How would replacing the energy infrastructure with another more earth-friendly one destroy jobs?
They're talking about spending trillions on this at the big conference this week.
Now, what happens when those trillions are extracted from the existing economic structure (taxes, etc.)?
Those trillions don't get spent in the channels they would have been spent; purchases go down, employment goes down, etc. Instead, the trillions go to new channels; this is disruptive, and in all the areas where the money has been subtracted, the disruption is harmful.
Or, worse, we borrow those trillions, and because of interest, we have exactly the same problem later, only more expensive and consequently more extensive.
That's how people get hurt. Because we're not talking about something that is insignificant, economically speaking.
I'm not saying we shouldn't shift to nukes, solar, etc... I'm just saying there is a cost, and if the shift is done without following the usual paths, that is, if it is forced by law, that cost will be imposed and sudden, rather than a market function, ramping up naturally and slowly making inroads as most technologies do (and as, for instance, solar has been doing for a while now.)
Definition is presently understood to be resolution along an axis. If you hijack it to mean the presence of an axis, what happens when the resolution along that axis changes?
I don't know about you but I don't tend to move around the room while watching movies.
I'm assuming you're not paralyzed, so, do you ever turn your head? Lean? Would it not be more immersive if the scene changed appropriately?
And seriously, science show is on, they're showing something cool, you're not going to look around the scene being displayed if you can? View a galaxy from the side? How about sports? Look down a cheerleader's blouse? See the play from the angle you prefer? Never? In answer to your implied question (you didn't know about me), yeah, I'd move. I'd probably move a lot. Which I don't think is a bad thing at all. If you wouldn't move... well, I'd say that's your problem, not the technology.
This is stereo vision, not 3D. Two images taken from a single, locked human-like perspective (meaning they're about an eye-width apart.) This is precisely the same technique the toy View-Master has been using since 1939, only with a stream of frame-pairs instead of a single pair.
Actual 3D allows you to see from multiple perspectives, defined by your angle of view. If you move your head, the scene changes. In a fully implemented display, if you went behind the display, you'd see the rear of the scene. That's 3D.
If you allow the manufacturers to pervert stereo views into "3D", what will you call actual 3D when it becomes available?
Well, good luck with things like water, sewage, roads, street lights, schools, speed limits...
Government - at least in my view - has only a few legitimate roles. An important one is building and maintaining local infrastructure that is too expensive (or too divisive) for individual or corporate undertakings. If you don't have local voting control, then how will you see to it that your taxes are spent for the benefit of the region? People on the other side of the continent don't share your interests or priorities.
Here's the way I see it. Mr. Lawyer, you want to pay for support 40 hours a week? I'll give you a cellphone number I'll answer 40 hours a week.
It is ridiculous to presume that offering the opportunity to interrupt one's life at any time, any place, with an overriding obligation to deal with your problems, has no value.
Oh, you want the 168 hour phone number? Well, that's gonna cost ya...
The problem here isn't that people want information about their particular situation in wikipedia; it hurts nothing to have a page on whoever or whatever from any particular viewpoint. The problem is that there is a "priesthood" on wikipedia that wants to restrict content to the "notable", and in so doing, appoints themselves judge and jury of notability. Your own remark...
We are rapidly approaching a point where the vast majority of the necessary articles IN ENGLISH ABOUT U.S. AND U.K. TOPICS have been written
...pretty well highlights the problem. Aside from being a ridiculous assertion... where are the tens (hundreds?) of thousands of articles on the various creeks and streams? There is no page on the Sawkill creek in Pike county, PA... though it is mentioned once as part of the page on Grey Towers, a national holding, the Pinchott estate. There's a metric fuck-ton of interesting info about the Sawkill. But Wikipedia has made it entirely too difficult to put it up there. Odds are very good that after a lot of work expended, some dipshit editor will take it right down, or, for that matter, that someone else will remove it and replace it with a pointer to another creek with the simple remark that the Sawkill isn't as "notable" as the Basherkill or some stupid thing along those lines. A picture might be posted, taken by the article author, and bingo, again, some dipshit editor will take the pic down, citing some labyrinthine copyright/lawyersuck bullshit no one gives a rats ass about and in clear violation of the author's STATED intent. I've seen this happen, I'm not guessing.
The best suggestion I've seen in this discussion would be to allow multiple versions of each page, one per every time there is a deletion of information - delete something... bingo, you're editing a new page, while the old one continues to exist, sans your edits, unless you can get the prior author to cosign the new page with you. Not just because there is more than one viewpoint on many things relative to the human condition, and nature, but because there are many relevant viewpoints and it is often difficult to see which is which, or even if both are which, or many are which. Editors should only climb onto their rusty old horses when the English used is wandering into the fail zone -- too when to was meant, media when mediums was meant, which when witch was meant, sensorship when censorship was meant, etc. The moment you decide you're more than a glorified proofreader, you've fucked wikipedia right in the heart.
