Here in Ireland we have a lower TV licence fee. For that we get to have poorly funded pathetic local productions, or good productions that are poorly supported or short-lived because they get few viewers - our national broadcaster although funded by taxpayers, also runs commercial advertising and so operates on semi-commercial basis (i.e. cater to the lowest common denominator). Like most here in Ireland looking for serious TV, I'll stick to watching BBC for free on satellite.
You can buy groceries instore or online and then get them delivered for free - both customers and supermarket benefit from the economies of scale achieved by this, as does transport infrastructure.
People individually lugging shopping back is not a sensible model.
Although the experience in Ireland shows you can screw up with a similar public/private approach. The opposition here are suggesting a Dutch model of universal health insurance (easiest to move to here with so many having private insurance).
However, I am really hoping the US does something sensible because it seems all too many of our politicians here in Ireland use our Western position in Europe as a basis to make decisions (Boston rather than Berlin). Although the cynics suggest it's more about free market/private industry allowing them and their cronies more scope to line their pockets.
For a start, incarcerating a shockingly substantial section of its population and treating them like career criminals if they have ever been incarcerated.
It depends. On where you are and what you consider an alternative. Anyone in a UPC area is a bit crazy if they aren't with UPC.
A lot of the country still doesn't even have Eircom broadband! Even DSL-enabling all exchanges wouldn't solve that as they are too sparse in the countryside and most people on the exchange would be too far away for DSL.
A lot of people are turning to 3G mobile data as it's cheap and fairly widespread. It's not really broadband though as unless you're outdoors near a cell with no-one else on it you usually get speeds inbetween dial-up and basic broadband (1Mbit). Also you get charged outrageously per kilobyte over the low cap (15 GB).
Of course their main ace is that a lot of people have little option but to pay them line rental for the fixed-line connection, and Eircom offer bundle deals with their broadband that are potentially more attractive than signing up with a fixed-line competitor (you still have to pay Eircom line rental with the others and you get the bonus of trying to deal indirectly with Eircom if there's a line fault).
Nevertheless people are so broke or desperate that people are turning to 3G (cheap monthly rate, no install cost, widely available) that often offers little better than dial-up (contention and/or distance/signal) and not only has a low cap - but going over it means being billed a fortune as the excess is charged in cents per kilobyte (Cable/wireless/DSL ISPs enforcing cap simply warn/throttle/disconnect).
The options offered by Amazon retailers for particular products are growing by the month in my experience. I've certainly bought from there more frequently than ebay in the last year, and indeed I'm increasingly not having to bother with other online retailers (there's usually some Amazon retailer who's cheaper). Note that this isn't because of Amazon's own offerings - not since they jacked up the postage costs to Ireland, didn't ship certain product categories for months, and apply Irish sales tax (21.5%) on top of the *postage* as well as displayed UK prices (which afaik already include UK 15% VAT).
I just started up Civ 4 again in the last day or two - it is I think a particularly interesting "sequel" because it's not just about new concepts - it also tries to offer the central ideas of the past games with improvements based on experience since then. A lot of items are redesigned to offer smoother and less annoying gameplay. All previous Civ games had myriad things that were genuine annoyances in the game. Civ 4, almost none. And, on top of all of that it's got modern 3D graphics and nice animations without compromising the essential isometric-style view.
If the attempted reworking of EA classics are anything like Civ 4, then that's a worthwhile endeavour in my view and something that will be genuinely nice to play. The summary is right about the old games unless you're a hardcore enthusiast. Even Diablo II, that I sunk hours into and is a formative game for any number of copycats, I can't go back to even after an imitation like Titan Quest. I enjoyed the updated version of Monkey Island far more than I would have going back and playing the original. However, like the updated version of Monkey Island, I'd only probably be interested in spending 10 on these.
