If you're driving under the influence you are going to ruin your life and others, it is guaranteed.
The actual facts: there are enormous numbers of instances where people have driven under the influence (of all manner of debilitating things... alcohol, drugs [but I repeat myself], emotions, injuries, sleep deprivation, children in the car, fox news on the radio, texting, coughing fits, etc.) which reduced their general ability to react and think and have caused no one any vehicle-related problems at all. Because it is a complete myth that you have to be at your best when driving for almost all circumstances (and you can control many aspects of what circumstances you face as well.)
No, I'm not a drinker beyond a single glass of wine with my spaghetti... but I recognize the differences between impaired driving, incompetent driving, and an actual accident. Not saying it's optimum to drive impaired, either. No matter what the impairment is. Or even to intentionally become intoxicated under any circumstances at all. But it isn't a "guaranteed" road to injury and/or damage by any means.
Treat the issue with honesty and you're a lot more likely to arrive at realistic conclusions instead of hyperbolic exaggerations. There's plenty to worry about. But not ~"guaranteed ruination of other people's lives."
If I sell you X, and say that X does Y, but it doesn't, then my obligation is to fix it so it does or otherwise make good on it if that is possible. Which, in this case, it certainly was.
The mindset you are talking about is one of the things seriously wrong with the software industry. It is born of a massively misguided urge to go forward, abandoning previous work, regardless of how much damage it does to one's current customers and regardless of the lack of honor such behavior brings to the vendor/customer relationship. It is toxic behavior. There are other aspects to it, such as removing or disabling already existing features for no particular reason, "deprecating" things that work just fine for no (or stupid, or selfish, or hubris-driven) reasons... I readily admit that the way you describe things is the way it actually works, but that doesn't in any way justify the behavior(s.)
In the case of Apple, they have not just a surplus, but an actual embarrassment of resources: there is no possible sufficient excuse for not issuing a recompile to address the faulty product they sold. None. It wasn't even a coding error - it was a code *generation* error.
We're not talking about Windows 3.1, either; the OS in question was 10.6.8, and the version they sold me to "fix" it was 10.7, just one version later. And they were still building for 10.6.8 -- they kept issuing new versions of the appstore and iTunes for it long after that.
There's no possible excuse. It's appalling to me that you would think there is. When a customer gives me the fee I asked for in exchange for a product I told them will do some specific thing, it is my most important obligation to see to it that it does, in fact, do the thing I told them it would do. Not even just because of the money -- but because the customer enters into a situation where that functionality is more significant than "just some feature"; in my case, I put in weeks of work depending upon the OS simply working as advertised on Apple's hardware, and Apple's action not only cost me time, but money, or if I hadn't spent the money, I would have done harm to my friend's interests. This is one of the things that happens when you have no honor, no sense that you establish an obligation with your statements -- and that, in a nutshell, is a serious social problem.
Also -- I write software for a living. I behave exactly this way. I make sure bugs are addressed for many years after any sale. I don't charge people for upgrades if an upgrade is what it takes to fix it. Applications I release today still run under 10.5; and they run under the latest OS, too. All the fixes I write today are provided to every customer that ever invested their time and/or money and/or effort in my software. Every time Apple has broken the playing field moving "forward", which they have done multiple times, I have succeeded in going back in and make things work again. Why do I do these things? Several reasons: Because I respect the customer; because I have made statements about functionality that I consider to be representative of my personal word; and because I appreciate their patronage. All of this is basically an extension of one specific gentlemanly concept: If I say I will do something, then by Grapthar's hammer, I will do it if it's humanly possible. Not only if it is convenient, or only if I can make a profit on it, or only if I feel like it.