Wikipedia wants "professional" quality, but let me tell you, looking at history, written (and re-written, and re-written again) by "professionals", it's a sad tale of things left out, viewpoints left behind, motivations hidden, sandbagging, whitewashing, and outright lies. And that's without even extending the remark to cover mythology and superstition.
The goal - to document the world - cannot be met if there is a small minded editorship controlling the documentation. All you get is a razor-thin view that the editors agree with. If you don't agree with the editors, the thing might as well not exist.
And that, my friend, is why I neither contribute any longer, or even bother to look most things up there. Wikipedia went from good idea to middle of the road ideological fail in record time. And it's been downhill from there.
No, this is relativity at work. Two year olds aren't fast. Parents, after being worn down by two years of diaper changing, sleep loss, and the underlying knowledge that college costs are going to break them financially, have simply slowed down a great deal. The kid just looks fast from the parental observer's position.
I get nauseous from people who wear too much cologne. Can we ban that as well?
I think we can take it as a given that commercial perfumes and colognes are not toxic or otherwise harmful to normal human systems. And certainly not so in brief, secondary exposure. So although I take your point that it may be unpleasant, in the same sense that hearing rap music is unpleasant if you aren't fond of it, it isn't "bad" in the sense that aged body odor is; aged body odor (and bad breath) is a secondary effect of large colonies of bacteria breeding, and it may very well be dangerous -- not to mention that BO is a clear indicator that the emitter is not washing on a reasonable schedule and so may very likely be putting others at risk in other areas. From my POV, the latter is a public health issue, the former is a matter of personal liberty. There's no rationally defensible demand one can make to remain un-offended. There is, however, every reason to expect others not to expose you to large, entirely preventable clouds of bacteria.
Why not? Isn't hygiene a proper public concern? Is it not a factor with spread of disease? Isn't smell a direct indicator of hygiene? I don't see any problem at all with handing out a solid fine if you appear in public and bring bodily stench with you.
I strongly suspect the concept of marriage has been around since the idea of chattel slavery was coined, which would be well prior to the use of Latin.
Slavery in general was known in Shang-dynasty China (1500-1066 BC) and ancient Egypt, and is recorded in the Babylonian code of Hammurabi (1750 BC), and the Sanskrit Laws of Manu (600 BC.)
For most of history, marriage bore no resemblance to a union of equal partners, as the optimists like to pretend it is today. The woman was subject to the man in almost every instance, and her options, if any, were severely limited.
I have no respect for the institution at all, personally.
The question that arises is, to what degree is the rest of society responsible for ensuring that the world is toned down enough so that your defective breathing apparatus is able to cope?
Society spends a great deal of time, effort, and treasure on things like ramps, braille signs, "there may be peanuts in this" warnings, and even running public schools at a speed that ensure a good deal of the left side of the Gaussian has some sort of chance of coping with the curriculum.
I think perhaps the right solution here is for you, the defective one, to medicate or perhaps breathe through something that adjusts the air to your unusual needs. Not for us to cleanse the air of microscopic particulates, cat hair, pollen and so forth.
The idea that society is responsible for making the life of a person with defective parts "the same" as everyone else is very much idealistic, and in the end, impossible anyway. It's your problem; you should have to deal with it. Not everyone else. People are only as equal as they are; and in your case, you're unequal in the "what can I breathe" arena. It boils down to the idea of either removing many interesting things from the air in general, or adjusting your specific intake appropriately. I think the latter is both the most practical solution, as well as the one that addresses the reality of the situation: You're defective. Others are not. You're the one who needs to be making adjustments.
OTOH, To the degree that public behavior is a direct general health risk to others - which smoking is generally understood to be at this point in time - such public behavior should be restricted to sets of consenting and informed individuals. Smoker's clubs and bars; one's own home (presuming said home only contains consenting and informed individuals); areas where other people are virtually certain not to be affected (out on a lake or ocean, etc.)
Try walking 20 miles to work when it's zero degrees farenheit outside. The privilege aspect is just BS so government can screw with you. If you need it to be able function in society to it's standards then it's not a privilege, it's required. They can call it a privilege when I'm not paying for it, until then it's like everything else I pay for, mine to decide.
Well... actually, no.
