I question if gazillions of gallons of oil gushing into the ocean all at once is more or less bad than a little plutonium. Plutonium is pretty fucking toxic. Uranium... not so much. I mean it's bad, but it's not plutonium-bad. But that's a lot of oil.
What's funny here is that this is just beta-ray radiation, which is more penetrating ionizing radiation than alpha-ray radiation... made of electrons.
In short: the best way to handle this is to slowly dump it into the sea. Not kidding. That would solve the problem. the impact would be uh...... nothing. You'd have a few extra electrons here and there and that's it; I mean yeah you don't want to just unload all of this in one spot in one shot, it would be kind of shitty there for a few hours (possibly not really important), but overall this is going to dilute and emit not-very-scary electricity.
Now tell me what is emitting those beta-rays. Is it plutonium? We don't want plutonium in the ocean. Oh, wait, plutonium emits neutron radiation, so that's not it. Unless this is beta-ray radiation from the decay of neptunium into plutonium, which would be bad--and would make sense, since the water is probably filled with depleted uranium.
The best part is they said here that they wanted the "Root Certificate", which would allow them to sign new keys. Caveat: that's just a trust model, allowing them to replace LavaBit's SSL key. What they wanted was LavaBit's site SSL private key.
Let's say that the NSA got the Verisign Root Certificate and started using it to sign Verisign CSRs. A CSR includes the public key (certificate), but not the private key. The public key is already known. The NSA gains... nothing.
Now if they get the Google Gmail SSL private key, they can decrypt the SSL session handshake and key exchange. The key exchange exchanges a symmetric encryption key for AES or RC4 (yes RC4 is secure; yes I know it's used in WEP, which uses a new NONCE for every packet, and in their implementation they generate insecure NONCE/IV pairs and you can collect millions of these and crack it. Not applicable here). With Gmail's SSL private key, the NSA can decrypt the symmetric session key exchange and use that key to decrypt your session and read your e-mail.
Do you really think powerful men will allow someone who is out to decrease the money and power in the hands of powerful men to get into a position of power where he can decrease the money and power in the hands of those powerful men?
Politicians will always be able to win debates. Debates aren't about being correct; they're about gaining audience support. Aside from that, look at Ron Paul... remember the #1, #2, and #4 placers of the Republican Nomination or whatever in 2012? I'm not paying attention enough to care about all the details verbatim--and here I go losing a debate where I'm the only participant. But, yes, there was an instance where a news network skipped mentioning the #3 place in delegate count or some such because it was Ron Paul and they didn't want to mention Ron Paul on TV. There was a lot of avoiding Ron Paul, and there were instances where some hosts covered Ron Paul a lot and then suddenly veered away HARD, giving the impression of a lot of pressure coming down from the top.
Why would I ever get into a position of authority? I'm working directly against the interests of the exact people who can stop me from gaining any such position, and I have nothing to bait them into letting me get there. I'd have to run on a platform that sounds good for the people but is bullshit and tows a party line that the party knows only sounds good but really is only good for those in power, such that I'd have the support of the party and they would put faith in that I have the support of the people and thus can be given nominations to positions of power that I can actually win. Then I'd have to veer completely away from all that and do something different, betraying the trust of the people and the trust of the party and unveiling a pile of lies and deceit.
Because, while I'm manipulative, I am not intentionally deceptive. You'd be surprised what you can get away with when people trust you; it's a valuable tool, and difficult to maintain. Being open and keeping those around you satisfied allows you to work against their direct interests in many cases, and especially to get them to accept risks they are typically uncomfortable with. Deception isn't a skill I ever learned; I control information by controlling relevance and then omitting what is justifiable to omit. Cannot omit strongly relevant things; can omit small details that have no relevant impact but that are worrying when brought up (i.e. people are bad at risk assessment; if the risk of direct impact on anything important isn't of any consequence, I don't need to mention it).
The problem with Fractional Reserve Banking is that there is no real money. Fiat currency is by nature imaginary; but in this case fiat currency isn't printed and spent into the economy, but rather loaned into existence. That means every piece of currency in existence is basically owed to someone else, with the caveat that it's probably not in the hands of the debtor who owes it to said creditor.
On top of this, loans necessarily incur interest, meaning more money is required to pay off the loan than borrowed, meaning inflation, meaning that every piece of currency that comes into existence causes inflation and immediately creates a need for more currency to come into existence at a later date. It's not that predictably later we will need more currency because of another action, but that the event of currency becoming accessible creates the situation that more currency needs to be made accessible.
In essence, each unit of currency loaned into existence causes inflation by increasing the money supply ("printing money") and by increasing the amount of money owed (monetary demand to pay off the interest). We operate on a negative currency system, where the system becomes more and more poor as the amount of currency increases. Our entire economy is continuously indebted, and the growth of the money supply is accomplished by the growth of debt and the continuous loss of wealth.
This is a good illustration about how wealth transfer works, though. Each economic activity has a cost. Economic activities which are rent-seeking--which draw increased revenue without increasing actual value--are damaging in this way. Economic waste is also damaging in this way.
This is why, for example, overpricing the market by artificially limiting supply (labor i.e. electricians and plumbers, goods i.e. diamonds, etc.) makes some people rich but has a disproportionate cost--the profiteers gain $100,000, but the net economic impact is $150,000 or so, and so the economy is $50,000 less wealthy but these folks don't care because they're $100,000 more wealthy and fuck everyone else.
