do we blame martians? Debunked.
What would disprove it? debunked. Uhm... mean temperatures getting colder over a decade? Mean temperatures staying even over a decade. Mean temperatures rising VEEEEEEERY slightly, but not so much? Funny, it hasn't done any of those.
I'm just not sure! And the coal and oil companies have paid good money to sow those seeds of doubt.
We don't know enough! And to some, we never will. Seriously, we do know enough. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. It traps heat in the atmosphere instead of letting it radiate out into space. That is pretty basic. We know this. Burning fossil fuels releases CO2. We know this. Burning a couple million years worth of dead plants in a few centuries overwhelms the natural CO2 balancing systems that are in place. We know this too.
If it's not fun, he won't care. He won't give two sh1ts about libraries, OOP programming, garbage collection, etc etc etc....
If you feed him freak'in c++, he'll hate it, and he'll hate it FOREVER.
It's not about the stupid language, it's about what you DO with it.
Get a fun project, in an easy language.
Make a chat program all of your own. Then he can chat all clandestine like with his friends.
Make a program to help him encrypt and decrypt his secret stash of porn. He's a teenage boy? He has one....
How about a secret file sharing app he can use to share with his friends?
Whatever.... find a fun project for a teenage boy, and do it in an easy language. If he really takes to it, he'll eventually find his way to the harder and more "serious" languages.
I have a nasty habit of washing my phones. Or losing them when camping....
I can't afford to get a fancy phone three times a year. I can't afford to be in a contract. So I just buy my phones.
I get them off ebay. They cost $10, including shipping. They have no bells and whistles, but who cares? I don't contribute to shitty Ta mining practices in Africa. I don't sign a contract for the length of my service. It's cheaper for me.
I'm free. I can leave whenever I want to. Hear that Sprint? Yup... whenever I want to.
Other people could be free too. We're all whining about how Evil Verizon is, but people PUT UP WITH THIS SH!T. It's outrageous, considering that NOT putting up with it is cheaper, easier, better for the environment, etc...
Now, even though I think most poeple are morons who "need" the latest Shiny... The phone ocmpanies are still evil bastards. Go FCC! Extend network neutrality to phones!
Ok, so yeah, I'm an old D&D player. But dangnabbit, I miss just playing my characters. They had quirks, flaws, personalities...
I was never just a fighter, I was a poor guardsman, a greedy mercenary, a disgraced nobleman with a drinking problem. I was a farm boy sworn to get rich and bring my family out of poverty. My characters had motivations beyond Epic Loot.
Danged Min/Maxers! Someone aught'a make a game with only 5 levels, player made content, and let social structures dictate power, just like in real life. Lets face it, even the most badass swordsman WILL get taken down by an angry peasant mob. And he should.
And permanent character death too!
Stupid kids don't know what they're missing. Get off my lawn!
It could also be that they don't want anyone to go watch the first showing and tell the whole world what a giant pile of crap a movie may be. If people knew the movie was horrible, they might wait to see it, or just rent it later... Which costs the studios money and the prestige of box office numbers.
More likely, this is just a knee jerk reaction by a bunch of jerks.
"The fundamental problem is that the vast majority of health care expenses are incurred by people who are no longer in the work force."
Are you refering to Old People? Perhaps we need some sort of panel to decide if they live or die. We'll need a catchy name though... Hmm... BLANK panel... Hmm...
Or are you refering to Poor Welfare People? If you are, I must point out that most poor people who don't have insurance work WAAAAYYY harder than you do. They have crappy jobs, often two or three of them. The lady that made your McMuffin this morning contributed to society. Then some accident happens, and BAM, they're screwed. They were working, they want to work, they were trying, and one mistep down the stairs put them in debt for the medical bills. If only they'd have had decent medical insurance... but their job didn't provide it.
Where do people get this idea that there is a large class of people that don't work? I know people that don't work. They're retired. I know other people that don't work. They're in prison. I know a few people that don't work. They're homeless. Still, pretty much everyone works, and works hard. Often, if they're poor, they work HARDER.
Just remember, saying you're all for it on an internet forum doesn't actually do anything... Write your elected officials in support of S.1714, the "Open College Textbook Act of 2009". Here are some links, just in case you're THAT lazy....
Actually, most of the really innovative periods in time came when people disrespected IP laws and stole everything they could. The U.S. stole all kinds of ideas during the industrial revolution, and that worked out rather swell for everyone involved.