Yes, I would say most two year olds *understand* most of what you say (indeed even in overheard conversations, although sometimes the understanding can be limited to the literal, resulting in rather odd ideas), and have enough "words" (including very rough attempts) and non-verbal communication to allow a *conversation* with any adult who has the patience (and also doesn't mind rather random subjects). Also I don't know of dogs understanding concepts like yesterday and tomorrow.
I have encountered a number of border collies and I could easily believe they can understand 200 words, but it is clearly a more rudimentary understanding - not part of a broader tapestry as with kids. They are pretty impressive for dogs though.
I would be unconvinced these researchers have enough experience with children, outside their research environment as well as inside.
Try Lidl or Aldi. Quite a range although nothing especially fancy, but it's cheaper than Cadbury's etc. and taste is far superior.
Don't know about the UK, but some of the ordinary continental brands are reasonably available here - Lindt, Milka, etc. To be honest the Lidl stuff compares well with the ordinary products even of those major brands.
Blue Smarties were "missing" for a couple years after they switched to more natural food colouring. Now they are back again but they're more kind of slightly purple than a vibrant blue.
In fairness, I don't think kids care once they are chocolate, an attractive package, and interesting (different colours even if not exceedingly vibrant).
Of course it being British chocolate, it's not proper milk chocolate at all, and has a lot of vegetable fat added unlike real milk chocolate (British chocolate is very distinguishable by being horrible and greasy - kind of sticking to the roof of your mouth). I don't know what on earth is in US chocolate but I found Hershey bars inedible when I was last there, although peanut butter cups are tasty enough (although I'd feel ill eating more than one or two).
What you describe as real is climate change on a short timescale - such fluctuations aren't extraordinary and the claims of "climate change" are for the most part suggesting a mostly permanent change in climate, brought about by man-made influence.
Even the changes you describe are hard to judge and have varied greatly just year to year - here in Ireland this year everything (plants/animals) was more a stereotypical Spring/Summer - albeit extra plant growth, insects and birds because the sun/rain in Spring were in just the right order for optimal conditions (one particular week of heavy rain, one particular week of strong sunshine, and a lot of other "nice" conditions besides).
I'm a skeptic in the true sense - I'm skeptical about the climate change hysteria, but not convinced either that there is no merit in the "man-made permanent climate change" argument, and certainly I think it's a good idea to cut back on pollution (although the exclusive focus on carbon/CO2 may need more justification). I don't think we have enough to go on either way and some policies seem very knee jerk and may be counter productive. Plus most policies that are happening as opposed to mere proposals are often due to other interests (ways to make money from it, keep certain section of voters happy, skew competition, raise tax, etc.)
Here in Ireland there is as much talk as anywhere else about carbon taxes etc. yet there is still next to no enforcement of building standards for example to ensure new houses are properly insulated, pathetic planning that nevermind about transport emissions - makes equal (or even poor) delivery of services across the country very expensive. Too sparse population in rural areas for all kinds of services never mind private car use problems - too unplanned and fast-increasing population in the capital for services needed for such an amount of people - traffic problems and not enough money for public transport due to cost of supporting rural area. Our poor planning also means developers are allowed to put up crummy buildings that last as little as 10 years before being redeveloped - regardless of climate change or CO2 or anything else it's obvious that such things are grossly wasteful.
All in all, I'd like to see common-sense policies while we continue to research the "big picture" rather than random ideologically-driven hypotheses being put into action where politically convenient.
Who cares about video games - we can watch movies without 3:2 pulldown artifacts and in higher resolution even with SD (except for silly people importing Region 1). And we can watch the three LOTR extended editions back to back in about half an hour (28 mins) less than folks in 60 Hz land.
Just because it "worked" back then does not mean that using the old designs would be acceptable today even if it were possible. There are too many advantages to modern technology to simply stick to the original plans. In any case, it wouldn't even be cheap to use the original plans considering you'd have to set up production of all the parts and so on.
I think it is exceedingly unlikely that the value of the original Apollo program is being written off - undoubtedly they have avoided billions of dollars of expense due to the experience (if nothing else) of the original program.
