I want my children to think with their own heads. That's why I explain to them the reasons behind I tell them to do this or that. I don't start ordering them around like some sergeant. If I did that, at the first opportunity they had, they would do the opposite.
I'm trying to raise my children to become independent and self-confident adults, not fearful, obedient drones.
I also saw one in 60 minutes about a town in China called Guiyu where most of worldwide electronic trash is sent to. It's a horrible place. They also do that burning thing, too. The soil has nearly deadly concentrations of heavy metals and poisons. The filming crew was kicked out of the place by thugs when someone noticed them.
I was trying to give a good example of the value of electronic waste. The Nigeria case I saw is a great example of ingenuity and efficiency. Unfortunately, Guiyu, India and Ghana are on the other side of the same coin. The Greenpeace solution of forcing manufacturers to be accountable for the whole life cycle of their products seems OK. But it won't go there without a fight. The poor people in those countries have no voice, and many will most likely think the current situation is good for them. And the people in the rich countries don't give a fuck about what happens in Africa or India.
There we go again, the environment can't defend itself. Leave everything to the free market to decide, Earth and the poor will always get a raw deal.
The problem is 1st world economies, not "West vs. The World". You think it's bad in the US, you've obviously never been to most of Asia- they're just as bad or worse. Take a vacation to Japan, you'll see what I mean... Korea and China aren't much different.
Granted. By the "West" I meant "rich countries". Your definition is more correct.
It all gets sent to the recycling center, but that does NOT mean it's being recycled. You do the same thing in Europe which the recycling companies in the US do- they pull out the easy to get metals, and the rest ends up in the landfill.
How is it any worse than just dumping everything right away without extracting any valuables?
I can't believe it's cheaper to dig millions of tons of rock to extract metals and other shit than it is to recycle our trash.
It depends on the trash, and how much you want to pollute shit with the recycling process. It's not like you can hit an old computer monitor with a hammer and gold bricks fall out of it or something. Sure, you can toss the glass from an old CRT into a smelter, but what are you planning on doing with the lead, and how are you going to separate them and keep the lead safely contained? The majority of the cost is dealing with all the toxic materials which are also in the electronics, unless you're just dumping them into the environment.
I'm so glad that I can hit rock with a sledgehammer and 24 carat gold bars come pouring down. See, easy, no chemicals, no pollution. Do you really want to take your bullshit any further? Who the fuck are you, a mining company executive? Or you just hate everything?
So in this case, the US should force it's values on other countries?
Absolutely NOT! When has the US done anything like that???
You can choose what you buy, can't you? The other countries are free to choose, if they want to produce stuff that damages the environment, they can sell it to anyone else.
Also, you don't think there is any middle ground for reducing or better thinking our current regulations?
No I don't. Current regulations are not even enough. Economical activities use the environment as if it was free. It's not. It provides extremely valuable services, without which human life would not be possible. As in any trade activity, those services have a cost. You can't imagine a sane economy where suppliers are not paid for, can you? That would make my business extremely efficient, if my supplies were given to me for free. But such a model will hit a stonewall in no time.
I'm baffled by the blatant hypocrisy of the right-wing. They tell me that working people should stop whining and be entrepreneurial, because anyone can become a millionaire if he faces any problem as an opportunity, blah, blah, blah.
If "entrepreneurs" are so brave and valiant, they will "enterprene" no matter what difficulties they find. At least that's what I hear all the time. Why do they whine so so much, then? According to the right-wing, people have no right to socialised healthcare, social protection, labour rights, consumer protection, anything. But corporations should have all the free rides.
Yes, I do. Still, it's a lot cheaper than buying a new TV. When it breaks, I'll buy an LCD. And my old CRT will probably make the delights of a family living in a slum in Lagos.
The problem in the US is that complying with the myriad environmental regulations, which were passed to protect the environment, makes the cost of dealing with all the toxic compounds that are produced and/or freed during the process of a high-yield-percentage recycling program, especially for electronics, exceed what they can recover.
That also happens for mining and industry. That's why we outsource them to third-world countries, where people work in the most wretched conditions for a shit pay and dump all the waste in the environment. It doesn't get any cheaper than that. Out of sight, out of mind. However, it may appear to be cheaper, but in the long run, it will bite us in the ass eventually, as always.