It's a privilege that the community (in the guise of government) can (and has legitimate interest to) regulate as long as you're driving on roads the community pays for and maintains. You, as a community member, probably have some input to the process, but in a healthy community, that input will be scaled to an appropriate, and fairly minor, fraction. Ideally, this would be proportionate to the amount you contribute to cost and maintainance.
OTOH, If you drive 20 miles to work on your own privately owned and maintained roads, it's a matter of personal freedom. And strangely enough, it's legal in most places without license or other community interference.
This just in: physicists have a pro-gravity bias. Geologists have an anti-flat-earth bias. Astronomers have a pro-heliocentric bias.
Yes, and following that, legitimate climate scientists would have a pro-climate bias. Not a pro-warming, pro-cooling, or pro-stable climate change bias. Because science is about data confirmed by successful predictions of theory, and AGW is presently very weak in this area.
Gravity - lots of theory, so lots of ways to predict, lots of uses of those predictions in tests, solid confirmation of the predictions in turn, hence lots of validations of the theory. Hence, gravity is data rich, massively (ha) uniform in its result WRT the predictions of theory, and recognition of that data is widespread. Round earth, same thing - lots of theory, lots of predictions, lots of confirmation, hence, we acknowledge the data. Orbit around the sun, exactly the same thing.
AGW, however, is very far from settled science, and it is disingenuous to compare it to the things you do here. Some predictions have been made. Of those, some have failed (for instance, the current stall/reversal contradicts the models); some predictions have yet to come into the time when the prediction can be tested (will the seas rise the way they're predicted? Will temperatures go up as predicted? Would reducing CO2 counter this?) and finally, at least in the public eye, some of the rationales underlying AGW are really very weak, such as the claim that CO2 rising in the past has driven warming, when in fact if one simply looks at the historical graphs of temperature vs. CO2, the very first thing that leaps out at an interested observer is that CO2 spikes occur in the cooling phase subsequent to warming periods, rather than prior to, or coincident with, the actual warming.
AGW is not theory based on past cycles in history we can look at and simply say, "Oh, that's how it always goes." It is new theory, based on new conditions that are now coming into effect for the first time, and it is theory about events that take input from all manner of areas: solar, geological, atmospheric, pollution, plant activity, ocean behavior, CO2 reserves, hydrological issues, the evap/precip engines, and a lot more. The failure of the models to predict near term behavior is something to warm the heart of any interested scientist, because it means there's more research to be done, more to learn, etc. It doesn't mean AGW is wrong or right, it just means the science is inadequate to the task of producing accurate predictions, thus far.
But it does mean that AGW isn't in the same class with gravity, orbits, and the objective fact of our favorite oblate spheroid at this point in time.
It'd be nice if news organizations lost their status as "news" the second they printed an opinion. Anyone's opinion. CNN would have to rebrand itself as CON (Cable Opinion Network), FNN as FON, etc.
Though it really doesn't bother me, because mainstream news lost its credibility with me many years ago. I no longer watch TV news, and try to get my news from overseas sources so I have a chance of knowing what is actually going on.
Why it's more socially and morally acceptable to hurt people than to show affection is beyond me, though.
Here's why: Most people don't have the urge to hurt other people. It's very rare, in fact. On the other hand, almost everyone has the urge to engage in sexual congress with other people. Religion and politics both thrive on control, and you cannot control the masses by regulating an urge that does not exist. Religion and politics together essentially control the social environment. The former by legislation, the latter by inspiring guilt.
It *is* a sign of a sick society (considering sexuality something to be "defended against"), however at least here in the USA, it's not going to change any time soon. We're poorly educated, largely superstitious, and have a political system where any two uninformed people outvote an informed person in an environment where informed people are rare -- and this applies both at the voter level, and at the representative level.
No, actually, you didn't. You watched it in stereo - two static viewing angles, one per eye, that give you exactly one perspective on the content. 3D would allow you to see the performance from many viewing angles -- for instance, from the left or from the right. Stereo is a far more limited approach. It is a common error, propounded by bad marketing, that characterizes stereo media as 3D. Geeks should know better.
Do unions gun people down in the streets or something to generate this sort of reaction?
No, they simply extort excessive pay. Which in turn destroys the industry they work in if those jobs can be exported, which they often can. I explained what the issue was in the previous post. I can point out all kinds of examples. For instance, the US railroad industry is on life support because of ridiculous wages extorted by unions; my youngest kid is an engineer (that means he drives locomotives), and it is absolutely hair-raising the high wages and working conditions these jobs provide for a job where the requisite skills are learned in just a few months of on the job practice and confirming tests. On May 10th, 1869, the rail link between the US east and west coasts was completed. Today, about 140 years later, we still don't have more than single track width going east to west, trains stuck on sidings everywhere instead of sane 2-way traffic on (at least) dual rail beds. US passenger rail service is horrible; there's only one train a day that goes East coast / Chicago / West coast. And ticket costs - they're brutal, especially if you want to ride in comfort.