This is also how churn of goods works. Tearing down a bridge that needs $1M of work to remain viable for 10 years to instead rebuild a $100M bridge in its place doesn't make the economy stronger; it temporarily creates jobs at the expense of whoever's paying for the bridge (usually taxpayers), who end up poorer, thus don't spend as much in their local economy or in the wider (national, global) market, weakening the economy overall by reducing its ability to respond to new opportunities and instead diverting money to bridge builders.
Also like the bridge, buying a new iPhone every 3 months--a more personal decision, but one with the same impact, and one that's not "DEH GUBERMENT SHUDNT BE SO SOZIALIST!" Yes, we can have that same socialist wealth destruction in a completely capitalist free market by people being idiots. On the other hand, handing down that iPhone to someone who has less money and will get it free or at a discount will keep the wealth in society. That's why I encourage people to donate their old goods to i.e. Good Will or such, rather than trashing them. Those things still useful retain value, and passing them on at steep discount to those who cannot afford such goods will enrich society by retaining wealth that would otherwise be lost to landfilling or re-processing (recycling, etc., investing more labor) perfectly useful goods.
In this case, a lot of folks are poorer and a lot of resources are wasted; but power companies are a good deal richer, and the botnet operators have more money. Society is poorer, a few players are richer. The botnet operators are as a small boy who walks through the town periodically breaking random windows so that the glazier can retain his job... and he's coming to break your window, at $50 a pane to replace.
Admittedly, the term ANFO is often abused. On the other hand, chicken crap contains a LOT of ammonium nitrate, so will contain a significant amount of ANFO if mixed with fuel oil. The ammonia comes from urine and the nitrogen comes from a high amount of nitrogen present in chicken manure; bacteria ferment urea into ammonia and then nitrates, and can and do fixate ammonium nitrate from resultant compounds eventually.
I guess it's like how ground, wet barley that's fermented is not beer, because it's a messy pile of muck that happens to contain fermented barley (alcohol, basically beer).
Technically, in this case, you could say you manufactured and detonated ANFO--it works, it does exactly that, and it's effective--but you can't can this shit and call it ANFO. So whatever.
Having watched a Discovery Channel special where they actually piped chicken manure and fuel oil into a cavity carved into a stone outcropping to blast a passage for a roadway, I can say that you're wrong. This is common practice here.
Short version: It happens to actually work in real life and gets used on an industrial scale. That makes it a real thing.
If you want to be specific, how about this one. There is a traffic light on a road that is right at the bottom of a hill about 100 feet. The road has 40 mph speed limit. You come up the hill and are going down, and at the same time the light just turns green. There is a car sitting right in front of the light, and the driver is actually texting and doesn't know that the light has turned green. You are driving in the same lane as that car. You don't know that the person doesn't realize that the light turns green, so what is your anticipation? Of course, you would think that the car is going to move. Let say you are cautious so you slow down but intend not to be completely stopped. But then the car in front of you does not move at all and you eventually hit the car in front of you because you couldn't brake on time. Legally, you are totally at fault because you couldn't stop. What's about ethical? You were cautious but were NOT cautious enough.
Let's try again.
You were cautious but were NOT cautious enough.
Again.
You were cautious but were NOT cautious enough.
Yes, Virginia, it is in fact your duty to not look down the hill and go, "Oh, he'll move. The light is green." That is what they drill into your head in driver's ed. It's your responsibility to control your car. This is why you don't, oh I don't know, tailgate the car in front of you because "He won't slam on his brakes for no reason, so I have room to stop if something happens!" No, you have enough room to make a full stop if the car in front of you stops RIGHT NOW. Because maybe something you can't see happens and he does slam his brakes down, with full ABS and TC and assisted braking, and he comes to a god damn fast stop.
I routinely misjudge a light and wind up reading the next signal as the one I'm approaching. That means on your example I will see a car parked at the bottom of the hill waiting at a red traffic signal and see the next signal green and routinely misjudge that this dumb asshole is sitting at a green light like a moron. I've done it a hundred times. I didn't hit anyone because it's my moral responsibility to notice that dumbass at the bottom of the hill isn't moving even though he should be. Even when I'm wrong and he's supposed to keep his car parked until the signal changes. I also repeatedly reassess the signal as I approach, mostly to make sure it doesn't change.
Also, the guy at the bottom of the hill may be waiting for an approaching emergency vehicle. This happens several times per day to me. Firetrucks, ambulances, and police cruisers... I see 2-3 firetrucks and 3-5 ambulances per day, though some days I see plenty more. Police cruisers oddly less often, but when I see one there's usually plenty more coming down over the next 20-30 minutes all going the same place. And then there's this dorkus waiting at a traffic signal for an approaching ambulance...
Yes, when you see somebody at the next signal just sitting, you should assume that they'll be there when you get there. That's a core theme of driver's ed. Maybe you should attend one day.
It's not so much that as soil viability. We already manage soil by round-up treating the field, tilling everything over, planting seeds, repeated round-up treatment from time to time if the crop is round-up ready, etc. We also till organic fertilizer (cow shit) into the soil at the first run, and later add chemical fertilizer as needed. We also apply pesticides by air spraying.
