Yes but my point is that if you're going to argue what's "natural", a 13 year old girl with a narrow waist, widened hips, and firm and filled out boobs is as "natural" as you can get by the meter of sexual maturity. These days, we have all these social ideals--people live longer and young teens having children can have fatal complications, plus the economic situation is terrible, PLUS they're mentally immature and easy to lead on, etc etc, so predatory behavior towards 13 year olds--while perfectly natural and healthy--has very much undesirable effects and is thus something our society tries to prevent.
The arguments aren't simple. We like to pretend that it's disgusting and unnatural and evil and plain old wrong to have sex with someone under 18... but it's not. There are VERY GOOD arguments for why we shouldn't, and they're strong enough to support making it illegal, but that's not good enough. Society doesn't want laws punishing people for being "normal."
On the flip side, there's also good argument for why you shouldn't get married or have kids when you're 18-25 either, but we don't have a problem with that because it's "normal" and you're an "adult" (although you're not enough of an "adult" to drink a beer until you're 21).
Maybe we should also not prosecute adults who hold pornography of minors if the minors made it, and if we can show proof of release in adulthood (i.e. if after 18 they shrugged and said they don't care about distribution). I mean how many cases of people being 17, getting head from their 16 year old girlfriend, then they turn 18 and the still 16 year old sends pictures of her boobs? And they get to a friend, and she's like well whatever he thinks they're nice too right? And you know 20 years later she's an old cougar and she's like, lol, I found my boobs on the Internet! Wow they were a lot perkier back then!
Why should anyone have to go to prison for this?
Not being retarded is hard. Try legalizing the above without creating a hell of a lot of legal loopholes for child pornography. They'll just have to start becoming pornogoghraphers young.
In human society we DO have a concept of rights and THAT is what our response must be built upon. If you intrude on the rights of others then you are going too far.
A very young child clearly has not got the knowledge or maturity to make an informed consentual decision about sexual behavior with an adult who does, THAT's why they cannot GIVE consent and why we punish adults who take advantage of this.
Careful, that's a dangerous position. A very young child clearly has not the knowledge or maturity to make moral decisions, and therefor teaching a child your morals and ethics should be a punishable offense. A very young child clearly cannot make informed consensual decision about beliefs, therefor we should outlaw the teaching of religion to children. A very young child clearly hasn't the ability to discern truth from myth, therefor we should teach truth in schools by informing all children that Santa Clause is not real (probably a good idea) and punish parents for teaching their children to believe lies (probably not a good idea). A very young child clearly hasn't the knowledge or maturity to understand complex social forces, and therefor we should execute parents who raise their children to be over-entitled liberals that vote in people like Barrack Obama.
Our society has its own beliefs. To fit in with society, you have to fit in with its beliefs. To survive, you must fit in with society. Sexualizing children would effectively make them dangerous to society--they would grow up thinking this is normal, and behave similarly. We all have our own beliefs that clash with society around us and we tend to just accept that the vast majority of the world is stupid and we can do what we want--mostly this is harmless, for example I wear Vibram FiveFingers in public and I always wear flat shoes (from Converse All-Stars to Merrell Barefoot) because the high heal and strong arch support standard in all shoes is bad for your joints and muscles and will cause foot, knee, hip, and back problems. When those beliefs start to include "I can stick my penis in small children" and your behavior is mainly "those folks are stupid, I'm going to put it in their daughter's mouth when they're not watching," then you start becoming dangerous.
"Dangerous" how is always up for debate (mainly in terms of magnitude) and the list is of course quite long, but the social behavior is offensive to society and the social shift it would cause if left unchecked is perceived as extremely threatening. We consider our moral opinions on these things as an important basis for our society; allowing that to shift would destroy our society, and at the moment we believe the current way is the better way. If we actually believed it was harmful, obviously we'd encourage a slow, comfortable social shift.