If you think sticking to "tried and trusted" technology is a good idea, just look at the American car industry.
To acheive a "background" in an area, you do require simple rote learning of certain basics. Reaching a certain competency in mathematics, science and use of the english language, all essential to some degree in everyday life nevermind a profession, does amongst other things, require rote learning of basic information. Also, kids are in general pretty good at such rote learning and learning things by repetition (which is unfortunately "boring" and indeed fairly pointless for kids who've already grasped something).
There has been plenty of experimentation with alternative teaching methods, and while some useful experience has been garnered by this, in my mind it has also shown that we merely need to improve and suppliment traditional learning, rather than replace it entirely as the ideology warriors would have us do.
How about sticking to income tax. You know, where what you pay is directly linked to your income? You could argue that those on high incomes could afford to pay an "energy tax", but with income tax, they are already paying more than others (well, in sensible countries) and should have the same treatment as the lower paid.
Here in Ireland there is talk of means-testing certain benefits (free Uni tuition, child benefit payments). This is madness - it *costs* money to apply a means test (and it will invariably not be fair in some cases), and while you might save some money not providing benefits to higher earners - you can acheive the same effect by modifying their income tax rate. And if there is no scope for that, then there shouldn't be scope for reducing their benefits.
An old Irish Rail (Iarnród Éireann) railway locomotive appeared on one of the election posters of the recent Iranian presidential election. Pretty bizarre.
Of course the omitted pertinent detail in your post is Ireland's corporation tax rate, 12.5% (indeed I think companies who've been here long-term may still be on 10%). However, we are Europe's "Red State" - apart from a brief overdose from consumption taxes during the boom years, we don't raise enough taxes to actually run the country (and that is with minimal services and things like not actually really policing the whole country, charging directly for every govt. admin thing possible, etc.).
Actually I've had plenty of car journeys where to some extent one is relieved to be at the destination. Here in Ireland I would suggest that a journey of 200 km would involve at the very least, four encounters with crazed lunatic drivers trying to kill everyone around them. Friday evening out of Dublin involves many many more as three lanes worth of traffic tries to fit in two lanes, with random people trying to do faster than the 120 km/h limit. Not to mention the handful of times I've made an unwise choice in choosing to be a passenger in a car with certain drivers.
Even in Germany where I find driver behaviour mostly excellent, this is made up for if you merely encounter one insane driver while on the no-speed limit section of Autobahn (not nice speeds to have someone acting the maggot with lanes/tailgating) or one driver on the 120 km/h limit section who intends to pretend it's no speed limit (not fun if you are 120 km/h in outside lane with this driver coming up behind, and you can't pull in due to slow trucks close together in the inside lane).
By contrast I've mostly found air travel quite reasonable (although some stressful airport encounters - but no feeling of narrowly avoiding death).
Actually some famines are still today the result of economic policies and even the deliberate implementation of such policies being put ahead of people's lives.
However, this isn't a new phenomenon, an older example is the Irish Potato Famine (there was plenty of "food" in Ireland at the time).
The EU compared to who else...? The old saying "better late than never" comes to mind. I think the US opted for the "never" approach to doing something about IE bundling.
Yeah, but if there are problems with welfare - you fix them. Too many on the right use the problems as an excuse to suggest that you ditch it.
The same applies to government. Trying to make do with less governance isn't the solution to problems with government - instead what needs to be done is address the specific problems rather than running away and going "Aiiieee, government is evil".
The whole lack of regulation has brought us to this present crisis. And now there are those who forget that the lack of regulation happened for a reason - a reaction to the ill-considered regulation we had previously. Nevertheless, it should now be obvious that what we need is good regulation (and even that some element of bad regulation along with it is better than none).
Slashdot Mirror
Here in Ireland we have a lower TV licence fee. For that we get to have poorly funded pathetic local productions, or good productions that are poorly supported or short-lived because they get few viewers - our national broadcaster although funded by taxpayers, also runs commercial advertising and so operates on semi-commercial basis (i.e. cater to the lowest common denominator). Like most here in Ireland looking for serious TV, I'll stick to watching BBC for free on satellite.