Now, we have two options, we can drop our environmental and labour regulations and live happily in a festering shithole, or we can demand those poor countries to abide to safety and environmental standards. The industrial processes to recover valuables from waste are pretty young. They should have a huge lot of room to improve. The processes to extract valuables from ore have centuries of improvements to stand on.
I saw a very nice documentary the other day showing what happens to a lot of our electronic waste. A fair share of it is shipped to Nigeria! There, people repair all the devices they can and sell it in a huge street market, the largest electronic market in the world. This means that a huge lot of electronic devices get to be used again instead of polluting the environment, and all the Nigerians have cheap cell phones, laptops, TVs and DVD players. Stuff that we consider outdated, they use with pride. One man's trash is another man's treasure.
We in the West are too pampered for our own good. I have a huge 16:9 CRT TV that works perfectly. I don't know anyone that still uses CRTs. I won't waste my money on an LCD TV before my current set breaks down. But most of people I know ditched perfectly good TV sets to replace them with LCDs. The same with cell phones, laptops, and even fridges, washing machines, or even cars!
Even when the devices don't get a second life, I can't believe it's cheaper to dig millions of tons of rock to extract metals and other shit than it is to recycle our trash. I don't know about the USA, but here in Europe we recycle most of our waste. Be it paper, plastic, metals, fluorescent bulbs, all kinds of oils and fats, electronic devices, everything gets recycled.
These guys were ALL seemingly of middle-eastern origins but that's NOT the issue.
If they were Arabs, the most likely origin is Morocco, Tunisia and specially Algeria. These countries are in the Middle East just as much as France is.
Otherwise you're right, that's REALLY NOT the issue.
And in Europe, also. Because of the Euro crisis some elected governments were replaced by unelected technocrats, among them many former bank executives and advisors. Nothing like an exceptional situation to send democracy down the drain.
The unelected prime-minister in Italy is a former GS advisor. The President of the European Central Bank was a prominent GS executive.
We're all being drowned in austerity to keep the parasitical banks afloat. And it's the very bankers leading the process from their government seats.
I'm so tired of all the "if you're not with me you're against me" trolls appearing all the time in Slashdot. It's getting boring. Every time anyone states an opinion about some controversial issue, a bunch of posts appear accusing him (unfairly) of standing on one insane extreme of the issue, while defending the other insane extreme. Can't we just have rational arguments, for a change?
So, if we're not on your extreme of the spectrum, we can only be on the other, can't we? Your post is nothing but a stupid straw man. Did anyone mention angel dust should be legalised, you troll?
You are hugely exaggerating, dude! What have you been smoking? Why are you attacking a relatively harmless drug just to make marijuana look better? What does one thing have to do with the other? For the record: I'm a caffeine "junkie" who strongly defends marijuana should be legal, so I'm (partly) on your side.
Funny, but seriously, caffeine = legal crack. Caffeine junkies are far more numerous (and self-righteous, and ignorant) than heroin junkies.
The effects of caffeine have nothing to do with crack. Although caffeine is addictive, its effects have been proven beneficial to health unless you take a shitload of it every day. I can't see any beneficial effects of crack or heroin.
The withdrawal can be as bad as or worse than nicotine withdrawal.
As someone who drinks coffee and has been a tobacco smoker I call this is utter bullshit.
If you want to compare marijuana with legal drugs, alcohol and tobacco are perfectly examples of substances that are (rightfully, IMHO) legal and cause terrible harm. I drink regularly and moderately, but I've seen the harm alcohol can do to those who abuse it and their family/friends. It's terrible. However, a glass or two a day actually makes you healthier, go figure!
As for tobacco, that's a really stupid addiction. There's no positive thing that tobacco can do to you except of the pleasure of smoking if you're not addicted (a very tiny minority). Otherwise, it ruins your health and that of the innocent people around you.
I'm not saying marijuana is not (mildly) harmful, but it has a big advantage over alcohol/tobacco: It's not addictive. It's really stupid that it's illegal. I can't see the harm of someone smoking a joint once in a while that justifies making it illegal. Of course, some people are stoned all the time but IMHO those people already had worse problems in their lives before marijuana abuse. Someone who keeps smoking pot all the time needs to get a life.
Please don't make me quote citations for the facts I mentioned. Find them yourself, they're widely known and available.
No, it wasn't! It's about time we got rid of those communist nanny state pot smoking smelly hippie abortionist islam-lover lesbian ways of measuring currents and got ourselves a true American Patriot unit of measurement!