That's how a society with morals and ethics works. Anything against its morals and ethics is a threat if it spreads. Bestiality is treated like pedophilia--you can be arrested for it and the social reaction is massive, it's like we're frightened of the neighbor that had sex with a dog. Be mindful: it's a good argument to show that society clings to its morals by pointing out that basically nobody is harmed by the neighbor screwing the dog; but it's a strawman argument to try to apply that directly to sex with children, as mainly no other people are involved with sex with animals, whereas children are involved with sex with children and it absolutely does affect their development.
In short, though: We do it because we've decided that this is what we do, and because we believe under our current understanding that not doing it this way would cause harm to individuals and to society as a whole. One side is emotional, one side is scientific, currently both sides are in agreement with each other. It has nothing to do with how much "consent" a child can give or how prepared they are to "understand and make their own decisions," because we rape their minds teaching them morals and ethics and even political and religious beliefs in the first place--which is probably much more damaging, ESPECIALLY the politics.
We need to find out what causes paedophilia. It seems clear from observation of other, closely related species (like mammals in general), that it is not a natural state of affairs when adults have sex with immature young.
Well first off, we define pedophilia as sex with anyone under 18, and child pornography as sexual images of anyone under 18, so there's that. Your argument seems to indicate that 11-12 year olds are fair game if they've reached the age of sexual maturity--some 11 year olds have boobs and can bear children, MANY 12 year olds are there and have become... I guess the word is "shapely"? And of course as age goes on, the late bloomers catch up and the early bloomers fill out.
Used to be 14 was a good child birthing age, which means at 12-13 you were married and by 13 you were banging some older, established working man. Was the status quo. 20-30 year old man ready for a family, 12-13 year old girl ready for marriage and in a year ready for birthing. Now you're a "pedophile."
Banging 6 year olds is not the natural state. Banging 16 year olds is simply both illegal and unfavorable in today's society, but we'll arrest you for it and call you a "child molester" anyway.
I know, could you imagine if Anonymous knew how to do more than DDOS people and wasn't full of attention-seeking whore children? One day during an anti-virus clean-up of the President's laptop, find gigs and gigs of kiddy porn in a directory buried under WIndows\System32. "I swear it's not mine!"
Actually, it works entirely the opposite. Imagine we abolish all reference to all things called child sexual abuse, make it not a thing people have ever thought of. I don't mean just molestation or naughty pictures, but ALL of it. Desexualize children entirely.
Now, some 15-17 year old teenager in the new generation, frustratingly trying to get laid, will realize the 10 year old he's babysitting will do... things.
Suddenly: Brilliant idea involving a 10 year old girl.
Well yes but the impurities are obviously just left around. There's not much to do with sulphur unless you're an H2S burning bacteria, which isn't common up here.
We don't crack the crude because finding it is apparently hard. They need a way to refine it out of the water and such, which I guess is hard.
As food, the only use for hydrocarbons is energy. They supply hydrogen and carbon, which you can burn for CO2 + H2O + heat. Sugars are burned for heat, which is used as activation energy to strike ATP and get more heat, which activates other chemical processes. Plastic isn't very useful biologically.
Hydrocarbons are hydrogen and carbon. They combine with oxygen to produce CO2. Sugar is the same way: apply oxygen to C6H12O6 and you get H2O (H6O12 becomes 6 x H2O) and C6 + O (C6 + O2 gives you 6 x CO2 if you can find 6 O2). Yes, sugar--food--is basically air (CO2), water (H2O), and sunlight (to strip the O2 off the CO2 and attach the remaining C to the H2O to give CH2O and O2).
We're dealing with CH4 here or basically C(n)H(2(n+1)) which when combined with oxygen gives CO2 and H2O. News flash: it's a fuel source, it burns.
Eh, I've been jobless, drained my savings, dug into backups on top of backups, gotten to the wire in credit card debt and had a big car loan. I can live on my own in the big city on entry level salary; I have mid-level junior salary right now.
The community I'm moving into is kind of crime ridden, but 11 shootings in 2 months in a 2 mile radius versus 31 where I live now. My parents hate it, it's full of blacks, they say blacks will shoot me and hit my car a lot and slash my tires... the neighbors are all nice, I talked with them while surveying the house.