You can buy groceries instore or online and then get them delivered for free - both customers and supermarket benefit from the economies of scale achieved by this, as does transport infrastructure.
People individually lugging shopping back is not a sensible model.
Although the experience in Ireland shows you can screw up with a similar public/private approach. The opposition here are suggesting a Dutch model of universal health insurance (easiest to move to here with so many having private insurance).
However, I am really hoping the US does something sensible because it seems all too many of our politicians here in Ireland use our Western position in Europe as a basis to make decisions (Boston rather than Berlin). Although the cynics suggest it's more about free market/private industry allowing them and their cronies more scope to line their pockets.
For a start, incarcerating a shockingly substantial section of its population and treating them like career criminals if they have ever been incarcerated.
It depends. On where you are and what you consider an alternative. Anyone in a UPC area is a bit crazy if they aren't with UPC.
A lot of the country still doesn't even have Eircom broadband! Even DSL-enabling all exchanges wouldn't solve that as they are too sparse in the countryside and most people on the exchange would be too far away for DSL.
A lot of people are turning to 3G mobile data as it's cheap and fairly widespread. It's not really broadband though as unless you're outdoors near a cell with no-one else on it you usually get speeds inbetween dial-up and basic broadband (1Mbit). Also you get charged outrageously per kilobyte over the low cap (15 GB).
Eircom thus far haven't enforced a download cap.
Of course their main ace is that a lot of people have little option but to pay them line rental for the fixed-line connection, and Eircom offer bundle deals with their broadband that are potentially more attractive than signing up with a fixed-line competitor (you still have to pay Eircom line rental with the others and you get the bonus of trying to deal indirectly with Eircom if there's a line fault).
Nevertheless people are so broke or desperate that people are turning to 3G (cheap monthly rate, no install cost, widely available) that often offers little better than dial-up (contention and/or distance/signal) and not only has a low cap - but going over it means being billed a fortune as the excess is charged in cents per kilobyte (Cable/wireless/DSL ISPs enforcing cap simply warn/throttle/disconnect).
The options offered by Amazon retailers for particular products are growing by the month in my experience. I've certainly bought from there more frequently than ebay in the last year, and indeed I'm increasingly not having to bother with other online retailers (there's usually some Amazon retailer who's cheaper). Note that this isn't because of Amazon's own offerings - not since they jacked up the postage costs to Ireland, didn't ship certain product categories for months, and apply Irish sales tax (21.5%) on top of the *postage* as well as displayed UK prices (which afaik already include UK 15% VAT).
I just started up Civ 4 again in the last day or two - it is I think a particularly interesting "sequel" because it's not just about new concepts - it also tries to offer the central ideas of the past games with improvements based on experience since then. A lot of items are redesigned to offer smoother and less annoying gameplay. All previous Civ games had myriad things that were genuine annoyances in the game. Civ 4, almost none. And, on top of all of that it's got modern 3D graphics and nice animations without compromising the essential isometric-style view.
If the attempted reworking of EA classics are anything like Civ 4, then that's a worthwhile endeavour in my view and something that will be genuinely nice to play. The summary is right about the old games unless you're a hardcore enthusiast. Even Diablo II, that I sunk hours into and is a formative game for any number of copycats, I can't go back to even after an imitation like Titan Quest. I enjoyed the updated version of Monkey Island far more than I would have going back and playing the original. However, like the updated version of Monkey Island, I'd only probably be interested in spending 10 on these.
Yes, I would say most two year olds *understand* most of what you say (indeed even in overheard conversations, although sometimes the understanding can be limited to the literal, resulting in rather odd ideas), and have enough "words" (including very rough attempts) and non-verbal communication to allow a *conversation* with any adult who has the patience (and also doesn't mind rather random subjects). Also I don't know of dogs understanding concepts like yesterday and tomorrow.