I suggest using the Patriot = 373.245 microamperes, and its subdivisions, the Liberty = 1/17 Patriots and the Apple Pie = 163/467 Liberties.
There, that should make our calculations a lot easier and our electrons a lot more macho than those wimpy Euro-electrons.
Shut up! You're destroying the most overrated fantasy in modern life! If people start believing you, they might think the 1% don't actually deserve al the obscenely luscious wealth they have. Life as we know it would be at peril.
Well, the people in Venezuela have chosen democratically to be ruled by Chavez. And he's doing a better job than all the previous corrupt pro-USA leaders that made them live in the most abject poverty in a country full of oil.
Firearm possession is illegal in my country, dumb fuck. And in the rest of Europe, by the way. I suppose we live under terrible dictatorships, according to fanatic fucks like you.
The levels of gun related violence in Venezuela are appalling. What the fuck should the government do? Sit on their asses? Then they'd be criticised for that, too. Stop judging other countries according to your own warped values. The crazy gun ownership laws in the US are the exception among civilised countries. Not the rule. There are far more important things to think about that owning guns. I guess the Venezuelans value more to have a job and food on their table that owning a revolver. Crazy people.
It's so cool that anyone can come here as an Anonymous Coward and just outright lie their ass off without any having to present any evidence or suffering any consequences.
Care to cite any evidence? As far as I know, elections in Venezuela are closely watched by thousands of UN observers, and they never declared any significant fraud since Chavez is in power. Check this.
Which is more than you can say about Baby Bush's first election...
So basically your point is that you (the richest country in the world) rank very well among a bunch of third-world countries with huge income inequalities. Your excuse is so lame it hurts.
It may (I don't have the data), but it's fucking up sooooo badly in the rest, that it vastly outweighs any good it could possibly be doing. Please, just look at the numbers.
Bullshit. They can vote for someone else or even call for a mid-term referendum. Chavez has survived one of these before, I wonder why the opposition doesn't pull that one again? Maybe because they know they'll lose?
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Dude, this was a joke, no need to get so Nazi about it :-)
Both "Count" and "Earl" translate to "Conde" in my language, and both translate to "Graf" in German so Earl and Count mean basically the same thing.
I guess the Earl's wife arrived earlier that day and he really really needed to stash all the evidence of what we was doing.
I want my children to think with their own heads. That's why I explain to them the reasons behind I tell them to do this or that. I don't start ordering them around like some sergeant. If I did that, at the first opportunity they had, they would do the opposite.
I'm trying to raise my children to become independent and self-confident adults, not fearful, obedient drones.
I also saw one in 60 minutes about a town in China called Guiyu where most of worldwide electronic trash is sent to. It's a horrible place. They also do that burning thing, too. The soil has nearly deadly concentrations of heavy metals and poisons. The filming crew was kicked out of the place by thugs when someone noticed them.
I was trying to give a good example of the value of electronic waste. The Nigeria case I saw is a great example of ingenuity and efficiency. Unfortunately, Guiyu, India and Ghana are on the other side of the same coin. The Greenpeace solution of forcing manufacturers to be accountable for the whole life cycle of their products seems OK. But it won't go there without a fight. The poor people in those countries have no voice, and many will most likely think the current situation is good for them. And the people in the rich countries don't give a fuck about what happens in Africa or India.
There we go again, the environment can't defend itself. Leave everything to the free market to decide, Earth and the poor will always get a raw deal.
The problem is 1st world economies, not "West vs. The World". You think it's bad in the US, you've obviously never been to most of Asia- they're just as bad or worse. Take a vacation to Japan, you'll see what I mean... Korea and China aren't much different.
Granted. By the "West" I meant "rich countries". Your definition is more correct.
It all gets sent to the recycling center, but that does NOT mean it's being recycled. You do the same thing in Europe which the recycling companies in the US do- they pull out the easy to get metals, and the rest ends up in the landfill.
How is it any worse than just dumping everything right away without extracting any valuables?
I can't believe it's cheaper to dig millions of tons of rock to extract metals and other shit than it is to recycle our trash.
It depends on the trash, and how much you want to pollute shit with the recycling process. It's not like you can hit an old computer monitor with a hammer and gold bricks fall out of it or something. Sure, you can toss the glass from an old CRT into a smelter, but what are you planning on doing with the lead, and how are you going to separate them and keep the lead safely contained? The majority of the cost is dealing with all the toxic materials which are also in the electronics, unless you're just dumping them into the environment.