Long story short, found out the burned down house next to mine has been down 3 or 4 years, and everyone wants it fixed, but nobody will fix it because it'll cost more in labor than you can sell it for. I'm thinking, maybe I'll buy it and rebuild it from the inside out for a hobby, get some work done, have a contractor drop by once in a while to survey it and tell me what needs to be done structurally/to code/etc. I have a guy that's got a normal hourly rate of $30/hr and can help with the work, I've seen his work--in fact I've seen a whole building he's built (multi-room, full attic, electrical wiring, etc) that's held up for around 15 years without so much as a roof leak. I'll get him to lend some labor and supervision, since I'm inexperienced--it'll be like an apprenticeship, I can pay for an education, $30/hr is like $240/day.
I figure I can rebuild it and let HUD rent it out, they'll give me a little over $500/mo and they'll find tenants, maintain it, even pay for repairs if it's damaged. In the mean time, I'll at least get that overgrown yard cleaned up. Two buildings across the street too, one bricked shut (no idea on price) and one falling apart (selling for $80,000 and my ready-to-live-in wet for $50k? I'll buy it for $30k, if that, maybe $20k). That right there is $1500/mo, I can live on that but I can't afford to build houses on it.
Maybe I"ll quit my job when I have 4 or 5 of these. Less income sure, but I can build out the neighborhood. Make the place a bit nicer, you know? That's a real job. My job you don't see shit from, I keep www.yourfavoritenewsco.com up and get paid $65k for it.
You think "life happens"? You haven't had "life happen" yet. Wait until you realize you've got endless disposable income and your life isn't worth shit. Enjoy raising your stupid, worthless kids and putting them through the public social conditioning system so they can get diplomas and be good little functional members of society doing stupid, worthless jobs like Web design. But at least there's whiskey and your hollow, empty marriage to your hot trophy wife that's probably screwing the mailman, right?
Everything I've ever done no longer exists. I've been a hero, I've created the most amazing things, solved complex problems with a wave of my hand, pulled everyone's asses out of the fire. All that shit doesn't matter, and it's all been torn out and replaced. It never mattered, we would have always just worked around the problem some other way. And they pay me good money for this... I didn't even go to college, I went to a community college and got an associate's degree in goofing off and getting As.
No, no it's not wrong. When you sell a share of a stock, there must be a buyer. IBM doesn't buy your 10 shares of IBM; Joe Jackass buys your 10 shares of IBM. He then sells them to Cindy Cocksucker down the street for a profit. She then sells them to Dan Dumbass, at a sharp loss. He then holds them for a while thinking it's got to come back one day, but it spirals down.
There's only one thing to understand here: Private firms perform HFT and private firms would not do something that did not make them money. Private firms' interest in HFT is not to waste millions of dollars putting in crazy infrastructure just to help day traders strike it Romney Rich; their interest in HFT is to pull more money from everyone else in the stock market into their own coffers.
The stock market is about people being able to buy and sell securities that allows businesses to raise additional capital. It was originally a very social thing so much so that it could reflect the mood of the populace's strength and development.
An IPO is a business raising additional capital; everything else after that is psychology, almost the second thing you said. The stock market is about none of that though; it's about person A swindling person B out of their money.
The stock market shows the opinion of the market's major buying and selling power on a security. The security starts to slow and peak when the minority are the only ones in the buy-buy-buy cycle. They're out there screaming "BUY BUY BUY OMG GOLD IS GOING UP IT'S GOING TO HIT LIKE $10,000" while gold is stalled at $1800 and has been for months. Gold climbed steadily to $1600, then tapered off and slowly rose to $1800 while the smart folk continued to slowly sell theirs off to these idiots. Soon, gold will fall, but these folks are going "BUY GOLD BUY GOLD GONNA BE RICH!" and the other half are going "Hedge against inflation!" When the price starts to drop and there's no big money interest, it'll slowly start to go down. Then, everyone will panic as they realize gold is slowly devaluing and they'll start SELLING to people who think gold is just following a natural slump, a calm before climbing like crazy. Or maybe, selling to people who just think "gold is good to buy" and then start panic selling themselves when gold they buy starts dropping.