We do this for crop density, but it's not a great practice to keep the soil viable. Too much chemical herbicide treatment and soil depletion. The soil is kept viable by the addition of chemical fertilizers and a lesser addition of organic matter. My suggestion is merely that we could greatly improve soil viability by using more organic fertilizer (manure, compost, etc.) between crops and applying worms for continuous enrichment; this has the advantage of improving soil quality continuously in many ways beyond simple nutrient content, but the caveat that use of chemical herbicides and pesticides could harm the worms to a point that compromises their viability for this use. That means we would also need to grow food with worm-safe weed and pest control practice--either alternate practices or restriction to chemicals which do not harm worm viability.
It appears Round-Up may be toxic to red worms. From this paper the author conjectures that it may only kill smaller red worms; I conjecture that it could be killing a random subset (variation in tolerance), sterilizing (breeding problems), killing eggs, or killing young worms. A random subset would be the best possible outcome here, as a 20% higher mortality rate at random would still retain viability. Propagation problems (breeding, egg destruction, or death of juveniles) would be the worst, as this would cause a steady population decline.
Pesticides will likely kill worms. Pyrethrin will, for example.
There is so much chicken shit to go around that we carve mountain passes with it. ANFO explosive can cut down a pass in a huge mountain with unbelievable efficacy; one of the more popular ways to generate ANFO is to pump a hole full of chicken shit and then pour in fuel oil (Kerosene, diesel, any grade of Jet Fuel, etc.).
Here on the east coast, farmers have access to enough cow, horse, and chicken manure to fertilize their entire growing season's worth of crops. There are regulations in the way for any addition of "organic fertilizer" after the beginning of the growing season--everything needs to be done on the first application, and the farmers complain that they just can't estimate how much fertilizer they need and must apply more later and so must use chemical fertilizer.
It may be different in the midwest; however, here we have such an abundance of natural fertilizer that it's given away for free in some municipalities where waste is controlled by composting.
Soil quality is extremely easy to solve. Everyone wants to use pesticides and herbicides out the ass, mostly petrol-based shit and chemical shit and dangerous plant derived shit etc. There are other ways.
Every time I open this argument, somebody comes along with the "Green Revolution" that started all of this heavily-scienced lab bullshit that apparently saved the world from starvation. That's all well and good, but that doesn't mean that's the only direction we can take science; it doesn't all have to happen in a beaker, and we've made great strides in natural science research since then. We know more about the biosphere, and thus can leverage various attributes in new ways.
Bad soil. Let's attack bad soil first.
Farmers have access to a lot of manure. Cow manure, sheep manure, goat shit, chicken shit, the like. They also have access to non-useful plant matter, although some of that goes to ethanol. Farmers will tend to plow manure into the land; good. Do that. Skip the petrol, do this more. We have a lot of regulations here about plowing "natural fertilizer" into the land: it all needs to be used at once in the beginning of the season; this is unsustainable because farmers will add more manure to the top of the land throughout the season, and don't know how much to use in the beginning. This is a real thing. We've had legislative arguments on it. The legislature wants to prevent run-off of cow-shit-based nitrogen sources into the bay here, because algae growth from fertilizer run-off is a real problem; unfortunately, they're encouraging farmers to use chemical nitrogen sources, which doesn't help.
So, drop the chemical fertilizers. Use more cow shit.
Step two: Worms. European Night Crawlers will dig deep into the soil. We bin them as an invasive species, but I don't believe the damage is as bad as people think. There's talk about how worms accelerate the nitrogen cycle in forests and will cause biosphere changes; but I believe that the research is too young to produce anything intelligent and that everything here is conjecture and knee-jerk reaction. I'll add mine to the pile: the forests aren't collapsing overnight and they won't. New seedlings that can handle the new nitrogen cycle better will out-compete new seedlings that can't; over time, the forests will shift toward plants that can better handle living with earthworms, and no major crisis will occur.
European Night Crawlers move through deeper soil, consuming soil and killing bacteria on the soil. They consume the bacteria as food and leave behind processed, crushed soil containing remaining bits of destroyed bacteria and crushed matter. The soil is better aerated, has a high nutrient availability, holds water better, drains better, and is easier for plant roots to take hold in. The soil is effectively cultivated (turned, tilled, etc.) and fertilized continuously. This means ENC greatly improve soil quality.
Red Wigglers are another type of worm. These feed on bacteria present in rotting matter--plant matter that's rotted and softened, or manure. Essentially, Red Wigglers process rotting (i.e. composting) matter into high-quality soil; ENC process soil into high-quality soil, and will further enrich the soil that Red Wigglers produce. Thus manure and hummus tilled into the top layer of soil provides a high-quality basis for a long-running enrichment process that produces and maintains extremely high-quality soil during the growing season.
Our industry is such that we can do this at home and get better quality farm land than farmers have. We have tiny little plots of land in our back yard gardens. There is not a massive, ginormous scale worm farming industry in our country; we can't supply the worms for this (although, given a big stacked worm bed and enough input feed, we could breed enough worms in under a year to support the whole farming industry; they breed fucking fast). Our farming industry also relies largely on petrol and chemical fertilizers; however w
Unavoidable vs Avoidable is one thing; but the point is that "oh, you shouldn't have been here, so this is kind of your fault, not really mine" is patent, weapons-grade bullshit. Keeping your vehicle stationary IS SAFE. Keeping your vehicle stationary in an intersection IS SAFE. Keeping your vehicle stationary where it's supposed to move IS SAFE. It's annoying and impedes traffic, but it IS SAFE. Collisions involving your stationary vehicle ARE NOT CAUSED BY YOUR STATIONARY VEHICLE; they're caused by another vehicle running into it.