I'm so glad that I can hit rock with a sledgehammer and 24 carat gold bars come pouring down. See, easy, no chemicals, no pollution. Do you really want to take your bullshit any further? Who the fuck are you, a mining company executive? Or you just hate everything?
So in this case, the US should force it's values on other countries?
Absolutely NOT! When has the US done anything like that???
You can choose what you buy, can't you? The other countries are free to choose, if they want to produce stuff that damages the environment, they can sell it to anyone else.
Also, you don't think there is any middle ground for reducing or better thinking our current regulations?
No I don't. Current regulations are not even enough. Economical activities use the environment as if it was free. It's not. It provides extremely valuable services, without which human life would not be possible. As in any trade activity, those services have a cost. You can't imagine a sane economy where suppliers are not paid for, can you? That would make my business extremely efficient, if my supplies were given to me for free. But such a model will hit a stonewall in no time.
I'm baffled by the blatant hypocrisy of the right-wing. They tell me that working people should stop whining and be entrepreneurial, because anyone can become a millionaire if he faces any problem as an opportunity, blah, blah, blah. If "entrepreneurs" are so brave and valiant, they will "enterprene" no matter what difficulties they find. At least that's what I hear all the time. Why do they whine so so much, then? According to the right-wing, people have no right to socialised healthcare, social protection, labour rights, consumer protection, anything. But corporations should have all the free rides.
Yes, I do. Still, it's a lot cheaper than buying a new TV. When it breaks, I'll buy an LCD. And my old CRT will probably make the delights of a family living in a slum in Lagos.
The problem in the US is that complying with the myriad environmental regulations, which were passed to protect the environment, makes the cost of dealing with all the toxic compounds that are produced and/or freed during the process of a high-yield-percentage recycling program, especially for electronics, exceed what they can recover.
That also happens for mining and industry. That's why we outsource them to third-world countries, where people work in the most wretched conditions for a shit pay and dump all the waste in the environment. It doesn't get any cheaper than that. Out of sight, out of mind. However, it may appear to be cheaper, but in the long run, it will bite us in the ass eventually, as always.
Now, we have two options, we can drop our environmental and labour regulations and live happily in a festering shithole, or we can demand those poor countries to abide to safety and environmental standards. The industrial processes to recover valuables from waste are pretty young. They should have a huge lot of room to improve. The processes to extract valuables from ore have centuries of improvements to stand on.
Unintended consequences are a bitch.
That's what I'm talking about.
I saw a very nice documentary the other day showing what happens to a lot of our electronic waste. A fair share of it is shipped to Nigeria! There, people repair all the devices they can and sell it in a huge street market, the largest electronic market in the world. This means that a huge lot of electronic devices get to be used again instead of polluting the environment, and all the Nigerians have cheap cell phones, laptops, TVs and DVD players. Stuff that we consider outdated, they use with pride. One man's trash is another man's treasure.
We in the West are too pampered for our own good. I have a huge 16:9 CRT TV that works perfectly. I don't know anyone that still uses CRTs. I won't waste my money on an LCD TV before my current set breaks down. But most of people I know ditched perfectly good TV sets to replace them with LCDs. The same with cell phones, laptops, and even fridges, washing machines, or even cars!
Even when the devices don't get a second life, I can't believe it's cheaper to dig millions of tons of rock to extract metals and other shit than it is to recycle our trash. I don't know about the USA, but here in Europe we recycle most of our waste. Be it paper, plastic, metals, fluorescent bulbs, all kinds of oils and fats, electronic devices, everything gets recycled.
These guys were ALL seemingly of middle-eastern origins but that's NOT the issue.
If they were Arabs, the most likely origin is Morocco, Tunisia and specially Algeria. These countries are in the Middle East just as much as France is.
Otherwise you're right, that's REALLY NOT the issue.
Come on, in Belgium??? Those guys have thousands of beer varieties! You can buy all kinds of crazy beers in a convenience shop.
Ah, I love the smell of gross simplifications in the afternoon...
And in Europe, also. Because of the Euro crisis some elected governments were replaced by unelected technocrats, among them many former bank executives and advisors. Nothing like an exceptional situation to send democracy down the drain.
The unelected prime-minister in Italy is a former GS advisor. The President of the European Central Bank was a prominent GS executive.
We're all being drowned in austerity to keep the parasitical banks afloat. And it's the very bankers leading the process from their government seats.