In any case, when none of these people can offload their gold, they start dropping the price trying to offload it. Gold rushes down quickly as people buy into the "deals" at $1500 (man gold was just $1800, it's dipped, I'll sell this back 'cause it's gold it's gotta come back!), $1100, $900 (man it's lost so much, it's gotta come back), and so on. Eventually it settles in and gets bought up by big interests again, slowly climbing as the market trades it around.
Stocks work this way. Bonds are complex, but essentially the same (a 5% bond sells for its face value plus the interest it'll gain, really). And so on. Why would you retire on money you've stuffed in the stock market? "Oh I'll buy into the market, the market grows" right... the market is people like me robbing you.
Also, what about our senators? They get $179k paychecks, should we give them more? A US Senator must reside in his state, he must be present in his state, but he also must be in DC. Because of this, they spend tens of thousands of dollars a year just flying around, plus hotel, food, etc. $179k goes quick when every 2 days or multiple times a day you're getting on a private short-notice jet to fly between Iowa and Washington DC.
So wait, people making $125/week at Foxconn factories are rich now, right? I mean they get a lot more than $17/week like other Chinese factory workers and it's more than enough money to get by. I hear all this outrage that the yellow working class gets $125/wk but it's like they spend $100/mo on rent and now they have $500/mo...
Anything under 40mph direct collision is unlikely to be fatal. Amusingly, in a car, injury sharply climbs around 40mph, and fatality in a 40mph total head on collision (20mph to 20mph) is very high even with airbags. A motorcycle also has a sharp increase in injury at around 40mph collision speed. Also, a car hitting a pedestrian at 40mph has a high probability of killing the pedestrian, while at 35mph the pedestrian will probably survive with minor injuries (broken bones heal).
Bicyclists are SUPPOSED to bike in the far light lane with traffic, but a lot bicycle against traffic which is EXTREMELY hazardous. Bicyclists are required by law to stop at stop signs and red lights, but they also often don't--cops should be ticketing these people. Cyclists aren't legally supposed to ride on the sidewalk because it's extremely dangerous--bicycle-pedestrian collisions aren't uncommon and are often fatal.
On the other hand, cars aren't supposed to pass cyclists within 3 feet (it's a ticketable offense and gets you a fine and points), but they like to buzz close, which can disorient the cyclist trying to hold a perfectly straight line, or force them to ride over road hazards which may result in measurable loss of control. Cyclists have right-of-way on the road, and so at a stop sign they get a turn in sequence same as a car or a motorcycle (though they don't get priority as an emergency vehicle), but of course a lot of drivers like to pull out when they see a cyclist waiting and occasionally this leads to confusion or collision. Pedestrians see a bicycle coming down the street and cross the road in front of it; they wait for cars to pass but ignore bicycles, which can't stop from 30mph nearly as fast (20mph is more normal but I've been at 30 and downhill can get you going 35-45, though bicycles should not exceed the speed limit).
By following proper lane control and traffic flow rules, bicycles pose no more of a hazard than a slow moving vehicle. Usually in city streets this is a 25-30mph street and a 15-20mph bicycle. Maybe more driver's education is needed to teach cyclists to follow traffic law? Maybe cops should start ticketing cyclists for running stop signs and red lights, and for driving down the wrong side of the road or the wrong way down a one way street? That's probably a good idea.
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The question is not "are are journals, as a whole, really that bad" ... the question is...
IS OUR CHILDREN LEARNING YET?!!
Yes but my point is that if you're going to argue what's "natural", a 13 year old girl with a narrow waist, widened hips, and firm and filled out boobs is as "natural" as you can get by the meter of sexual maturity. These days, we have all these social ideals--people live longer and young teens having children can have fatal complications, plus the economic situation is terrible, PLUS they're mentally immature and easy to lead on, etc etc, so predatory behavior towards 13 year olds--while perfectly natural and healthy--has very much undesirable effects and is thus something our society tries to prevent.