"Many of the scientists involved with ID hold very religious views which may cause them to insert God into areas they do not yet understand. The "God in the Gaps" folks."
Uhm... isn't that ALL of them?
"Luckily, most ID scientists are able to put their personal biases away for the sake of good science."
Forget the E bomb... How about we get a couple of guys with a pickup and a couple of hundred bucks of steel pipe from Home Depot... they drive around flinging the pipes into transformer substations....
"Security" is a lie. There's always a way around whatever protections you can put in place, and the false protection is often extremely expensive while the workaround is usually cheap.
I think a large amount of people are against perpetual copyright, not copyright itself. Of course you should be able to monetize your creative work for a while. No Worries there.
But culture shouldn't be locked away forever. Life of the Author + 75 years (~100-150ish) is about SIX GENERATIONS. Think about that.
Ok, this is reaaaaaally oversimplified, and pulled out of my bum, but....
All populations have variance. Lets take height. If we lined everyone up and measured their heights and took frequency counts, we'd get a nice bell curve.
Lets take those folks and divide them evenly. We separate them in two environments. One favors tall folk. The other favors short folk... for some weird reason, i don't know, it's just an example.
Over time, just a little bit of favoring one way or the other will give some genes a competitive advantage. It doesn't have to be much... In Tall Land, if tall folk have 1% more kids than average folk.... give it a few hundred generations and voila! After a while the short and tall populations diverge by quite a bit.
My girlfriend is arguing the point with me. I love her very much.:D She says you need mutation to create the variance in the first place. I say it just happens through random noise.:D
Errrgghh.... Stephen Hawking said something that bothered me. I feel weird.....
Now, I am not a biologist, or even in the field. I have read The Selfish Gene, and consider myself up on evolutionary theory....
OK. There are several misconceptions about evolution that drive me nuts. Why? Because it's incredibly important to understand, as it helps explain so much about life on this planet. It hurts me that people accept the Law of Gravity, but poke at the evolutionary process....
Ok... Misconceptions. 1. Evolution has a goal. It doesn't. We are not going to transcend or become ultimate beings. No. It just adapts critters to their environment. What's neat is that critters adapt to each other, together. Think about that, and ecosystems, and all that web of life stuff for a while and it's pretty neat.
2. Evolution is critter-centric. We are simply carriers for genese. Evolution is gene centric. Most of your genes are useless to you. Stuff that is stupid at a critter level can make perfect sense at a gene level. Those little bastards are using us, and don't care about us at all, as long as we breed.
3. Survival of the fittest. It's survival of the breediest, not necessarily of the fittest.
4. Evolution works through mutation. Errrrgghh... I disagree with Stephen Hawking. Ok, mutation helps, but you know what? Evolution doesn't need it. Most mutations result in a f*kup, not something useful. Evolution just needs seperate populations and/or environments. Eventually populations diverge and become more suited to their environments.
Night shift all by itself will greatly degrade your health. If you want any semblance of normality, don't switch back to days on your weekends! Of course, this will destroy your social life, which is very important to your quality of life. Either way, you're screwed.
Your job sucks. get a new one, or demand to go to days. Move closer and bike to work. Consider that your exercise and your unwind time can be combined into one. See biking to work. Take your lunch break and go to the gym. Every Night. Do It. Get really good sleep. Bring your own healthy food to work. This will take extra effort. Don't eat out of the Spinning Wheel of Death (vending machines).
You're pretty much screwed unless you can get a treadmill attached to your cube. If you can, then a nice slow walking pace through the day will take care of most of your problems. Good Luck getting your boss to OK that one....
Seriously... Get a new job. It's not worth it. I did it for 8 years and it turned me fat and grouchy. It had a good part to play in my divorce. Oh, and I lost touch with all my friends who didn't work nights. All for fleeting money.....
Clean air, clean water, clean earth.... Yeah, that sounds nice. What were you complaining about again?
The same folks that rail against global warming are usually the ones that are railing against letting companies dump pollutants in our water, air, etc.
And lets not forget that the largest polluter is just ordinary poeple making trash, eating food, and dumping their waste back into the water. But again, it's the greenies that tend to make the most effort to reduce their own waste.
The funny thing about geeks... they're interesting. Interesting counts for a lot. Develop a neat meatspace hobby.
