I was providing a thought experiment to illustrate why it is ludicrous to theorize that wealth is a "zero-sum" game. Zero sum means that for every "dollar" won, a dollar must be lost, and for every dollar lost, a dollar must be won. If you don't mean zero sum, don't say zero sum, that's all I'm saying. I don't dispute your assertion that material objects come from material sources and that costs associated with these sources are often overlooked, but I do dispute the idea that the "value added" by the laborer cannot be greater than the "cost" of the labor itself. I.e., sometimes the value of an object (perhaps a piece of art) is greater than the cost of the materials and labor that went into creating it. I do not claim, however, that infinite wealth is possible. I do believe that information also has value, and can often be attained at a high value/cost ratio, although "value" is obviously subjective.
I assume you agree now that your original claim ("Wealth *is* zero sum.") was wrong, right?
333.3 hours = 20,000 minutes = 1.2 million seconds.
1.2 million seconds x 9 GB/s = 10.8 PB.
1.2 million seconds x 9.08 GB/s = 10.896 PB.
Where are you getting 1.29890442 PB from?
If we assume 60mph average speed for that trip, than a 20,000 mile trip will take 333 hours and 20 minutes or 1,200,000. At 9 GB/s, the network will have transferred 10,800 TB in that amount of time. Assuming dual-layer blu-ray DVDs, each with 50 GB (0.05 TB) of data, the station wagon will have to carry more than 216,000 DVDs for it to win. If each DVD takes up about 3.6 cubic inches (0.1x6x6) or 0.002 cubic feet, the station wagon will need to carry 432 cubic feet of DVDs.
I'm just pointing out the fallacy of the argument that lowering taxes will raise revenues. Most (if not all) economists will argue that the point of diminishing returns (with respect to revenue only) is at a tax rate much higher than the current tax rate. If raising revenue is your only concern, then you should be fighting for higher taxes. However, I'm not in favor of raising revenue.
No, I am, like most people, in favor of lowering taxes, but I refuse to support faulty arguments as a means of doing so.
So, there's no way to reduce over-all wealth? If we were to some how plant ridiculously high-yield nuclear devices in the core of the Earth and blew it up, who would be the winners? The second law of thermodynamics basically guarantees that wealth is not a zero-sum game.
Gerrymandering will still be quite possible (and would still happen), but it's true the effects of gerrymandering would be mitigated somewhat. Of course, we would need a bigger Congressional building...
If a reasonable, non-partisan person would conclude from the evidence that Cheney committed an impeachable offense, then it's a short disaster for the Republicans whether or not a conviction is returned. Republican senators will find themselves in a prisoner's dilemma: be loyal and share the pain, or defect and escape some of it.
The thing is, I don't feel that the resolution really has much to it. It seems both too vague and too focused at the same time. It's all about Iraq/Iran and in such a way that he can dodge it quite easily by a combination of appealing to (implicitly) incompetence or faulty memory, and not about any of the other high crimes and misdemeanors he might be guilty of - with the outing of Plame seeming to be the one easiest to pin on him, IMO.
How would it end gerrymandering? I have to admit the text is confusing to me:
Article the first...After the first enumeration required by the first article of the Constitution, there shall be one Representative for every thirty thousand, until the number shall amount to one hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall be not less than one hundred Representatives, nor less than one Representative for every forty thousand persons, until the number of Representatives shall amount to two hundred; after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall not be less than two hundred Representatives, nor more than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons.
Wha?!? Let me try to break that down: the first clause (up to the semicolon) seems to say that there will be at least 100 Representatives and that each Representative will represent no more than 40,000 people, unless that means you have more than 200 Representatives. Of course 200 x 40,000 = 8,000,000 so that clause is basically meaningless today (I see it was first proposed in the late 1700s, which explains a lot) - unless I'm misunderstanding it. The rest of that very long sentence seems to say that there will be at least 200 Representatives and that each Representative will represent no less than 50,000 people.
So, have I understood it correctly, and how does that end gerrymandering?
Until someone made the argument you just made (might have been you), and I was forced to admit he was right. I wish the voting populace was smart enough to handle Condorcet, but they're not. You have to go to vote with the populace you have, not the populace you want.