Ethically, morally, and technically, you are responsible for BEING AN ANNOYANCE TO THE PUBLIC by impeding traffic. Nothing more. Absolutely nothing more. You share zero responsibility with the moron behind you who rammed into your car. Case in point: While waiting for a left hand turn, I had my car stopped in the traffic lane; guy behind me hit my car. Did he hit it because it was stationary? No. He hit it because he was leaning over his seat fishing around in the back seat playing with his toddler in her car seat. Had I been simply sitting in the roadway playing with my cell phone, HE STILL WOULD HAVE HIT ME. Had he been paying attention while I was sitting in the roadway playing with my cell phone, HE STILL WOULD HAVE NOT HIT ME. The collision was entirely due to his action, not due to my presence in the lane of traffic for whatever reason.
Your reasoning extends logically to absurdity. Your reasoning makes me partially responsible for murder if I leave a bicycle on the sidewalk and an inattentive jogger watching some other jogger's tits trips over my bicycle and breaks his braincase open on the pavement, killing himself. I have nearly done this several times because the sidewalk in my city is uneven; perhaps the city would be responsible for injury if someone trips on the uneven, poorly maintained pavement. Maybe people should be able to sue if they slip on the sidewalk in front of my house because I didn't come out to apply salt to the walkway.
Let's continue to disclaim personal responsibility for actions that are clearly the fault of a single party, and just shift the blame to someone else whose presence is incidental. God damn, man, that lamp post shouldn't have been there!
I want a language that's fully formed enough to discuss all conceivable abstract concepts. Prolog might be a good way to do this, although looking at your example it seems to require full scope definition of language elements (what is a weapon? Missiles are weapons). This is, of course, a failing in any model really.
Gangster-style marketing of firearms is unethical. Marketing cigarettes and booze to kids is also unethical. I still feel that parents should be allowed to order alcohol for 14+ offspring, and that 16+ should be allowed to buy beer and 18+ buy liquor; wtf is this 21+ shit? But marketing alcohol to young kids to skirt the law by creating a criminal demand to make more money is unethical.
Firearms are manufactured and distributed to make a profit by various means. Like in all well-run business, what is and isn't in the market scope is identified; market sectors are targeted, others are incidental. Some firearms manufacturers can simply strongly target non-law-enforcement citizens with the best grade of personal defense firearms on the market; others may feel an ethical or moral obligation (i.e. the board, the CEO, corporate mission statement--look at Cliff Bar Co) or see a market opportunity in maintaining their brand image ("trust") by aggressively taking action to ensure that their firearms are more likely to land in their target markets and exclude other target markets--particularly illegal or criminal ones ("criminal" is different than "illegal" from certain standpoints--the concept of crimes against humanity that may not be crimes against the law uses one such definition).
"Assault Weapons" are debated over a lot, since there's often evidence that they're not great for "assault" (the definition of an "assault" here is tactical; throwing an unloaded firearm at someone's head is assault, but that's not what we're talking about) or at least don't provide greater opportunity than handguns and more bullets. For example, if I wanted to shoot up an airplane terminal, I couldn't approach the place carrying an AR-15; how the fuck would I conceal it? I could get a couple pistols and a jacket filled with clips or magazines to the security checkpoint, or to a prior strategic point (i.e. without an armed guard standing next to me) and do a lot more damage. Some arguments suppose that you could get either to said strategic point, but that there's no real advantage to having a high-capacity assault rifle over a pistol that swaps in more bullets quickly. It hasn't been settled yet. In either case, the deterrent effect of removing "assault weapons" from society on mass murder isn't measurable and isn't conjectured in any scientifically meaningful way.
You need high-velocity rifles for hunting certain animals, but probably in the lower range of "High velocity" (some of these things will send a bullet 2km; a regular old hunting rifle is effective at at least 650m). I prefer crossbow bolts, but I must admit that a rifle will shoot faster if you miss. I worry about where the bullet goes if you miss. I prefer a recurve bow for two reasons: I hate compound bows; and the effective range is far enough to cover anything I could reasonably expect to hit without being ridiculously far (seriously, 50 meters? 50 meters?! DO I LOOK LIKE ROBIN HOOD?! WTF is with 650m effective range, I can't get a clear shot that far in the woods!).
Jaywalking is illegal. We have crosswalks so that morons can belong in the street at some point and drivers expect them. Said morons still manage to wind up in the street where and when they don't belong. Drivers are still expected not to hit them unless it's patently unreasonable to expect the driver not to hit them. A driver with ample room and time to avoid or brake should not hit a pedestrian who is illegally crossing the roadway; a driver who strikes a pedestrian who ran out into the roadway from behind cover may have been in an unavoidable situation and thus is not at fault. In the first case, if that driver is traveling with excessive speed beyond legal boundaries and driving erratically and recklessly, striking the pedestrian is squarely his fault.
It took seven years of debate for my state to pass a law making vehicular manslaughter a crime. We eventually settled on a law specifying that drivers engaging in risk-increasing behavior such as speedi
Slashdot Mirror
Japan had its big catastrophe. Let me illustrate: observe March 10.
I question if gazillions of gallons of oil gushing into the ocean all at once is more or less bad than a little plutonium. Plutonium is pretty fucking toxic. Uranium... not so much. I mean it's bad, but it's not plutonium-bad. But that's a lot of oil.
What's funny here is that this is just beta-ray radiation, which is more penetrating ionizing radiation than alpha-ray radiation... made of electrons.