The arguments aren't simple. We like to pretend that it's disgusting and unnatural and evil and plain old wrong to have sex with someone under 18... but it's not. There are VERY GOOD arguments for why we shouldn't, and they're strong enough to support making it illegal, but that's not good enough. Society doesn't want laws punishing people for being "normal."
On the flip side, there's also good argument for why you shouldn't get married or have kids when you're 18-25 either, but we don't have a problem with that because it's "normal" and you're an "adult" (although you're not enough of an "adult" to drink a beer until you're 21).
Maybe we should also not prosecute adults who hold pornography of minors if the minors made it, and if we can show proof of release in adulthood (i.e. if after 18 they shrugged and said they don't care about distribution). I mean how many cases of people being 17, getting head from their 16 year old girlfriend, then they turn 18 and the still 16 year old sends pictures of her boobs? And they get to a friend, and she's like well whatever he thinks they're nice too right? And you know 20 years later she's an old cougar and she's like, lol, I found my boobs on the Internet! Wow they were a lot perkier back then!
Why should anyone have to go to prison for this?
Not being retarded is hard. Try legalizing the above without creating a hell of a lot of legal loopholes for child pornography. They'll just have to start becoming pornogoghraphers young.
In human society we DO have a concept of rights and THAT is what our response must be built upon. If you intrude on the rights of others then you are going too far.
A very young child clearly has not got the knowledge or maturity to make an informed consentual decision about sexual behavior with an adult who does, THAT's why they cannot GIVE consent and why we punish adults who take advantage of this.
Careful, that's a dangerous position. A very young child clearly has not the knowledge or maturity to make moral decisions, and therefor teaching a child your morals and ethics should be a punishable offense. A very young child clearly cannot make informed consensual decision about beliefs, therefor we should outlaw the teaching of religion to children. A very young child clearly hasn't the ability to discern truth from myth, therefor we should teach truth in schools by informing all children that Santa Clause is not real (probably a good idea) and punish parents for teaching their children to believe lies (probably not a good idea). A very young child clearly hasn't the knowledge or maturity to understand complex social forces, and therefor we should execute parents who raise their children to be over-entitled liberals that vote in people like Barrack Obama.
Our society has its own beliefs. To fit in with society, you have to fit in with its beliefs. To survive, you must fit in with society. Sexualizing children would effectively make them dangerous to society--they would grow up thinking this is normal, and behave similarly. We all have our own beliefs that clash with society around us and we tend to just accept that the vast majority of the world is stupid and we can do what we want--mostly this is harmless, for example I wear Vibram FiveFingers in public and I always wear flat shoes (from Converse All-Stars to Merrell Barefoot) because the high heal and strong arch support standard in all shoes is bad for your joints and muscles and will cause foot, knee, hip, and back problems. When those beliefs start to include "I can stick my penis in small children" and your behavior is mainly "those folks are stupid, I'm going to put it in their daughter's mouth when they're not watching," then you start becoming dangerous.
"Dangerous" how is always up for debate (mainly in terms of magnitude) and the list is of course quite long, but the social behavior is offensive to society and the social shift it would cause if left unchecked is perceived as extremely threatening. We consider our moral opinions on these things as an important basis for our society; allowing that to shift would destroy our society, and at the moment we believe the current way is the better way. If we actually believed it was harmful, obviously we'd encourage a slow, comfortable social shift.
That's how a society with morals and ethics works. Anything against its morals and ethics is a threat if it spreads. Bestiality is treated like pedophilia--you can be arrested for it and the social reaction is massive, it's like we're frightened of the neighbor that had sex with a dog. Be mindful: it's a good argument to show that society clings to its morals by pointing out that basically nobody is harmed by the neighbor screwing the dog; but it's a strawman argument to try to apply that directly to sex with children, as mainly no other people are involved with sex with animals, whereas children are involved with sex with children and it absolutely does affect their development.