I have encountered a number of border collies and I could easily believe they can understand 200 words, but it is clearly a more rudimentary understanding - not part of a broader tapestry as with kids. They are pretty impressive for dogs though.
I would be unconvinced these researchers have enough experience with children, outside their research environment as well as inside.
Or in the case of politics here in Ireland, people just avoid the unknown and choose familiar names regardless of track record :(
Try Lidl or Aldi. Quite a range although nothing especially fancy, but it's cheaper than Cadbury's etc. and taste is far superior.
Don't know about the UK, but some of the ordinary continental brands are reasonably available here - Lindt, Milka, etc. To be honest the Lidl stuff compares well with the ordinary products even of those major brands.
Blue Smarties were "missing" for a couple years after they switched to more natural food colouring. Now they are back again but they're more kind of slightly purple than a vibrant blue.
In fairness, I don't think kids care once they are chocolate, an attractive package, and interesting (different colours even if not exceedingly vibrant).
Of course it being British chocolate, it's not proper milk chocolate at all, and has a lot of vegetable fat added unlike real milk chocolate (British chocolate is very distinguishable by being horrible and greasy - kind of sticking to the roof of your mouth). I don't know what on earth is in US chocolate but I found Hershey bars inedible when I was last there, although peanut butter cups are tasty enough (although I'd feel ill eating more than one or two).
What you describe as real is climate change on a short timescale - such fluctuations aren't extraordinary and the claims of "climate change" are for the most part suggesting a mostly permanent change in climate, brought about by man-made influence.
Even the changes you describe are hard to judge and have varied greatly just year to year - here in Ireland this year everything (plants/animals) was more a stereotypical Spring/Summer - albeit extra plant growth, insects and birds because the sun/rain in Spring were in just the right order for optimal conditions (one particular week of heavy rain, one particular week of strong sunshine, and a lot of other "nice" conditions besides).
I'm a skeptic in the true sense - I'm skeptical about the climate change hysteria, but not convinced either that there is no merit in the "man-made permanent climate change" argument, and certainly I think it's a good idea to cut back on pollution (although the exclusive focus on carbon/CO2 may need more justification). I don't think we have enough to go on either way and some policies seem very knee jerk and may be counter productive. Plus most policies that are happening as opposed to mere proposals are often due to other interests (ways to make money from it, keep certain section of voters happy, skew competition, raise tax, etc.)
Here in Ireland there is as much talk as anywhere else about carbon taxes etc. yet there is still next to no enforcement of building standards for example to ensure new houses are properly insulated, pathetic planning that nevermind about transport emissions - makes equal (or even poor) delivery of services across the country very expensive. Too sparse population in rural areas for all kinds of services never mind private car use problems - too unplanned and fast-increasing population in the capital for services needed for such an amount of people - traffic problems and not enough money for public transport due to cost of supporting rural area. Our poor planning also means developers are allowed to put up crummy buildings that last as little as 10 years before being redeveloped - regardless of climate change or CO2 or anything else it's obvious that such things are grossly wasteful.
All in all, I'd like to see common-sense policies while we continue to research the "big picture" rather than random ideologically-driven hypotheses being put into action where politically convenient.
Who cares about video games - we can watch movies without 3:2 pulldown artifacts and in higher resolution even with SD (except for silly people importing Region 1). And we can watch the three LOTR extended editions back to back in about half an hour (28 mins) less than folks in 60 Hz land.
Just because it "worked" back then does not mean that using the old designs would be acceptable today even if it were possible. There are too many advantages to modern technology to simply stick to the original plans. In any case, it wouldn't even be cheap to use the original plans considering you'd have to set up production of all the parts and so on.
I think it is exceedingly unlikely that the value of the original Apollo program is being written off - undoubtedly they have avoided billions of dollars of expense due to the experience (if nothing else) of the original program.
If you think sticking to "tried and trusted" technology is a good idea, just look at the American car industry.