In short: the best way to handle this is to slowly dump it into the sea. Not kidding. That would solve the problem. the impact would be uh... ... nothing. You'd have a few extra electrons here and there and that's it; I mean yeah you don't want to just unload all of this in one spot in one shot, it would be kind of shitty there for a few hours (possibly not really important), but overall this is going to dilute and emit not-very-scary electricity.
Now tell me what is emitting those beta-rays. Is it plutonium? We don't want plutonium in the ocean. Oh, wait, plutonium emits neutron radiation, so that's not it. Unless this is beta-ray radiation from the decay of neptunium into plutonium, which would be bad--and would make sense, since the water is probably filled with depleted uranium.
That's a good point. I keep assuming it's hard to get in the middle.
The best part is they said here that they wanted the "Root Certificate", which would allow them to sign new keys. Caveat: that's just a trust model, allowing them to replace LavaBit's SSL key. What they wanted was LavaBit's site SSL private key.
Let's say that the NSA got the Verisign Root Certificate and started using it to sign Verisign CSRs. A CSR includes the public key (certificate), but not the private key. The public key is already known. The NSA gains ... nothing.
Now if they get the Google Gmail SSL private key, they can decrypt the SSL session handshake and key exchange. The key exchange exchanges a symmetric encryption key for AES or RC4 (yes RC4 is secure; yes I know it's used in WEP, which uses a new NONCE for every packet, and in their implementation they generate insecure NONCE/IV pairs and you can collect millions of these and crack it. Not applicable here). With Gmail's SSL private key, the NSA can decrypt the symmetric session key exchange and use that key to decrypt your session and read your e-mail.
That's the difference.
Agriculture giant Monsanto has purchased the weather analytics firm Climate Corporation for over $930 Millionl.
930 Million L? What's 930 million loonies in real money? Something like the Norwegian Krone I guess. What's $930Ml in Krone?
Is this the Splinter Cell guy?
The US is on a fiat currency, so this is relevant. Backed currency is irrelevant here.
Do you really think powerful men will allow someone who is out to decrease the money and power in the hands of powerful men to get into a position of power where he can decrease the money and power in the hands of those powerful men?
Politicians will always be able to win debates. Debates aren't about being correct; they're about gaining audience support. Aside from that, look at Ron Paul... remember the #1, #2, and #4 placers of the Republican Nomination or whatever in 2012? I'm not paying attention enough to care about all the details verbatim--and here I go losing a debate where I'm the only participant. But, yes, there was an instance where a news network skipped mentioning the #3 place in delegate count or some such because it was Ron Paul and they didn't want to mention Ron Paul on TV. There was a lot of avoiding Ron Paul, and there were instances where some hosts covered Ron Paul a lot and then suddenly veered away HARD, giving the impression of a lot of pressure coming down from the top.
Why would I ever get into a position of authority? I'm working directly against the interests of the exact people who can stop me from gaining any such position, and I have nothing to bait them into letting me get there. I'd have to run on a platform that sounds good for the people but is bullshit and tows a party line that the party knows only sounds good but really is only good for those in power, such that I'd have the support of the party and they would put faith in that I have the support of the people and thus can be given nominations to positions of power that I can actually win. Then I'd have to veer completely away from all that and do something different, betraying the trust of the people and the trust of the party and unveiling a pile of lies and deceit.
Can't do it.
Because, while I'm manipulative, I am not intentionally deceptive. You'd be surprised what you can get away with when people trust you; it's a valuable tool, and difficult to maintain. Being open and keeping those around you satisfied allows you to work against their direct interests in many cases, and especially to get them to accept risks they are typically uncomfortable with. Deception isn't a skill I ever learned; I control information by controlling relevance and then omitting what is justifiable to omit. Cannot omit strongly relevant things; can omit small details that have no relevant impact but that are worrying when brought up (i.e. people are bad at risk assessment; if the risk of direct impact on anything important isn't of any consequence, I don't need to mention it).
The problem with Fractional Reserve Banking is that there is no real money. Fiat currency is by nature imaginary; but in this case fiat currency isn't printed and spent into the economy, but rather loaned into existence. That means every piece of currency in existence is basically owed to someone else, with the caveat that it's probably not in the hands of the debtor who owes it to said creditor.
On top of this, loans necessarily incur interest, meaning more money is required to pay off the loan than borrowed, meaning inflation, meaning that every piece of currency that comes into existence causes inflation and immediately creates a need for more currency to come into existence at a later date. It's not that predictably later we will need more currency because of another action, but that the event of currency becoming accessible creates the situation that more currency needs to be made accessible.
In essence, each unit of currency loaned into existence causes inflation by increasing the money supply ("printing money") and by increasing the amount of money owed (monetary demand to pay off the interest). We operate on a negative currency system, where the system becomes more and more poor as the amount of currency increases. Our entire economy is continuously indebted, and the growth of the money supply is accomplished by the growth of debt and the continuous loss of wealth.
The benefit would probably be there with HIV, especially if we nipped it early on.
This is a good illustration about how wealth transfer works, though. Each economic activity has a cost. Economic activities which are rent-seeking--which draw increased revenue without increasing actual value--are damaging in this way. Economic waste is also damaging in this way.
This is why, for example, overpricing the market by artificially limiting supply (labor i.e. electricians and plumbers, goods i.e. diamonds, etc.) makes some people rich but has a disproportionate cost--the profiteers gain $100,000, but the net economic impact is $150,000 or so, and so the economy is $50,000 less wealthy but these folks don't care because they're $100,000 more wealthy and fuck everyone else.