In short, though: We do it because we've decided that this is what we do, and because we believe under our current understanding that not doing it this way would cause harm to individuals and to society as a whole. One side is emotional, one side is scientific, currently both sides are in agreement with each other. It has nothing to do with how much "consent" a child can give or how prepared they are to "understand and make their own decisions," because we rape their minds teaching them morals and ethics and even political and religious beliefs in the first place--which is probably much more damaging, ESPECIALLY the politics.
We need to find out what causes paedophilia. It seems clear from observation of other, closely related species (like mammals in general), that it is not a natural state of affairs when adults have sex with immature young.
Well first off, we define pedophilia as sex with anyone under 18, and child pornography as sexual images of anyone under 18, so there's that. Your argument seems to indicate that 11-12 year olds are fair game if they've reached the age of sexual maturity--some 11 year olds have boobs and can bear children, MANY 12 year olds are there and have become ... I guess the word is "shapely"? And of course as age goes on, the late bloomers catch up and the early bloomers fill out.
Used to be 14 was a good child birthing age, which means at 12-13 you were married and by 13 you were banging some older, established working man. Was the status quo. 20-30 year old man ready for a family, 12-13 year old girl ready for marriage and in a year ready for birthing. Now you're a "pedophile."
Banging 6 year olds is not the natural state. Banging 16 year olds is simply both illegal and unfavorable in today's society, but we'll arrest you for it and call you a "child molester" anyway.
I know, could you imagine if Anonymous knew how to do more than DDOS people and wasn't full of attention-seeking whore children? One day during an anti-virus clean-up of the President's laptop, find gigs and gigs of kiddy porn in a directory buried under WIndows\System32. "I swear it's not mine!"
Actually, it works entirely the opposite. Imagine we abolish all reference to all things called child sexual abuse, make it not a thing people have ever thought of. I don't mean just molestation or naughty pictures, but ALL of it. Desexualize children entirely.
Now, some 15-17 year old teenager in the new generation, frustratingly trying to get laid, will realize the 10 year old he's babysitting will do ... things.
Suddenly: Brilliant idea involving a 10 year old girl.
Well, that too, but most directly we burned the oil in a series of tiny fires.
Well yes but the impurities are obviously just left around. There's not much to do with sulphur unless you're an H2S burning bacteria, which isn't common up here.
We don't crack the crude because finding it is apparently hard. They need a way to refine it out of the water and such, which I guess is hard.
If it's a legitimate oil nature has ways to shut all that down.
As food, the only use for hydrocarbons is energy. They supply hydrogen and carbon, which you can burn for CO2 + H2O + heat. Sugars are burned for heat, which is used as activation energy to strike ATP and get more heat, which activates other chemical processes. Plastic isn't very useful biologically.
Hydrocarbons are hydrogen and carbon. They combine with oxygen to produce CO2. Sugar is the same way: apply oxygen to C6H12O6 and you get H2O (H6O12 becomes 6 x H2O) and C6 + O (C6 + O2 gives you 6 x CO2 if you can find 6 O2). Yes, sugar--food--is basically air (CO2), water (H2O), and sunlight (to strip the O2 off the CO2 and attach the remaining C to the H2O to give CH2O and O2).
We're dealing with CH4 here or basically C(n)H(2(n+1)) which when combined with oxygen gives CO2 and H2O. News flash: it's a fuel source, it burns.
We dealt with all the oil by burning it.
Metal Oxide Film?
Eh, I've been jobless, drained my savings, dug into backups on top of backups, gotten to the wire in credit card debt and had a big car loan. I can live on my own in the big city on entry level salary; I have mid-level junior salary right now.
The community I'm moving into is kind of crime ridden, but 11 shootings in 2 months in a 2 mile radius versus 31 where I live now. My parents hate it, it's full of blacks, they say blacks will shoot me and hit my car a lot and slash my tires ... the neighbors are all nice, I talked with them while surveying the house.