To acheive a "background" in an area, you do require simple rote learning of certain basics. Reaching a certain competency in mathematics, science and use of the english language, all essential to some degree in everyday life nevermind a profession, does amongst other things, require rote learning of basic information. Also, kids are in general pretty good at such rote learning and learning things by repetition (which is unfortunately "boring" and indeed fairly pointless for kids who've already grasped something).
There has been plenty of experimentation with alternative teaching methods, and while some useful experience has been garnered by this, in my mind it has also shown that we merely need to improve and suppliment traditional learning, rather than replace it entirely as the ideology warriors would have us do.
How about sticking to income tax. You know, where what you pay is directly linked to your income? You could argue that those on high incomes could afford to pay an "energy tax", but with income tax, they are already paying more than others (well, in sensible countries) and should have the same treatment as the lower paid.
Here in Ireland there is talk of means-testing certain benefits (free Uni tuition, child benefit payments). This is madness - it *costs* money to apply a means test (and it will invariably not be fair in some cases), and while you might save some money not providing benefits to higher earners - you can acheive the same effect by modifying their income tax rate. And if there is no scope for that, then there shouldn't be scope for reducing their benefits.
I didn't in fact think it had had much coverage, thought it was more an email-forward thing just in Ireland, but here is actually a news article from Irish Independent newspaper with the aforementioned image:
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/iran-on-track-with-help-of-irish-rail-1767781.html
Apologies for earlier deprivation of visual depiction of Internet-aided and reported oddity from around the world.
An old Irish Rail (Iarnród Éireann) railway locomotive appeared on one of the election posters of the recent Iranian presidential election. Pretty bizarre.
Of course the omitted pertinent detail in your post is Ireland's corporation tax rate, 12.5% (indeed I think companies who've been here long-term may still be on 10%). However, we are Europe's "Red State" - apart from a brief overdose from consumption taxes during the boom years, we don't raise enough taxes to actually run the country (and that is with minimal services and things like not actually really policing the whole country, charging directly for every govt. admin thing possible, etc.).
Actually I've had plenty of car journeys where to some extent one is relieved to be at the destination. Here in Ireland I would suggest that a journey of 200 km would involve at the very least, four encounters with crazed lunatic drivers trying to kill everyone around them. Friday evening out of Dublin involves many many more as three lanes worth of traffic tries to fit in two lanes, with random people trying to do faster than the 120 km/h limit. Not to mention the handful of times I've made an unwise choice in choosing to be a passenger in a car with certain drivers.
Even in Germany where I find driver behaviour mostly excellent, this is made up for if you merely encounter one insane driver while on the no-speed limit section of Autobahn (not nice speeds to have someone acting the maggot with lanes/tailgating) or one driver on the 120 km/h limit section who intends to pretend it's no speed limit (not fun if you are 120 km/h in outside lane with this driver coming up behind, and you can't pull in due to slow trucks close together in the inside lane).
By contrast I've mostly found air travel quite reasonable (although some stressful airport encounters - but no feeling of narrowly avoiding death).
Actually some famines are still today the result of economic policies and even the deliberate implementation of such policies being put ahead of people's lives.
However, this isn't a new phenomenon, an older example is the Irish Potato Famine (there was plenty of "food" in Ireland at the time).
It's been a while since 1776 and the world has changed somewhat!
The EU compared to who else...? The old saying "better late than never" comes to mind. I think the US opted for the "never" approach to doing something about IE bundling.
Yeah, but if there are problems with welfare - you fix them. Too many on the right use the problems as an excuse to suggest that you ditch it.
The same applies to government. Trying to make do with less governance isn't the solution to problems with government - instead what needs to be done is address the specific problems rather than running away and going "Aiiieee, government is evil".
The whole lack of regulation has brought us to this present crisis. And now there are those who forget that the lack of regulation happened for a reason - a reaction to the ill-considered regulation we had previously. Nevertheless, it should now be obvious that what we need is good regulation (and even that some element of bad regulation along with it is better than none).