The USA has already tried that and it is still ongoing with a lot of things, let's take sugar and steel as the examples. Not even countries with a "free trade agreement" with the USA can sell sugar or steel to the US market.
Well, considering we don't have some of our steel industry any longer (for precisely the reason I mention above) where do you think we're getting our steel, then? Magic? In 2008, the US imported 31,703,000 NT of steel, about a third of what it produced in the same period, or 1/4 of total consumption. So apparently someone can sell us steel, eh? Re-instated protectionism has rebuilt our capacity, but most industries don't have that kind of protection. At this point, anyway.
the steelmakers can't sell much steel.
3/4ths of total consumption isn't "selling much steel"? 90 million tons? Where did you learn to do math? Geeze, at least learn to use Google before you stick your foot in your mouth, eh?
You have third world wages in some situations already and it hasn't helped the economy in any way whatsoever.
cite? Other than jobs that are not even wanted by American citizens, like fruit picking (where the low wages help the economy enormously - we generally enjoy very inexpensive fruit and vegetable prices), what are you talking about? The local McDonalds pays $9/hour for selling a burger, or $11/hr if you'll manage the "shift", such as it is. These are third world wages?
How is filling factories with illegal immigrants being paid very small sums of money going to help?
The hiring of illegals is a separate, and controllable, issue. Personally, I don't have any problem with it, being of the opinion that people are people and everyone deserves equal opportunity, to make of it what they will. I don't think you're a 2nd class human being just because you were born over some line in the sand. Further, the whole issue is pretty hypocritical in a country where the vast majority are descendants of immigrants anyway. But regardless of how I feel about it, citizenship can be required for employment (and often is) so this really isn't the same issue as wages overall.
I'll tell you something else: most US citizens are far too proud to pick fruits and vegetables or nanny kids at the wages those jobs are actually worth; and the first people you'd hear screaming about the price increases if we didn't have a corps of illegals to do those jobs would be the consumers of those products and services. If you could magic the illegals out of this country today our economy would have a serious problem by tomorrow - so I wouldn't be too dismissive of those folks if I were you.
The t-shirt you advertise on your site about "Cleaning up after your dogma" is actively insulting another faith by suggesting the destruction of the bible.
"Another faith"? Atheism isn't a faith. It's a lack of faith. It is insulting to faith, because faith is stupid and destructive and needs to be considered on the same level as crystal-gazing or astrology, because that's exactly what it is - made up nonsense; the difference is that religion does a bunch more harm - to science, to law, to education, to the ability to simply think critically - than those two examples do. I don't have any problem "insulting" religion; it's bunkum, and deserves to be treated as such.
Both shirts are about baiting people and starting fights.
No. One is about selling myth as reality. The other is about valuing reality over myth. If those two things are logically equivalent in your mind, your "thinker" is bustamente.
It is politically correct to not speak out against religion. That doesn't make it actually correct. The state of being correct is not, unlike the state of being politically correct, based on a popularity contest.
it was given away by extremely clueless management that didn't realise they were managing their companies into oblivion and setting up their own competition.
No sir, it was given away by unions and legislated pay levels that priced US workers out of employment that was affordable by the companies in an environment where outsourcing was inexpensive and easily developed. People can pretend forever that an assembly line job is worth $20/hour, but it simply isn't and all that happened by that insistence of excessive worth is that folks in other countries now have a chance to prove it isn't so, which they are happily doing.
The only unions left that continue to extort provide local services such as electrical wiring, plumbing and so forth, because these jobs physically cannot be outsourced. There are only two ways we can get the lost jobs back.
First, we can take lower wages, lose the expectation that we are owed "a good living" because... well, just because. That will make all kinds of employees from line workers to tech support script followers hirable again, though it's a long road uphill to rebuild industry even so. It still leaves room for new value creators such as engineers of all kinds, techs who can actually do more than follow a script, programmers, architects, doctors and so on. If the companies can operate in-country and make as good a living at it as they can out-country, they will operate in-country. If they can't - and this is what the idiot unions can't seem to wrap their heads around - they won't.
Alternatively, we can go the protectionist route, close our borders to products manufactured and services provided from outside them, and earn the (further) ill will of the entire world - but this would rebuild our manufacturing base is record time. Nasty, but effective. All kinds of international repercussions await, but then again, this is the country that went to war with both Afghanistan and Iraq for no reason, continues to meddle in the middle east to extremes, particularly with regard to Israel and oil resources... and the enmity that earns us doesn't seem to bother anyone in Washington, so... it's a politically viable path.