You're absolutely right. However, the question is does this perjury rise to the level of "high crimes and misdemeanors"? Perjury is a very serious crime, but I'm not sure that in this case it meets that criteria. The perjury issue would still be worth pursuing if there was a reason to suspect it covered up larger crimes, but in Clinton's case that didn't seem to be true.
I voted for Dole in '96 because of the corruption I saw in the Clinton administration. That corruption now seems quite minor by comparison to the current administration. (On a side note: if Dole has won in '96, we wouldn't have had Bush in office in 2000.)
Just trying to fight the concept that the Earth only has x billion people in it. While perhaps you were not implying x=5, enough people don't realize that x > 6.5 that it never hurts to throw that number out every now and again.
I don't like Cheney and the majority of people might be wanting to get rid of him, but those aren't good reasons for impeaching him. Furthermore, he might indeed be guilty of impeachable offenses, but I do not feel that Kucinich has made that point. Not only is this a poorly thought out resolution, even the PDF is poorly rendered. It looks like a scanning device was used to render the PDF as it gets slanted after a couple pages. Doesn't he have anybody capable of generating a PDF from a.tex or.doc document?
Are you referring to Section 3 of Article III? (It's the only part that comes close to making sense.) If so, you should re-read Article I, Section 8. It's not treason for Congress to be doing their job.
You mean worse, right? Because the Speaker of the House is a government employee (and the head of a branch that is tasked by the Constitution to be involved in all kinds of international affairs - see Article I, section 8), and the President Elect will only assume that position shortly. The "minutes after" scenario is at least suggestive that the hostages were held until he took office under whatever agreement he reached. Why not release them ASAP? If he was going to negotiate illegally, wouldn't that at least make it seem like he was following the spirit of the Logan Act if not the letter?
If so, wouldn't that be a violation of the Logan Act that all the conservatives claim (incorrectly) that Pelosi violated?
In fact, it's rather hard to imagine a scenario where the hostages get released minutes after Reagan takes office that doesn't entail a violation of the Logan Act.
I mean, Euclidean geometry, Riemannian geometry, Ricci tensors, topology, Lorentz contraction, Maxwell's demon, algebraic set theory, noncommutative geometry, and Quantum Mechanics were all instances of science following technology.
It's an impossible thing to quantify without some sort of rigorous definition of technology, but I'd say technology follows science as much as science follows technology.
If enough* people are concerned about it, then it makes sense to label accordingly. If I weren't a vegetarian, then I'd have no problem paying less for cloned meat, as I think it's highly unlikely that cloning could result in any danger to the consumer. If you feel differently, then you should be allowed to opt out - which is what labeling allows.
* enough should be a pretty low bar as labeling isn't that expensive. Maybe 1% = "enough", but I'm just making up numbers here.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't fault you too much for trusting Google.
I was providing a thought experiment to illustrate why it is ludicrous to theorize that wealth is a "zero-sum" game. Zero sum means that for every "dollar" won, a dollar must be lost, and for every dollar lost, a dollar must be won. If you don't mean zero sum, don't say zero sum, that's all I'm saying. I don't dispute your assertion that material objects come from material sources and that costs associated with these sources are often overlooked, but I do dispute the idea that the "value added" by the laborer cannot be greater than the "cost" of the labor itself. I.e., sometimes the value of an object (perhaps a piece of art) is greater than the cost of the materials and labor that went into creating it. I do not claim, however, that infinite wealth is possible. I do believe that information also has value, and can often be attained at a high value/cost ratio, although "value" is obviously subjective.
I assume you agree now that your original claim ("Wealth *is* zero sum.") was wrong, right?
When taxes have been raised, revenues have also gone up. Post hoc ergo propter hoc.
333.3 hours = 20,000 minutes = 1.2 million seconds.
1.2 million seconds x 9 GB/s = 10.8 PB.
1.2 million seconds x 9.08 GB/s = 10.896 PB.
Where are you getting 1.29890442 PB from?
But the calculations do need correction. :) 210,000 TB in 40 hours = 1,458 GB/s or 1.458 TB/s.
If we assume 60mph average speed for that trip, than a 20,000 mile trip will take 333 hours and 20 minutes or 1,200,000. At 9 GB/s, the network will have transferred 10,800 TB in that amount of time. Assuming dual-layer blu-ray DVDs, each with 50 GB (0.05 TB) of data, the station wagon will have to carry more than 216,000 DVDs for it to win. If each DVD takes up about 3.6 cubic inches (0.1x6x6) or 0.002 cubic feet, the station wagon will need to carry 432 cubic feet of DVDs.