This is also how churn of goods works. Tearing down a bridge that needs $1M of work to remain viable for 10 years to instead rebuild a $100M bridge in its place doesn't make the economy stronger; it temporarily creates jobs at the expense of whoever's paying for the bridge (usually taxpayers), who end up poorer, thus don't spend as much in their local economy or in the wider (national, global) market, weakening the economy overall by reducing its ability to respond to new opportunities and instead diverting money to bridge builders.
Also like the bridge, buying a new iPhone every 3 months--a more personal decision, but one with the same impact, and one that's not "DEH GUBERMENT SHUDNT BE SO SOZIALIST!" Yes, we can have that same socialist wealth destruction in a completely capitalist free market by people being idiots. On the other hand, handing down that iPhone to someone who has less money and will get it free or at a discount will keep the wealth in society. That's why I encourage people to donate their old goods to i.e. Good Will or such, rather than trashing them. Those things still useful retain value, and passing them on at steep discount to those who cannot afford such goods will enrich society by retaining wealth that would otherwise be lost to landfilling or re-processing (recycling, etc., investing more labor) perfectly useful goods.
In this case, a lot of folks are poorer and a lot of resources are wasted; but power companies are a good deal richer, and the botnet operators have more money. Society is poorer, a few players are richer. The botnet operators are as a small boy who walks through the town periodically breaking random windows so that the glazier can retain his job... and he's coming to break your window, at $50 a pane to replace.
Admittedly, the term ANFO is often abused. On the other hand, chicken crap contains a LOT of ammonium nitrate, so will contain a significant amount of ANFO if mixed with fuel oil. The ammonia comes from urine and the nitrogen comes from a high amount of nitrogen present in chicken manure; bacteria ferment urea into ammonia and then nitrates, and can and do fixate ammonium nitrate from resultant compounds eventually.
I guess it's like how ground, wet barley that's fermented is not beer, because it's a messy pile of muck that happens to contain fermented barley (alcohol, basically beer).
Technically, in this case, you could say you manufactured and detonated ANFO--it works, it does exactly that, and it's effective--but you can't can this shit and call it ANFO. So whatever.
Having watched a Discovery Channel special where they actually piped chicken manure and fuel oil into a cavity carved into a stone outcropping to blast a passage for a roadway, I can say that you're wrong. This is common practice here.
Short version: It happens to actually work in real life and gets used on an industrial scale. That makes it a real thing.
If you want to be specific, how about this one. There is a traffic light on a road that is right at the bottom of a hill about 100 feet. The road has 40 mph speed limit. You come up the hill and are going down, and at the same time the light just turns green. There is a car sitting right in front of the light, and the driver is actually texting and doesn't know that the light has turned green. You are driving in the same lane as that car. You don't know that the person doesn't realize that the light turns green, so what is your anticipation? Of course, you would think that the car is going to move. Let say you are cautious so you slow down but intend not to be completely stopped. But then the car in front of you does not move at all and you eventually hit the car in front of you because you couldn't brake on time. Legally, you are totally at fault because you couldn't stop. What's about ethical? You were cautious but were NOT cautious enough.
Let's try again.
You were cautious but were NOT cautious enough.
Again.
You were cautious but were NOT cautious enough.
Yes, Virginia, it is in fact your duty to not look down the hill and go, "Oh, he'll move. The light is green." That is what they drill into your head in driver's ed. It's your responsibility to control your car. This is why you don't, oh I don't know, tailgate the car in front of you because "He won't slam on his brakes for no reason, so I have room to stop if something happens!" No, you have enough room to make a full stop if the car in front of you stops RIGHT NOW. Because maybe something you can't see happens and he does slam his brakes down, with full ABS and TC and assisted braking, and he comes to a god damn fast stop.
I routinely misjudge a light and wind up reading the next signal as the one I'm approaching. That means on your example I will see a car parked at the bottom of the hill waiting at a red traffic signal and see the next signal green and routinely misjudge that this dumb asshole is sitting at a green light like a moron. I've done it a hundred times. I didn't hit anyone because it's my moral responsibility to notice that dumbass at the bottom of the hill isn't moving even though he should be. Even when I'm wrong and he's supposed to keep his car parked until the signal changes. I also repeatedly reassess the signal as I approach, mostly to make sure it doesn't change.
Also, the guy at the bottom of the hill may be waiting for an approaching emergency vehicle. This happens several times per day to me. Firetrucks, ambulances, and police cruisers... I see 2-3 firetrucks and 3-5 ambulances per day, though some days I see plenty more. Police cruisers oddly less often, but when I see one there's usually plenty more coming down over the next 20-30 minutes all going the same place. And then there's this dorkus waiting at a traffic signal for an approaching ambulance...
Yes, when you see somebody at the next signal just sitting, you should assume that they'll be there when you get there. That's a core theme of driver's ed. Maybe you should attend one day.
It's not so much that as soil viability. We already manage soil by round-up treating the field, tilling everything over, planting seeds, repeated round-up treatment from time to time if the crop is round-up ready, etc. We also till organic fertilizer (cow shit) into the soil at the first run, and later add chemical fertilizer as needed. We also apply pesticides by air spraying.