If you are comfortable claiming you will do something, and then in failing to perform, you either won't admit it, or you blow it off, refusing to make good on what you said if that is possible to do, you are a completely different person than I am and we will never, ever see eye to eye. What I suggest here is possible, I eat my own dog food (and am happy to do it, because I am not in the least interested in being a deceitful, undependable shit), and the premise that justification can be found in "others do it" or "most do it that way" is bankrupt right out of the gate. That just means they have no honor. It doesn't mean I
You're trying to divide us, aren't you? You figure what divides us, multiplies all you Akbars on the other side. Well, let me simplify this for you: we don't need your stinking al-gebra. We just count on our fingers.:P
That would still be better than what Apple did to me. I wrote an integrated, dual-language point-of-sale system for a Chinese restaurant, friends of the family. They had a Mac Mini, perfect for this kind of low-cpu-load app; I designed and built the app on my mac pro, under the exact same level of OS X, got it working 100%, installed it on the mini... and it wouldn't print. Debugged a bit, and found that CUPS was going nipples north every time UTF-8 data (Chinese text, perfectly normal use of UTF-8) got sent to it. Only on the mini. Mac pro continued to print the Chinese text perfectly. Receipts, kitchen order printouts, reports, etc. So, I called Apple.
me: "I found a 100% repeatable bug in the CUPS printing engine that prevents output via the shell of UTF-8 text" them: "um, yeah, we confirm that, turns out there was a bug in the object generation for Intel core 2 duos." me: "So, a fix, when?" them: Oh, already fixed, just upgrade OS X. Was only a bug in the code generator. me: ok [buys upgrade on USB stick] [tries to upgrade the mini] quoth the upgrade: "your computer cannot be upgraded, core 2 duo not supported" me: "Hey, I can't upgrade, core 2 duo here" them: "time for a new computer!" me: "computer isn't broken. The OS is broken. Your OS. You told me so. It doesn't do what you said it would." them: "...time for a new computer" me: [ATH0] [buys used mini of later vintage for my friends out of my pocket - it certainly wasn't their fault - got all that working.]
Since then, they have tried to push many upgrades of the Apple app store and iTunes to the same machine. So they're definitely still building for the architecture.
Never bought another computer from them. I don't plan to, either. I still use OS X, but I only buy used machines, I don't buy apps or music or anything from the Apple store, and I now have an Android phone and my brand new S7 will be here in 8 days.
This is also why many people live with crushing debt. They had little -- or no -- understanding of how interest works.
A little math, a few curves... intuitive understanding of those things should lead any thinking person to run screaming from interest-bearing debt.
In general, those of us who did understand it before lenders managed to get their hooks into us are capable of, and many are, living completely different lives from those who didn't.
Just as not everyone can pick up a pen or brush and draw well, and not everyone is physically coordinated, and not everyone is spiritually inclined, not everyone can manipulate mathematical abstracts comfortably or well.
We're not all the same. We're not all special butterflies either, but we sure don't all have the same intellectual resources.
I took algebra in high school and a single stats course for one of my bachelors yet never use any of it in daily life.
Your understanding of daily life is no doubt better, though. You understand, probably intuitively, how things relate to one another better than you would without having been walked through these windows on the world.
I won't go as far as the offered snippet does, but I am pretty confident that the more math you know, the more likely you are to gain an improved understanding of the world around you. I think that's entirely a good thing.
Same thing for the scientific method. I'm not too worried about how much data you know about any one area of scientific endeavor, but if you actually have been taught and have understood the scientific method, the world is much more of an open book to you -- because you then have an open window on objective reality. You can draw the appropriate distinction between a baseless assertion and experimentally validated results; you're a lot less likely to be taken in by various scams, religions, and superstitions.
Same thing for history. It isn't about preparing to repeat the battle of Hastings. It is about developing an overview of human nature. If you have a good overview, you can be more effective for yourself, for your family, as a positive force within your society, etc. If you don't, as the old saw says, you're probably going to just be repeating mistakes, or supporting others who are repeating mistakes.
Learning isn't just about collecting facts and learning procedures. It's about building a big picture that actually represents the world you live in. The closer you can get to that, the more effective you can be, the more your choices can actually bring you closer to your goals, the better you get at winnowing the wheat from the chaff at every level.