I think the network wins this one.
1 AU = 1.58128588 × 10^-5 lightyears
So sayeth Google.I'm just pointing out the fallacy of the argument that lowering taxes will raise revenues. Most (if not all) economists will argue that the point of diminishing returns (with respect to revenue only) is at a tax rate much higher than the current tax rate. If raising revenue is your only concern, then you should be fighting for higher taxes. However, I'm not in favor of raising revenue.
No, I am, like most people, in favor of lowering taxes, but I refuse to support faulty arguments as a means of doing so.
Every time taxes are raised, revenues go up, too.
Gerrymandering will still be quite possible (and would still happen), but it's true the effects of gerrymandering would be mitigated somewhat. Of course, we would need a bigger Congressional building...
Until someone made the argument you just made (might have been you), and I was forced to admit he was right. I wish the voting populace was smart enough to handle Condorcet, but they're not. You have to go to vote with the populace you have, not the populace you want.
You're absolutely right. However, the question is does this perjury rise to the level of "high crimes and misdemeanors"? Perjury is a very serious crime, but I'm not sure that in this case it meets that criteria. The perjury issue would still be worth pursuing if there was a reason to suspect it covered up larger crimes, but in Clinton's case that didn't seem to be true.
I voted for Dole in '96 because of the corruption I saw in the Clinton administration. That corruption now seems quite minor by comparison to the current administration. (On a side note: if Dole has won in '96, we wouldn't have had Bush in office in 2000.)
Well, 6.2 billion if you discount the US itself.
Just trying to fight the concept that the Earth only has x billion people in it. While perhaps you were not implying x=5, enough people don't realize that x > 6.5 that it never hurts to throw that number out every now and again.
OK, now I understand his comment.
I don't like Cheney and the majority of people might be wanting to get rid of him, but those aren't good reasons for impeaching him. Furthermore, he might indeed be guilty of impeachable offenses, but I do not feel that Kucinich has made that point. Not only is this a poorly thought out resolution, even the PDF is poorly rendered. It looks like a scanning device was used to render the PDF as it gets slanted after a couple pages. Doesn't he have anybody capable of generating a PDF from a .tex or .doc document?
Are you referring to Section 3 of Article III? (It's the only part that comes close to making sense.) If so, you should re-read Article I, Section 8. It's not treason for Congress to be doing their job.
Of course, in this case Nancy Pelosi was elected, and is an employee (where I'm defining employee as someone who is paid) of the government.
You mean worse, right? Because the Speaker of the House is a government employee (and the head of a branch that is tasked by the Constitution to be involved in all kinds of international affairs - see Article I, section 8), and the President Elect will only assume that position shortly. The "minutes after" scenario is at least suggestive that the hostages were held until he took office under whatever agreement he reached. Why not release them ASAP? If he was going to negotiate illegally, wouldn't that at least make it seem like he was following the spirit of the Logan Act if not the letter?
If so, wouldn't that be a violation of the Logan Act that all the conservatives claim (incorrectly) that Pelosi violated?
In fact, it's rather hard to imagine a scenario where the hostages get released minutes after Reagan takes office that doesn't entail a violation of the Logan Act.
I mean, Euclidean geometry, Riemannian geometry, Ricci tensors, topology, Lorentz contraction, Maxwell's demon, algebraic set theory, noncommutative geometry, and Quantum Mechanics were all instances of science following technology.
It's an impossible thing to quantify without some sort of rigorous definition of technology, but I'd say technology follows science as much as science follows technology.
If enough* people are concerned about it, then it makes sense to label accordingly. If I weren't a vegetarian, then I'd have no problem paying less for cloned meat, as I think it's highly unlikely that cloning could result in any danger to the consumer. If you feel differently, then you should be allowed to opt out - which is what labeling allows.
* enough should be a pretty low bar as labeling isn't that expensive. Maybe 1% = "enough", but I'm just making up numbers here.I was wondering if maybe you had recently been dumped by a tri-Delt recently and decided to label them as the beast in revenge! ;)