The second way, your trip to Wham-a-lart or the car dealer will cost you a lot more. The first way, it won't. I'd think that bit of economic truth would tell people what it is we should do, but...
Right now, even stuff that comes out of Silicon Valley, as you put it, is really often coming from China, etc., and we're just making a profit off the sales end, with a few people legitimately doing design and writing software here. For instance, the iPod and Mac are quintessentially American products, right? Yeah. Made in China. That's what my iPod and Mac both say on their chassis.
I don't know what the solution has to be, or if we'll wake up soon enough to even make use of one, but I do know that management isn't really the problem. It's labor costs; and it's been labor costs for decades as the disease of entitlement took hold in the hearts of our citizens. It's management's job to keep the company on a positive balance sheet. When employee demands make that impossible, the employees have become the problem.
Slashdot Mirror
They're talking about spending trillions on this at the big conference this week.
Now, what happens when those trillions are extracted from the existing economic structure (taxes, etc.)?
Those trillions don't get spent in the channels they would have been spent; purchases go down, employment goes down, etc. Instead, the trillions go to new channels; this is disruptive, and in all the areas where the money has been subtracted, the disruption is harmful.
Or, worse, we borrow those trillions, and because of interest, we have exactly the same problem later, only more expensive and consequently more extensive.
That's how people get hurt. Because we're not talking about something that is insignificant, economically speaking.
I'm not saying we shouldn't shift to nukes, solar, etc... I'm just saying there is a cost, and if the shift is done without following the usual paths, that is, if it is forced by law, that cost will be imposed and sudden, rather than a market function, ramping up naturally and slowly making inroads as most technologies do (and as, for instance, solar has been doing for a while now.)
Quite right, I'm a very poor liar, nor am I mused by lies, deception, misdirection, etc.
Definition is presently understood to be resolution along an axis. If you hijack it to mean the presence of an axis, what happens when the resolution along that axis changes?
I'm assuming you're not paralyzed, so, do you ever turn your head? Lean? Would it not be more immersive if the scene changed appropriately?
And seriously, science show is on, they're showing something cool, you're not going to look around the scene being displayed if you can? View a galaxy from the side? How about sports? Look down a cheerleader's blouse? See the play from the angle you prefer? Never? In answer to your implied question (you didn't know about me), yeah, I'd move. I'd probably move a lot. Which I don't think is a bad thing at all. If you wouldn't move... well, I'd say that's your problem, not the technology.
RBP (read before posting)
The technology is already here. Follow the second link in the GP. Therefore, original point stands.
This is stereo vision, not 3D. Two images taken from a single, locked human-like perspective (meaning they're about an eye-width apart.) This is precisely the same technique the toy View-Master has been using since 1939, only with a stream of frame-pairs instead of a single pair.
Actual 3D allows you to see from multiple perspectives, defined by your angle of view. If you move your head, the scene changes. In a fully implemented display, if you went behind the display, you'd see the rear of the scene. That's 3D.
If you allow the manufacturers to pervert stereo views into "3D", what will you call actual 3D when it becomes available?
Well, good luck with things like water, sewage, roads, street lights, schools, speed limits...
Government - at least in my view - has only a few legitimate roles. An important one is building and maintaining local infrastructure that is too expensive (or too divisive) for individual or corporate undertakings. If you don't have local voting control, then how will you see to it that your taxes are spent for the benefit of the region? People on the other side of the continent don't share your interests or priorities.
Yes. Yes they are. In fact, if the current trend continues, we'll be buried in ice in 50 years! OMG WTF BBQ!
Here's the way I see it. Mr. Lawyer, you want to pay for support 40 hours a week? I'll give you a cellphone number I'll answer 40 hours a week.
It is ridiculous to presume that offering the opportunity to interrupt one's life at any time, any place, with an overriding obligation to deal with your problems, has no value.
Oh, you want the 168 hour phone number? Well, that's gonna cost ya...
The problem here isn't that people want information about their particular situation in wikipedia; it hurts nothing to have a page on whoever or whatever from any particular viewpoint. The problem is that there is a "priesthood" on wikipedia that wants to restrict content to the "notable", and in so doing, appoints themselves judge and jury of notability. Your own remark...