We do this for crop density, but it's not a great practice to keep the soil viable. Too much chemical herbicide treatment and soil depletion. The soil is kept viable by the addition of chemical fertilizers and a lesser addition of organic matter. My suggestion is merely that we could greatly improve soil viability by using more organic fertilizer (manure, compost, etc.) between crops and applying worms for continuous enrichment; this has the advantage of improving soil quality continuously in many ways beyond simple nutrient content, but the caveat that use of chemical herbicides and pesticides could harm the worms to a point that compromises their viability for this use. That means we would also need to grow food with worm-safe weed and pest control practice--either alternate practices or restriction to chemicals which do not harm worm viability.
It appears Round-Up may be toxic to red worms. From this paper the author conjectures that it may only kill smaller red worms; I conjecture that it could be killing a random subset (variation in tolerance), sterilizing (breeding problems), killing eggs, or killing young worms. A random subset would be the best possible outcome here, as a 20% higher mortality rate at random would still retain viability. Propagation problems (breeding, egg destruction, or death of juveniles) would be the worst, as this would cause a steady population decline.
Pesticides will likely kill worms. Pyrethrin will, for example.
There is so much chicken shit to go around that we carve mountain passes with it. ANFO explosive can cut down a pass in a huge mountain with unbelievable efficacy; one of the more popular ways to generate ANFO is to pump a hole full of chicken shit and then pour in fuel oil (Kerosene, diesel, any grade of Jet Fuel, etc.).
Here on the east coast, farmers have access to enough cow, horse, and chicken manure to fertilize their entire growing season's worth of crops. There are regulations in the way for any addition of "organic fertilizer" after the beginning of the growing season--everything needs to be done on the first application, and the farmers complain that they just can't estimate how much fertilizer they need and must apply more later and so must use chemical fertilizer.
It may be different in the midwest; however, here we have such an abundance of natural fertilizer that it's given away for free in some municipalities where waste is controlled by composting.
Feed them all!
Coffee grounds are better fed to red worms and used as highly enriched soil to grow plants in.
Soil quality is extremely easy to solve. Everyone wants to use pesticides and herbicides out the ass, mostly petrol-based shit and chemical shit and dangerous plant derived shit etc. There are other ways.
Every time I open this argument, somebody comes along with the "Green Revolution" that started all of this heavily-scienced lab bullshit that apparently saved the world from starvation. That's all well and good, but that doesn't mean that's the only direction we can take science; it doesn't all have to happen in a beaker, and we've made great strides in natural science research since then. We know more about the biosphere, and thus can leverage various attributes in new ways.
Bad soil. Let's attack bad soil first.
Farmers have access to a lot of manure. Cow manure, sheep manure, goat shit, chicken shit, the like. They also have access to non-useful plant matter, although some of that goes to ethanol. Farmers will tend to plow manure into the land; good. Do that. Skip the petrol, do this more. We have a lot of regulations here about plowing "natural fertilizer" into the land: it all needs to be used at once in the beginning of the season; this is unsustainable because farmers will add more manure to the top of the land throughout the season, and don't know how much to use in the beginning. This is a real thing. We've had legislative arguments on it. The legislature wants to prevent run-off of cow-shit-based nitrogen sources into the bay here, because algae growth from fertilizer run-off is a real problem; unfortunately, they're encouraging farmers to use chemical nitrogen sources, which doesn't help.
So, drop the chemical fertilizers. Use more cow shit.
Step two: Worms. European Night Crawlers will dig deep into the soil. We bin them as an invasive species, but I don't believe the damage is as bad as people think. There's talk about how worms accelerate the nitrogen cycle in forests and will cause biosphere changes; but I believe that the research is too young to produce anything intelligent and that everything here is conjecture and knee-jerk reaction. I'll add mine to the pile: the forests aren't collapsing overnight and they won't. New seedlings that can handle the new nitrogen cycle better will out-compete new seedlings that can't; over time, the forests will shift toward plants that can better handle living with earthworms, and no major crisis will occur.
European Night Crawlers move through deeper soil, consuming soil and killing bacteria on the soil. They consume the bacteria as food and leave behind processed, crushed soil containing remaining bits of destroyed bacteria and crushed matter. The soil is better aerated, has a high nutrient availability, holds water better, drains better, and is easier for plant roots to take hold in. The soil is effectively cultivated (turned, tilled, etc.) and fertilized continuously. This means ENC greatly improve soil quality.
Red Wigglers are another type of worm. These feed on bacteria present in rotting matter--plant matter that's rotted and softened, or manure. Essentially, Red Wigglers process rotting (i.e. composting) matter into high-quality soil; ENC process soil into high-quality soil, and will further enrich the soil that Red Wigglers produce. Thus manure and hummus tilled into the top layer of soil provides a high-quality basis for a long-running enrichment process that produces and maintains extremely high-quality soil during the growing season.
Our industry is such that we can do this at home and get better quality farm land than farmers have. We have tiny little plots of land in our back yard gardens. There is not a massive, ginormous scale worm farming industry in our country; we can't supply the worms for this (although, given a big stacked worm bed and enough input feed, we could breed enough worms in under a year to support the whole farming industry; they breed fucking fast). Our farming industry also relies largely on petrol and chemical fertilizers; however w
Unavoidable vs Avoidable is one thing; but the point is that "oh, you shouldn't have been here, so this is kind of your fault, not really mine" is patent, weapons-grade bullshit. Keeping your vehicle stationary IS SAFE. Keeping your vehicle stationary in an intersection IS SAFE. Keeping your vehicle stationary where it's supposed to move IS SAFE. It's annoying and impedes traffic, but it IS SAFE. Collisions involving your stationary vehicle ARE NOT CAUSED BY YOUR STATIONARY VEHICLE; they're caused by another vehicle running into it.