Start whittling a longbow, make your own cordage for the string, and head out to the local archery club. Start a RC robot wars type group through Craigslist and have fun building things with people. Join a book club. Play chess in the park. Buy an old bike, strip it down, and start building it up with loving care. Find other bike geeks to hang out with.
Start a FreeGeek branch. Do volunteer work. You'll meet a lot of cute women if you start painting schools and the like. Build an outdoor theater out of an old projector, amp, speakers, inverter, and a few marine batteries and show Creative Commons movies in a park.
Shit man, use your imagination. If you're boring... become unboring.
Whatever you do, make sure you enjoy it. Don't fake it. Folks can sense that a long way off, and that's not the vibe you want to put out.
Slashdot Mirror
I live in Portland and it's a nice city. Yes, it IS the controlling majority for the state. Why? Because a LOT of the people live there? Crazy, I know.... Most of the poeple I work with are actually conservatives though... or libertarians. Lets face it, the MAX is a good thing. I use it a lot, just to avoid parking. Oh, and it goes through Portland, Gresham, Beaverton, and Hillsboro... so... yeah. I don't see many businesses leaving. The city has a great DIY/startup vibe and people WANT to work here, because it's kind of an awesome place. Ok, some of the cyclists do ride a little stupid. Police are fined when the shoot an unarmed suspect, which is frankly how it should be... Ok, and I don't think anyone actually cares about the Mayor, but that was pretty stupid of him. If you hate it so much, why don't you move away? 36 years is a long time to stay somewhere you hate.
http://wyden.senate.gov/contact/ Write him and tell him you appreciate it. Especially since it's not even time for elections yet... :D
If you don't live in Oregon, write your rep and tell them that you see something like this and that it actually matters to you... And that you'll remember this come time to vote.
http://www.contactingthecongress.org/
"No, they are not "sucking money out of the system". They are CIRCULATING money in the system."
Except that we see the statistics that 10% of our population has 2/3 of the wealth. It's NOT circulating. That's why the middle class is disappearing today.
From Wikipedia....
"In the United States at the end of 2001, 10% of the population owned 71% of the wealth and the top 1% owned 38%. On the other hand, the bottom 40% owned less than 1% of the nation's wealth.[14]""
So, how is that circulating again?
-T
Hi,
When you have a very few large companies, who lobby excessively to get their way.... You have no free market. The minute ANY company gets large enough to strangle it's competition in the crib, it does so, by any means it can.
The "Free Market" and "Supply and Demand" are oversimplified models that are taught in Econ101...
Worse is the frankly silly idea that because those companies bribed the government to get their way, the government is at fault. Government is not the problem. It's the only thing standing in the way of a Corpratocracy.
Now, I'll agree that gov. subsidies are silly when we don't get our share. If my tax money paid for lines to be ran across public property, I don't want to hear any noise about how unfair it is to force those companies to open "their" lines.
And then comes the odd idea that there are only two solutions... Total free market no regulation or socialism... Which is silly and again, oversimplified.
I'm getting really sick of conservatives blaming government for what is obviously corporate practices.
-T
So, looking at the wikipedia entry for BP, it seems they own AmPm, Conoco, Castrol, and Arco.
Maybe next time you get an oil change, or fill up the tank, you should consider who you're giving your money to.
Voting with our dollars seem to have much more impact than voting with our votes.
-T
Hi all,
So, if you don't like BP, don't sit here griping at a screen. Vote with your dollar. It seems to have more effect than our political votes.
Look up BP on wikipedia and don't shop at their subsidiaries.
BP seems to own Arco, AmPm, and Castrol. Looks like Conoco and Amoco too. I suggest that the next time you pull in to get gas, or get an oil change, you take a look at who you're buying from. :D
-Tony
Why are you wanting people to kill themselves?
Huh? Who said that?
Why do you dislike these people so much?
Because they push their values on me.
Do you dislike them because they are promoting Christian values?
Don't lie, don't steal, don't kill, honor your parents, etc... These are Christian values, yes... but they're pretty much every religion's values. They're pretty much HUMAN values. Christianity doesn't own them. I dislike Christians because they tell me that the meek shall inherit the earth and that god loves everyone and then in the same sentence they tell me that God is going to send homosexuals to hell for all eternity and the poor can go !@#$ themselves.
If you do, do you dislike that they believe that God so loved the world that he sent his only Son so that who ever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life?
Uhm... whatever.