The best suggestion I've seen in this discussion would be to allow multiple versions of each page, one per every time there is a deletion of information - delete something... bingo, you're editing a new page, while the old one continues to exist, sans your edits, unless you can get the prior author to cosign the new page with you. Not just because there is more than one viewpoint on many things relative to the human condition, and nature, but because there are many relevant viewpoints and it is often difficult to see which is which, or even if both are which, or many are which. Editors should only climb onto their rusty old horses when the English used is wandering into the fail zone -- too when to was meant, media when mediums was meant, which when witch was meant, sensorship when censorship was meant, etc. The moment you decide you're more than a glorified proofreader, you've fucked wikipedia right in the heart.
Wikipedia wants "professional" quality, but let me tell you, looking at history, written (and re-written, and re-written again) by "professionals", it's a sad tale of things left out, viewpoints left behind, motivations hidden, sandbagging, whitewashing, and outright lies. And that's without even extending the remark to cover mythology and superstition.
The goal - to document the world - cannot be met if there is a small minded editorship controlling the documentation. All you get is a razor-thin view that the editors agree with. If you don't agree with the editors, the thing might as well not exist.
And that, my friend, is why I neither contribute any longer, or even bother to look most things up there. Wikipedia went from good idea to middle of the road ideological fail in record time. And it's been downhill from there.
No, this is relativity at work. Two year olds aren't fast. Parents, after being worn down by two years of diaper changing, sleep loss, and the underlying knowledge that college costs are going to break them financially, have simply slowed down a great deal. The kid just looks fast from the parental observer's position.
I think we can take it as a given that commercial perfumes and colognes are not toxic or otherwise harmful to normal human systems. And certainly not so in brief, secondary exposure. So although I take your point that it may be unpleasant, in the same sense that hearing rap music is unpleasant if you aren't fond of it, it isn't "bad" in the sense that aged body odor is; aged body odor (and bad breath) is a secondary effect of large colonies of bacteria breeding, and it may very well be dangerous -- not to mention that BO is a clear indicator that the emitter is not washing on a reasonable schedule and so may very likely be putting others at risk in other areas. From my POV, the latter is a public health issue, the former is a matter of personal liberty. There's no rationally defensible demand one can make to remain un-offended. There is, however, every reason to expect others not to expose you to large, entirely preventable clouds of bacteria.
I don't think I know of any bacteria that can survive their environment being turned into a live coal.
Why not? Isn't hygiene a proper public concern? Is it not a factor with spread of disease? Isn't smell a direct indicator of hygiene? I don't see any problem at all with handing out a solid fine if you appear in public and bring bodily stench with you.
I strongly suspect the concept of marriage has been around since the idea of chattel slavery was coined, which would be well prior to the use of Latin.
Slavery in general was known in Shang-dynasty China (1500-1066 BC) and ancient Egypt, and is recorded in the Babylonian code of Hammurabi (1750 BC), and the Sanskrit Laws of Manu (600 BC.)
For most of history, marriage bore no resemblance to a union of equal partners, as the optimists like to pretend it is today. The woman was subject to the man in almost every instance, and her options, if any, were severely limited.
I have no respect for the institution at all, personally.
Face it - if you want to do business with the public, then you have to deal with what society considers "the public."
The question that arises is, to what degree is the rest of society responsible for ensuring that the world is toned down enough so that your defective breathing apparatus is able to cope?
Society spends a great deal of time, effort, and treasure on things like ramps, braille signs, "there may be peanuts in this" warnings, and even running public schools at a speed that ensure a good deal of the left side of the Gaussian has some sort of chance of coping with the curriculum.
I think perhaps the right solution here is for you, the defective one, to medicate or perhaps breathe through something that adjusts the air to your unusual needs. Not for us to cleanse the air of microscopic particulates, cat hair, pollen and so forth.
The idea that society is responsible for making the life of a person with defective parts "the same" as everyone else is very much idealistic, and in the end, impossible anyway. It's your problem; you should have to deal with it. Not everyone else. People are only as equal as they are; and in your case, you're unequal in the "what can I breathe" arena. It boils down to the idea of either removing many interesting things from the air in general, or adjusting your specific intake appropriately. I think the latter is both the most practical solution, as well as the one that addresses the reality of the situation: You're defective. Others are not. You're the one who needs to be making adjustments.
OTOH, To the degree that public behavior is a direct general health risk to others - which smoking is generally understood to be at this point in time - such public behavior should be restricted to sets of consenting and informed individuals. Smoker's clubs and bars; one's own home (presuming said home only contains consenting and informed individuals); areas where other people are virtually certain not to be affected (out on a lake or ocean, etc.)
Well... actually, no.
It's a privilege that the community (in the guise of government) can (and has legitimate interest to) regulate as long as you're driving on roads the community pays for and maintains. You, as a community member, probably have some input to the process, but in a healthy community, that input will be scaled to an appropriate, and fairly minor, fraction. Ideally, this would be proportionate to the amount you contribute to cost and maintainance.