Long story short, found out the burned down house next to mine has been down 3 or 4 years, and everyone wants it fixed, but nobody will fix it because it'll cost more in labor than you can sell it for. I'm thinking, maybe I'll buy it and rebuild it from the inside out for a hobby, get some work done, have a contractor drop by once in a while to survey it and tell me what needs to be done structurally/to code/etc. I have a guy that's got a normal hourly rate of $30/hr and can help with the work, I've seen his work--in fact I've seen a whole building he's built (multi-room, full attic, electrical wiring, etc) that's held up for around 15 years without so much as a roof leak. I'll get him to lend some labor and supervision, since I'm inexperienced--it'll be like an apprenticeship, I can pay for an education, $30/hr is like $240/day.
I figure I can rebuild it and let HUD rent it out, they'll give me a little over $500/mo and they'll find tenants, maintain it, even pay for repairs if it's damaged. In the mean time, I'll at least get that overgrown yard cleaned up. Two buildings across the street too, one bricked shut (no idea on price) and one falling apart (selling for $80,000 and my ready-to-live-in wet for $50k? I'll buy it for $30k, if that, maybe $20k). That right there is $1500/mo, I can live on that but I can't afford to build houses on it.
Maybe I"ll quit my job when I have 4 or 5 of these. Less income sure, but I can build out the neighborhood. Make the place a bit nicer, you know? That's a real job. My job you don't see shit from, I keep www.yourfavoritenewsco.com up and get paid $65k for it.
You think "life happens"? You haven't had "life happen" yet. Wait until you realize you've got endless disposable income and your life isn't worth shit. Enjoy raising your stupid, worthless kids and putting them through the public social conditioning system so they can get diplomas and be good little functional members of society doing stupid, worthless jobs like Web design. But at least there's whiskey and your hollow, empty marriage to your hot trophy wife that's probably screwing the mailman, right?
Everything I've ever done no longer exists. I've been a hero, I've created the most amazing things, solved complex problems with a wave of my hand, pulled everyone's asses out of the fire. All that shit doesn't matter, and it's all been torn out and replaced. It never mattered, we would have always just worked around the problem some other way. And they pay me good money for this... I didn't even go to college, I went to a community college and got an associate's degree in goofing off and getting As.
Whoa, you make $130k and you're broke? Curious what you have dragging you down.
"Long term investment" is speculation. Do you think the stock will become worth more or less over the years?
For someone to win, someone must lose. The stock market is transactional, money comes from the mindless and goes to the shrewd.
No, no it's not wrong. When you sell a share of a stock, there must be a buyer. IBM doesn't buy your 10 shares of IBM; Joe Jackass buys your 10 shares of IBM. He then sells them to Cindy Cocksucker down the street for a profit. She then sells them to Dan Dumbass, at a sharp loss. He then holds them for a while thinking it's got to come back one day, but it spirals down.
There's only one thing to understand here: Private firms perform HFT and private firms would not do something that did not make them money. Private firms' interest in HFT is not to waste millions of dollars putting in crazy infrastructure just to help day traders strike it Romney Rich; their interest in HFT is to pull more money from everyone else in the stock market into their own coffers.
The stock market is about people being able to buy and sell securities that allows businesses to raise additional capital. It was originally a very social thing so much so that it could reflect the mood of the populace's strength and development.
An IPO is a business raising additional capital; everything else after that is psychology, almost the second thing you said. The stock market is about none of that though; it's about person A swindling person B out of their money.