Do you dislike them because they try to live like Christ but recognize that when they fail, which they inevitably do, they go back to God and ask for forgiveness?
Dude, if they had that kind of humility, I'd like them a LOT more. And I've met some who do, and they are AWESOME people.
Do you dislike them because they believe in a God that you don't believe exists?
Worship the family cat for all I care. Just keep it on your side of the fence.
Or do you dislike them because simply because you do not like others who don't believe in what you believe?
I don't care what someone believes, as long as they keep it to themselves. The beauty of a liberal society is that you're free to be as conservative as you want. If you decide you must wear a funny hat to hide your head from God... Hey, no worries. Have at it. Everyone wins. Now if we flip it, I get stoned for existing..... !@#$ that.
-Tony
Ok, this is important... I'm seeing a lot of arguing.
The science here is pretty basic, really. We're pumping out a lot of CO2, and it's causing a greenhouse effect. The earth as a whole is getting warmer, and it's weirding things out a little. We're worried about it. It's a complicated system that we're dealing with, and the math isn't straightforward. We can predict climate level stuff over the long haul, but short term predictions are useless, because weather is just way to complicated.
There seem to be a lot of naysayers. Lets really look at this though....
FOR:
CO2 is a greenhouse gas. we produce a lot of it. Not much to question here. These are facts.
AGAINST:
Man can't affect the environment! Debunked. Remember the hole in the freak'in ozone layer? It doesn't get a lot of press, but we did that. Or go to LA during a smog alert and breath deeply... Or look at the giant mound of plastic bits the size of Texas in the ocean, or look at the fish stocks running out on the coasts, or... Etc etc etc.
We don't produce enough! We're just a drop in the bucket compared to what Mom Nature spits out, so we can't be having an effect. Debunked. Yes, mom nature puts out a lot of CO2. And theoretically that has systems in place to deal with it. Our extra does not. Oh, and it's cumulative addition... The extra takes a LONG time to be gotten rid of. Think it's not a big deal? Eat an extra candy bar every day. It's only 300 calories... Compared to the 3000 you're already eating, no big deal right? Yeah, but if you don't work extra to get rid of it, you'll gain about 25lbs in a year.
Follow the money! Climate researchers are just trying to get grants! Yes.... grants... what a wonderful way to get money, to constantly scrap and scrimp. Those researchers are just trying to live it up. Not like the companies that are desperately trying to not get regulated, and have Hooker and Blow money to spare. Seriously.... Debunked.
We're coming out of an ice age! Yes, we are. This is the only criticism I've seen so far that has real merit. Yes, it's supposed to be getting warmer, but NOT THIS FAST. Remeber that the shift in ice ages takes a LOOOOOOOOOONG time. Seeing rapid warming inside of decades is NOT supposed to happen. And it is kind of weird how it started speeding up right around the time humans started burning coal en masse. yeah, yeah, correlation, causation. If it's not us, and it's not the earth, do we blame martians? Debunked.
What would disprove it? debunked. Uhm... mean temperatures getting colder over a decade? Mean temperatures staying even over a decade. Mean temperatures rising VEEEEEEERY slightly, but not so much? Funny, it hasn't done any of those.
I'm just not sure! And the coal and oil companies have paid good money to sow those seeds of doubt.
We don't know enough! And to some, we never will. Seriously, we do know enough. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. It traps heat in the atmosphere instead of letting it radiate out into space. That is pretty basic. We know this. Burning fossil fuels releases CO2. We know this. Burning a couple million years worth of dead plants in a few centuries overwhelms the natural CO2 balancing systems that are in place. We know this too.
So, what other doubts do you have?
-Tony
Come on, seriously,
If it's not fun, he won't care. He won't give two sh1ts about libraries, OOP programming, garbage collection, etc etc etc....
If you feed him freak'in c++, he'll hate it, and he'll hate it FOREVER.
It's not about the stupid language, it's about what you DO with it.
Get a fun project, in an easy language.
Make a chat program all of your own. Then he can chat all clandestine like with his friends.
Make a program to help him encrypt and decrypt his secret stash of porn. He's a teenage boy? He has one....
How about a secret file sharing app he can use to share with his friends?
Whatever.... find a fun project for a teenage boy, and do it in an easy language. If he really takes to it, he'll eventually find his way to the harder and more "serious" languages.
Sheesh
I have a nasty habit of washing my phones. Or losing them when camping....