Ethically, morally, and technically, you are responsible for BEING AN ANNOYANCE TO THE PUBLIC by impeding traffic. Nothing more. Absolutely nothing more. You share zero responsibility with the moron behind you who rammed into your car. Case in point: While waiting for a left hand turn, I had my car stopped in the traffic lane; guy behind me hit my car. Did he hit it because it was stationary? No. He hit it because he was leaning over his seat fishing around in the back seat playing with his toddler in her car seat. Had I been simply sitting in the roadway playing with my cell phone, HE STILL WOULD HAVE HIT ME. Had he been paying attention while I was sitting in the roadway playing with my cell phone, HE STILL WOULD HAVE NOT HIT ME. The collision was entirely due to his action, not due to my presence in the lane of traffic for whatever reason.
Your reasoning extends logically to absurdity. Your reasoning makes me partially responsible for murder if I leave a bicycle on the sidewalk and an inattentive jogger watching some other jogger's tits trips over my bicycle and breaks his braincase open on the pavement, killing himself. I have nearly done this several times because the sidewalk in my city is uneven; perhaps the city would be responsible for injury if someone trips on the uneven, poorly maintained pavement. Maybe people should be able to sue if they slip on the sidewalk in front of my house because I didn't come out to apply salt to the walkway.
Let's continue to disclaim personal responsibility for actions that are clearly the fault of a single party, and just shift the blame to someone else whose presence is incidental. God damn, man, that lamp post shouldn't have been there!
Why not just use Klingon?
I want a language that's fully formed enough to discuss all conceivable abstract concepts. Prolog might be a good way to do this, although looking at your example it seems to require full scope definition of language elements (what is a weapon? Missiles are weapons). This is, of course, a failing in any model really.
Look up Learned Helplessness. Stop telling me why things can't be done; start finding solutions or go back to sucking cocks.
Gangster-style marketing of firearms is unethical. Marketing cigarettes and booze to kids is also unethical. I still feel that parents should be allowed to order alcohol for 14+ offspring, and that 16+ should be allowed to buy beer and 18+ buy liquor; wtf is this 21+ shit? But marketing alcohol to young kids to skirt the law by creating a criminal demand to make more money is unethical.
Firearms are manufactured and distributed to make a profit by various means. Like in all well-run business, what is and isn't in the market scope is identified; market sectors are targeted, others are incidental. Some firearms manufacturers can simply strongly target non-law-enforcement citizens with the best grade of personal defense firearms on the market; others may feel an ethical or moral obligation (i.e. the board, the CEO, corporate mission statement--look at Cliff Bar Co) or see a market opportunity in maintaining their brand image ("trust") by aggressively taking action to ensure that their firearms are more likely to land in their target markets and exclude other target markets--particularly illegal or criminal ones ("criminal" is different than "illegal" from certain standpoints--the concept of crimes against humanity that may not be crimes against the law uses one such definition).
"Assault Weapons" are debated over a lot, since there's often evidence that they're not great for "assault" (the definition of an "assault" here is tactical; throwing an unloaded firearm at someone's head is assault, but that's not what we're talking about) or at least don't provide greater opportunity than handguns and more bullets. For example, if I wanted to shoot up an airplane terminal, I couldn't approach the place carrying an AR-15; how the fuck would I conceal it? I could get a couple pistols and a jacket filled with clips or magazines to the security checkpoint, or to a prior strategic point (i.e. without an armed guard standing next to me) and do a lot more damage. Some arguments suppose that you could get either to said strategic point, but that there's no real advantage to having a high-capacity assault rifle over a pistol that swaps in more bullets quickly. It hasn't been settled yet. In either case, the deterrent effect of removing "assault weapons" from society on mass murder isn't measurable and isn't conjectured in any scientifically meaningful way.
You need high-velocity rifles for hunting certain animals, but probably in the lower range of "High velocity" (some of these things will send a bullet 2km; a regular old hunting rifle is effective at at least 650m). I prefer crossbow bolts, but I must admit that a rifle will shoot faster if you miss. I worry about where the bullet goes if you miss. I prefer a recurve bow for two reasons: I hate compound bows; and the effective range is far enough to cover anything I could reasonably expect to hit without being ridiculously far (seriously, 50 meters? 50 meters?! DO I LOOK LIKE ROBIN HOOD?! WTF is with 650m effective range, I can't get a clear shot that far in the woods!).
Jaywalking is illegal. We have crosswalks so that morons can belong in the street at some point and drivers expect them. Said morons still manage to wind up in the street where and when they don't belong. Drivers are still expected not to hit them unless it's patently unreasonable to expect the driver not to hit them. A driver with ample room and time to avoid or brake should not hit a pedestrian who is illegally crossing the roadway; a driver who strikes a pedestrian who ran out into the roadway from behind cover may have been in an unavoidable situation and thus is not at fault. In the first case, if that driver is traveling with excessive speed beyond legal boundaries and driving erratically and recklessly, striking the pedestrian is squarely his fault.
It took seven years of debate for my state to pass a law making vehicular manslaughter a crime. We eventually settled on a law specifying that drivers engaging in risk-increasing behavior such as speedi