OTOH, If you drive 20 miles to work on your own privately owned and maintained roads, it's a matter of personal freedom. And strangely enough, it's legal in most places without license or other community interference.
Yes, and following that, legitimate climate scientists would have a pro-climate bias. Not a pro-warming, pro-cooling, or pro-stable climate change bias. Because science is about data confirmed by successful predictions of theory, and AGW is presently very weak in this area.
Gravity - lots of theory, so lots of ways to predict, lots of uses of those predictions in tests, solid confirmation of the predictions in turn, hence lots of validations of the theory. Hence, gravity is data rich, massively (ha) uniform in its result WRT the predictions of theory, and recognition of that data is widespread. Round earth, same thing - lots of theory, lots of predictions, lots of confirmation, hence, we acknowledge the data. Orbit around the sun, exactly the same thing.
AGW, however, is very far from settled science, and it is disingenuous to compare it to the things you do here. Some predictions have been made. Of those, some have failed (for instance, the current stall/reversal contradicts the models); some predictions have yet to come into the time when the prediction can be tested (will the seas rise the way they're predicted? Will temperatures go up as predicted? Would reducing CO2 counter this?) and finally, at least in the public eye, some of the rationales underlying AGW are really very weak, such as the claim that CO2 rising in the past has driven warming, when in fact if one simply looks at the historical graphs of temperature vs. CO2, the very first thing that leaps out at an interested observer is that CO2 spikes occur in the cooling phase subsequent to warming periods, rather than prior to, or coincident with, the actual warming.
AGW is not theory based on past cycles in history we can look at and simply say, "Oh, that's how it always goes." It is new theory, based on new conditions that are now coming into effect for the first time, and it is theory about events that take input from all manner of areas: solar, geological, atmospheric, pollution, plant activity, ocean behavior, CO2 reserves, hydrological issues, the evap/precip engines, and a lot more. The failure of the models to predict near term behavior is something to warm the heart of any interested scientist, because it means there's more research to be done, more to learn, etc. It doesn't mean AGW is wrong or right, it just means the science is inadequate to the task of producing accurate predictions, thus far.
But it does mean that AGW isn't in the same class with gravity, orbits, and the objective fact of our favorite oblate spheroid at this point in time.
It'd be nice if news organizations lost their status as "news" the second they printed an opinion. Anyone's opinion. CNN would have to rebrand itself as CON (Cable Opinion Network), FNN as FON, etc.
Though it really doesn't bother me, because mainstream news lost its credibility with me many years ago. I no longer watch TV news, and try to get my news from overseas sources so I have a chance of knowing what is actually going on.
Here's why: Most people don't have the urge to hurt other people. It's very rare, in fact. On the other hand, almost everyone has the urge to engage in sexual congress with other people. Religion and politics both thrive on control, and you cannot control the masses by regulating an urge that does not exist. Religion and politics together essentially control the social environment. The former by legislation, the latter by inspiring guilt.
It *is* a sign of a sick society (considering sexuality something to be "defended against"), however at least here in the USA, it's not going to change any time soon. We're poorly educated, largely superstitious, and have a political system where any two uninformed people outvote an informed person in an environment where informed people are rare -- and this applies both at the voter level, and at the representative level.
No, actually, you didn't. You watched it in stereo - two static viewing angles, one per eye, that give you exactly one perspective on the content. 3D would allow you to see the performance from many viewing angles -- for instance, from the left or from the right. Stereo is a far more limited approach. It is a common error, propounded by bad marketing, that characterizes stereo media as 3D. Geeks should know better.
No, they simply extort excessive pay. Which in turn destroys the industry they work in if those jobs can be exported, which they often can. I explained what the issue was in the previous post. I can point out all kinds of examples. For instance, the US railroad industry is on life support because of ridiculous wages extorted by unions; my youngest kid is an engineer (that means he drives locomotives), and it is absolutely hair-raising the high wages and working conditions these jobs provide for a job where the requisite skills are learned in just a few months of on the job practice and confirming tests. On May 10th, 1869, the rail link between the US east and west coasts was completed. Today, about 140 years later, we still don't have more than single track width going east to west, trains stuck on sidings everywhere instead of sane 2-way traffic on (at least) dual rail beds. US passenger rail service is horrible; there's only one train a day that goes East coast / Chicago / West coast. And ticket costs - they're brutal, especially if you want to ride in comfort.