I can't afford to get a fancy phone three times a year. I can't afford to be in a contract. So I just buy my phones.
I get them off ebay. They cost $10, including shipping. They have no bells and whistles, but who cares? I don't contribute to shitty Ta mining practices in Africa. I don't sign a contract for the length of my service. It's cheaper for me.
I'm free. I can leave whenever I want to. Hear that Sprint? Yup... whenever I want to.
Other people could be free too. We're all whining about how Evil Verizon is, but people PUT UP WITH THIS SH!T. It's outrageous, considering that NOT putting up with it is cheaper, easier, better for the environment, etc...
Now, even though I think most poeple are morons who "need" the latest Shiny... The phone ocmpanies are still evil bastards. Go FCC! Extend network neutrality to phones!
R.I.P. Roleplaying....
Ok, so yeah, I'm an old D&D player. But dangnabbit, I miss just playing my characters. They had quirks, flaws, personalities...
I was never just a fighter, I was a poor guardsman, a greedy mercenary, a disgraced nobleman with a drinking problem. I was a farm boy sworn to get rich and bring my family out of poverty. My characters had motivations beyond Epic Loot.
Danged Min/Maxers! Someone aught'a make a game with only 5 levels, player made content, and let social structures dictate power, just like in real life. Lets face it, even the most badass swordsman WILL get taken down by an angry peasant mob. And he should.
And permanent character death too!
Stupid kids don't know what they're missing. Get off my lawn!
-T
(Oh gods, I'm only 30....)
It could be that this is an anti-piracy thing.
It could also be that they don't want anyone to go watch the first showing and tell the whole world what a giant pile of crap a movie may be. If people knew the movie was horrible, they might wait to see it, or just rent it later... Which costs the studios money and the prestige of box office numbers.
More likely, this is just a knee jerk reaction by a bunch of jerks.
-T
"The fundamental problem is that the vast majority of health care expenses are incurred by people who are no longer in the work force."
Are you refering to Old People? Perhaps we need some sort of panel to decide if they live or die. We'll need a catchy name though... Hmm... BLANK panel... Hmm...
Or are you refering to Poor Welfare People? If you are, I must point out that most poor people who don't have insurance work WAAAAYYY harder than you do. They have crappy jobs, often two or three of them. The lady that made your McMuffin this morning contributed to society. Then some accident happens, and BAM, they're screwed. They were working, they want to work, they were trying, and one mistep down the stairs put them in debt for the medical bills. If only they'd have had decent medical insurance... but their job didn't provide it.
Where do people get this idea that there is a large class of people that don't work? I know people that don't work. They're retired. I know other people that don't work. They're in prison. I know a few people that don't work. They're homeless. Still, pretty much everyone works, and works hard. Often, if they're poor, they work HARDER.
-Tony
Hey all,
Just remember, saying you're all for it on an internet forum doesn't actually do anything... Write your elected officials in support of S.1714, the "Open College Textbook Act of 2009". Here are some links, just in case you're THAT lazy....
http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml
https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml
http://takeaction.lwv.org/lwv/dbq/officials/
Remember to get the senate AND the house.
-T
It's not illegal to be a monopoly. It's only illegal to act like one.
-T
Actually, most of the really innovative periods in time came when people disrespected IP laws and stole everything they could. The U.S. stole all kinds of ideas during the industrial revolution, and that worked out rather swell for everyone involved.
-T
"Many of the scientists involved with ID hold very religious views which may cause them to insert God into areas they do not yet understand. The "God in the Gaps" folks."
Uhm... isn't that ALL of them?
"Luckily, most ID scientists are able to put their personal biases away for the sake of good science."
Uhm.... what?
You know what? I'd LOVE to. I think it would be a gas. PM me. :D
-Tony
Forget the E bomb... How about we get a couple of guys with a pickup and a couple of hundred bucks of steel pipe from Home Depot... they drive around flinging the pipes into transformer substations....
"Security" is a lie. There's always a way around whatever protections you can put in place, and the false protection is often extremely expensive while the workaround is usually cheap.
Security Theater at it's finest...
I think a large amount of people are against perpetual copyright, not copyright itself. Of course you should be able to monetize your creative work for a while. No Worries there.
But culture shouldn't be locked away forever. Life of the Author + 75 years (~100-150ish) is about SIX GENERATIONS. Think about that.
You're a federal criminal whenever you sing Happy Birthday without paying up until the year 2030. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You
That's Nuts. Lets keep it to one generation, oh, say.... 28 years or so?