The stock market shows the opinion of the market's major buying and selling power on a security. The security starts to slow and peak when the minority are the only ones in the buy-buy-buy cycle. They're out there screaming "BUY BUY BUY OMG GOLD IS GOING UP IT'S GOING TO HIT LIKE $10,000" while gold is stalled at $1800 and has been for months. Gold climbed steadily to $1600, then tapered off and slowly rose to $1800 while the smart folk continued to slowly sell theirs off to these idiots. Soon, gold will fall, but these folks are going "BUY GOLD BUY GOLD GONNA BE RICH!" and the other half are going "Hedge against inflation!" When the price starts to drop and there's no big money interest, it'll slowly start to go down. Then, everyone will panic as they realize gold is slowly devaluing and they'll start SELLING to people who think gold is just following a natural slump, a calm before climbing like crazy. Or maybe, selling to people who just think "gold is good to buy" and then start panic selling themselves when gold they buy starts dropping.
In any case, when none of these people can offload their gold, they start dropping the price trying to offload it. Gold rushes down quickly as people buy into the "deals" at $1500 (man gold was just $1800, it's dipped, I'll sell this back 'cause it's gold it's gotta come back!), $1100, $900 (man it's lost so much, it's gotta come back), and so on. Eventually it settles in and gets bought up by big interests again, slowly climbing as the market trades it around.
Stocks work this way. Bonds are complex, but essentially the same (a 5% bond sells for its face value plus the interest it'll gain, really). And so on. Why would you retire on money you've stuffed in the stock market? "Oh I'll buy into the market, the market grows" right... the market is people like me robbing you.
The margin for ebook is speculative on how many copies you can sell at a given price. There's no cost to distribute, really.
Also, what about our senators? They get $179k paychecks, should we give them more? A US Senator must reside in his state, he must be present in his state, but he also must be in DC. Because of this, they spend tens of thousands of dollars a year just flying around, plus hotel, food, etc. $179k goes quick when every 2 days or multiple times a day you're getting on a private short-notice jet to fly between Iowa and Washington DC.
So wait, people making $125/week at Foxconn factories are rich now, right? I mean they get a lot more than $17/week like other Chinese factory workers and it's more than enough money to get by. I hear all this outrage that the yellow working class gets $125/wk but it's like they spend $100/mo on rent and now they have $500/mo...
Anything under 40mph direct collision is unlikely to be fatal. Amusingly, in a car, injury sharply climbs around 40mph, and fatality in a 40mph total head on collision (20mph to 20mph) is very high even with airbags. A motorcycle also has a sharp increase in injury at around 40mph collision speed. Also, a car hitting a pedestrian at 40mph has a high probability of killing the pedestrian, while at 35mph the pedestrian will probably survive with minor injuries (broken bones heal).
Bicyclists are SUPPOSED to bike in the far light lane with traffic, but a lot bicycle against traffic which is EXTREMELY hazardous. Bicyclists are required by law to stop at stop signs and red lights, but they also often don't--cops should be ticketing these people. Cyclists aren't legally supposed to ride on the sidewalk because it's extremely dangerous--bicycle-pedestrian collisions aren't uncommon and are often fatal.
On the other hand, cars aren't supposed to pass cyclists within 3 feet (it's a ticketable offense and gets you a fine and points), but they like to buzz close, which can disorient the cyclist trying to hold a perfectly straight line, or force them to ride over road hazards which may result in measurable loss of control. Cyclists have right-of-way on the road, and so at a stop sign they get a turn in sequence same as a car or a motorcycle (though they don't get priority as an emergency vehicle), but of course a lot of drivers like to pull out when they see a cyclist waiting and occasionally this leads to confusion or collision. Pedestrians see a bicycle coming down the street and cross the road in front of it; they wait for cars to pass but ignore bicycles, which can't stop from 30mph nearly as fast (20mph is more normal but I've been at 30 and downhill can get you going 35-45, though bicycles should not exceed the speed limit).
By following proper lane control and traffic flow rules, bicycles pose no more of a hazard than a slow moving vehicle. Usually in city streets this is a 25-30mph street and a 15-20mph bicycle. Maybe more driver's education is needed to teach cyclists to follow traffic law? Maybe cops should start ticketing cyclists for running stop signs and red lights, and for driving down the wrong side of the road or the wrong way down a one way street? That's probably a good idea.
The OP claimed Android was a toy, across the board. Like saying cars are toys, or bicycles are toys.