Well, considering we don't have some of our steel industry any longer (for precisely the reason I mention above) where do you think we're getting our steel, then? Magic? In 2008, the US imported 31,703,000 NT of steel, about a third of what it produced in the same period, or 1/4 of total consumption. So apparently someone can sell us steel, eh? Re-instated protectionism has rebuilt our capacity, but most industries don't have that kind of protection. At this point, anyway.
3/4ths of total consumption isn't "selling much steel"? 90 million tons? Where did you learn to do math? Geeze, at least learn to use Google before you stick your foot in your mouth, eh?
cite? Other than jobs that are not even wanted by American citizens, like fruit picking (where the low wages help the economy enormously - we generally enjoy very inexpensive fruit and vegetable prices), what are you talking about? The local McDonalds pays $9/hour for selling a burger, or $11/hr if you'll manage the "shift", such as it is. These are third world wages?
The hiring of illegals is a separate, and controllable, issue. Personally, I don't have any problem with it, being of the opinion that people are people and everyone deserves equal opportunity, to make of it what they will. I don't think you're a 2nd class human being just because you were born over some line in the sand. Further, the whole issue is pretty hypocritical in a country where the vast majority are descendants of immigrants anyway. But regardless of how I feel about it, citizenship can be required for employment (and often is) so this really isn't the same issue as wages overall.
I'll tell you something else: most US citizens are far too proud to pick fruits and vegetables or nanny kids at the wages those jobs are actually worth; and the first people you'd hear screaming about the price increases if we didn't have a corps of illegals to do those jobs would be the consumers of those products and services. If you could magic the illegals out of this country today our economy would have a serious problem by tomorrow - so I wouldn't be too dismissive of those folks if I were you.
No. Just experienced.
"Another faith"? Atheism isn't a faith. It's a lack of faith. It is insulting to faith, because faith is stupid and destructive and needs to be considered on the same level as crystal-gazing or astrology, because that's exactly what it is - made up nonsense; the difference is that religion does a bunch more harm - to science, to law, to education, to the ability to simply think critically - than those two examples do. I don't have any problem "insulting" religion; it's bunkum, and deserves to be treated as such.
No. One is about selling myth as reality. The other is about valuing reality over myth. If those two things are logically equivalent in your mind, your "thinker" is bustamente.
It is politically correct to not speak out against religion. That doesn't make it actually correct. The state of being correct is not, unlike the state of being politically correct, based on a popularity contest.
No sir, it was given away by unions and legislated pay levels that priced US workers out of employment that was affordable by the companies in an environment where outsourcing was inexpensive and easily developed. People can pretend forever that an assembly line job is worth $20/hour, but it simply isn't and all that happened by that insistence of excessive worth is that folks in other countries now have a chance to prove it isn't so, which they are happily doing.
The only unions left that continue to extort provide local services such as electrical wiring, plumbing and so forth, because these jobs physically cannot be outsourced. There are only two ways we can get the lost jobs back.
First, we can take lower wages, lose the expectation that we are owed "a good living" because... well, just because. That will make all kinds of employees from line workers to tech support script followers hirable again, though it's a long road uphill to rebuild industry even so. It still leaves room for new value creators such as engineers of all kinds, techs who can actually do more than follow a script, programmers, architects, doctors and so on. If the companies can operate in-country and make as good a living at it as they can out-country, they will operate in-country. If they can't - and this is what the idiot unions can't seem to wrap their heads around - they won't.
Alternatively, we can go the protectionist route, close our borders to products manufactured and services provided from outside them, and earn the (further) ill will of the entire world - but this would rebuild our manufacturing base is record time. Nasty, but effective. All kinds of international repercussions await, but then again, this is the country that went to war with both Afghanistan and Iraq for no reason, continues to meddle in the middle east to extremes, particularly with regard to Israel and oil resources... and the enmity that earns us doesn't seem to bother anyone in Washington, so... it's a politically viable path.
The second way, your trip to Wham-a-lart or the car dealer will cost you a lot more. The first way, it won't. I'd think that bit of economic truth would tell people what it is we should do, but...
Right now, even stuff that comes out of Silicon Valley, as you put it, is really often coming from China, etc., and we're just making a profit off the sales end, with a few people legitimately doing design and writing software here. For instance, the iPod and Mac are quintessentially American products, right? Yeah. Made in China. That's what my iPod and Mac both say on their chassis.
I don't know what the solution has to be, or if we'll wake up soon enough to even make use of one, but I do know that management isn't really the problem. It's labor costs; and it's been labor costs for decades as the disease of entitlement took hold in the hearts of our citizens. It's management's job to keep the company on a positive balance sheet. When employee demands make that impossible, the employees have become the problem.