-Tony
Ok, this is reaaaaaally oversimplified, and pulled out of my bum, but....
All populations have variance. Lets take height. If we lined everyone up and measured their heights and took frequency counts, we'd get a nice bell curve.
Lets take those folks and divide them evenly. We separate them in two environments. One favors tall folk. The other favors short folk... for some weird reason, i don't know, it's just an example.
Over time, just a little bit of favoring one way or the other will give some genes a competitive advantage. It doesn't have to be much... In Tall Land, if tall folk have 1% more kids than average folk.... give it a few hundred generations and voila! After a while the short and tall populations diverge by quite a bit.
My girlfriend is arguing the point with me. I love her very much. :D She says you need mutation to create the variance in the first place. I say it just happens through random noise. :D
-T
Errrgghh.... Stephen Hawking said something that bothered me. I feel weird.....
Now, I am not a biologist, or even in the field. I have read The Selfish Gene, and consider myself up on evolutionary theory....
OK. There are several misconceptions about evolution that drive me nuts. Why? Because it's incredibly important to understand, as it helps explain so much about life on this planet. It hurts me that people accept the Law of Gravity, but poke at the evolutionary process....
Ok... Misconceptions.
1. Evolution has a goal.
It doesn't. We are not going to transcend or become ultimate beings. No. It just adapts critters to their environment. What's neat is that critters adapt to each other, together. Think about that, and ecosystems, and all that web of life stuff for a while and it's pretty neat.
2. Evolution is critter-centric.
We are simply carriers for genese. Evolution is gene centric. Most of your genes are useless to you. Stuff that is stupid at a critter level can make perfect sense at a gene level. Those little bastards are using us, and don't care about us at all, as long as we breed.
3. Survival of the fittest.
It's survival of the breediest, not necessarily of the fittest.
4. Evolution works through mutation.
Errrrgghh... I disagree with Stephen Hawking. Ok, mutation helps, but you know what? Evolution doesn't need it. Most mutations result in a f*kup, not something useful. Evolution just needs seperate populations and/or environments. Eventually populations diverge and become more suited to their environments.
I feel weird....
-Tony
Night shift all by itself will greatly degrade your health. If you want any semblance of normality, don't switch back to days on your weekends! Of course, this will destroy your social life, which is very important to your quality of life. Either way, you're screwed.
Your job sucks. get a new one, or demand to go to days.
Move closer and bike to work.
Consider that your exercise and your unwind time can be combined into one. See biking to work.
Take your lunch break and go to the gym. Every Night. Do It.
Get really good sleep.
Bring your own healthy food to work. This will take extra effort. Don't eat out of the Spinning Wheel of Death (vending machines).
You're pretty much screwed unless you can get a treadmill attached to your cube. If you can, then a nice slow walking pace through the day will take care of most of your problems. Good Luck getting your boss to OK that one....
Seriously... Get a new job. It's not worth it. I did it for 8 years and it turned me fat and grouchy. It had a good part to play in my divorce. Oh, and I lost touch with all my friends who didn't work nights. All for fleeting money.....
-T
-Tony
Clean air, clean water, clean earth.... Yeah, that sounds nice. What were you complaining about again?
The same folks that rail against global warming are usually the ones that are railing against letting companies dump pollutants in our water, air, etc.
And lets not forget that the largest polluter is just ordinary poeple making trash, eating food, and dumping their waste back into the water. But again, it's the greenies that tend to make the most effort to reduce their own waste.
So, really, what are you complaining about again?
-T
The funny thing about geeks... they're interesting. Interesting counts for a lot. Develop a neat meatspace hobby.
Start whittling a longbow, make your own cordage for the string, and head out to the local archery club. Start a RC robot wars type group through Craigslist and have fun building things with people. Join a book club. Play chess in the park. Buy an old bike, strip it down, and start building it up with loving care. Find other bike geeks to hang out with.
Start a FreeGeek branch. Do volunteer work. You'll meet a lot of cute women if you start painting schools and the like. Build an outdoor theater out of an old projector, amp, speakers, inverter, and a few marine batteries and show Creative Commons movies in a park.
Shit man, use your imagination. If you're boring... become unboring.
Whatever you do, make sure you enjoy it. Don't fake it. Folks can sense that a long way off, and that's not the vibe you want to put out.
-Tony