I'm so tired of all the "if you're not with me you're against me" trolls appearing all the time in Slashdot. It's getting boring. Every time anyone states an opinion about some controversial issue, a bunch of posts appear accusing him (unfairly) of standing on one insane extreme of the issue, while defending the other insane extreme. Can't we just have rational arguments, for a change?
So, if we're not on your extreme of the spectrum, we can only be on the other, can't we? Your post is nothing but a stupid straw man. Did anyone mention angel dust should be legalised, you troll?
You are hugely exaggerating, dude! What have you been smoking? Why are you attacking a relatively harmless drug just to make marijuana look better? What does one thing have to do with the other? For the record: I'm a caffeine "junkie" who strongly defends marijuana should be legal, so I'm (partly) on your side.
Funny, but seriously, caffeine = legal crack. Caffeine junkies are far more numerous (and self-righteous, and ignorant) than heroin junkies.
The effects of caffeine have nothing to do with crack. Although caffeine is addictive, its effects have been proven beneficial to health unless you take a shitload of it every day. I can't see any beneficial effects of crack or heroin.
The withdrawal can be as bad as or worse than nicotine withdrawal.
As someone who drinks coffee and has been a tobacco smoker I call this is utter bullshit.
If you want to compare marijuana with legal drugs, alcohol and tobacco are perfectly examples of substances that are (rightfully, IMHO) legal and cause terrible harm. I drink regularly and moderately, but I've seen the harm alcohol can do to those who abuse it and their family/friends. It's terrible. However, a glass or two a day actually makes you healthier, go figure!
As for tobacco, that's a really stupid addiction. There's no positive thing that tobacco can do to you except of the pleasure of smoking if you're not addicted (a very tiny minority). Otherwise, it ruins your health and that of the innocent people around you.
I'm not saying marijuana is not (mildly) harmful, but it has a big advantage over alcohol/tobacco: It's not addictive. It's really stupid that it's illegal. I can't see the harm of someone smoking a joint once in a while that justifies making it illegal. Of course, some people are stoned all the time but IMHO those people already had worse problems in their lives before marijuana abuse. Someone who keeps smoking pot all the time needs to get a life.
Please don't make me quote citations for the facts I mentioned. Find them yourself, they're widely known and available.
No, it wasn't! It's about time we got rid of those communist nanny state pot smoking smelly hippie abortionist islam-lover lesbian ways of measuring currents and got ourselves a true American Patriot unit of measurement!
I suggest using the Patriot = 373.245 microamperes, and its subdivisions, the Liberty = 1/17 Patriots and the Apple Pie = 163/467 Liberties.
There, that should make our calculations a lot easier and our electrons a lot more macho than those wimpy Euro-electrons.
Shut up! You're destroying the most overrated fantasy in modern life! If people start believing you, they might think the 1% don't actually deserve al the obscenely luscious wealth they have. Life as we know it would be at peril.
Well, the people in Venezuela have chosen democratically to be ruled by Chavez. And he's doing a better job than all the previous corrupt pro-USA leaders that made them live in the most abject poverty in a country full of oil.
Firearm possession is illegal in my country, dumb fuck. And in the rest of Europe, by the way. I suppose we live under terrible dictatorships, according to fanatic fucks like you.
The levels of gun related violence in Venezuela are appalling. What the fuck should the government do? Sit on their asses? Then they'd be criticised for that, too. Stop judging other countries according to your own warped values. The crazy gun ownership laws in the US are the exception among civilised countries. Not the rule. There are far more important things to think about that owning guns. I guess the Venezuelans value more to have a job and food on their table that owning a revolver. Crazy people.
It's so cool that anyone can come here as an Anonymous Coward and just outright lie their ass off without any having to present any evidence or suffering any consequences.
Care to cite any evidence? As far as I know, elections in Venezuela are closely watched by thousands of UN observers, and they never declared any significant fraud since Chavez is in power. Check this.
Which is more than you can say about Baby Bush's first election...
So basically your point is that you (the richest country in the world) rank very well among a bunch of third-world countries with huge income inequalities. Your excuse is so lame it hurts.
It may (I don't have the data), but it's fucking up sooooo badly in the rest, that it vastly outweighs any good it could possibly be doing. Please, just look at the numbers.
Bullshit. They can vote for someone else or even call for a mid-term referendum. Chavez has survived one of these before, I wonder why the opposition doesn't pull that one again? Maybe because they know they'll lose?