Finally, learning does not have to come from schooling. You can pursue it yourself. The autodidact can easily become better informed than the person who has been through a rote process designed to fit the average student. Most people aren't really comfortable in that role, but for those who are, the world can be a truly open book.
If imposing math reduces the number of philosophers, sports figures, and poets... I unconditionally support us becoming a lot more focused on adding math requirements.
Sadly, I don't think it will do anything of the kind.
There isn't a lot of actual nationalism on display in the US. Mostly what is smeared all over everything is jingoism. Nothing wrong with nationalism in a world comprised of discrete nations. The trick is finding any.
Does the phrase "shit sandwich or turd croissant" ring any bells?
Does "bought and paid for congress" seem familiar?
Does/do any or all of terrorism, save the children, for your own good, in god we trust, infringe, interstate, amend, warrant, war on drugs, surveillance, censorship, corporate ownership of broadcasting... seem familiar?
I'm thinking "fixing itself" doesn't mean the same thing to you and I.
We've been dealing with trolls... well, pretty much forever. Lots of fun to be had. No actual need to get pushy. A light hand is customary here (well, except for moderation, but of course that's completely broken, so it gets ignored a lot. Moderation without accountability and that permanently submerges perfectly good comments on a very regular basis can never be worth a tinker's damn.)
TL;DC: (too lazy, didn't click): Well over ten billion dollars a year in taxpayer funded support, quite aside from what the petroleum products actually cost when we buy them intentionally. Of course, that's just the US. Internationally, it's over half a trillion dollars yearly.
Personally, I would rather see that money go elsewhere, and have petroleum users pay the actual cost, as that would tend to cause the market to correct itself into an actual sane producer/consumer mold.
It's very reminiscent of buying a pizza. You think it costs X, and only when you buy the pizza: "Not buying a pizza tonight, I'll not be spending any money on pizza." Wrong. You pay social safety net costs that are incurred because Pizza Hut and so forth are paying workers less than a living wage so the cost of the pizza can appear to be lower. But it still costs what it costs; and you pay it anyway. It's just hidden in your taxes. Same thing for petroleum products. You're paying a lot more than you think you are, and it's not only when you actually buy the product.
In both cases -- Pizza Producers and Big Oil -- the businesses slough off the costs onto your shoulders indirectly, via government largess. I won't even eat at Papa John's (the pizza is horrifically bad) but I pay for that crap anyway. As a pizza lover, I find that offensive.
Walmart?
Same thing. They underpay, the taxpayer takes up the slack.
What's really amusing here is just how absurd the "must pass background check" hurdle is. It's an isolated system. There is zero risk. The DOD would benefit from any reveal of a vulnerability within this system from anyone. And of course there are many accomplished hackers out there who could contribute and would likely do so for the bounty, assuming it isn't trivial. but couldn't pass a background check under any circumstances. This approach is a poster child for "cutting off your nose to spite your face."
"Oh, you've hacked corporation X? Getoudaheah, you backround-check-failing-lowlife"
Sure. That will help them out a lot. Oh, the pitfalls of not having an actual profit motive...
Well, we will see. I remain confident in my assessment. Also quite convinced Obama's done the right thing in most, not all, of the areas he's had the opportunity to do anything at all. The ACA is not the single payer system he asked for. It's a mutation created by Congress. It's still far better than the previous state of affairs, and I'm sure it will continue to evolve. Clinton won't be indicted, IMHO. Too entwined with the power structure. Not to mention they'd have to indict Colin Powell and Susan Rice at the same time, and probably lots of other high powered types. Doesn't seem even slightly likely.
But time will show us both how good our assessments are. Reality has this consistent factual bias.:)
explain how "Funny thing is spending 2 to 3 trillion dollars and 4,000 young united states citizen's lives" had anything to do with making oil more expensive.
The money comes out of the citizen's pocket. It's not just pulled off a magic tree somewhere. Same thing for oil subsidies.
It's just not paid at the pump. It is just as effective at reducing the money the citizens have left to spend on anything else.
If we stop the wars and stop subsidizing oil directly, then three things happen, one after the other: First, oil prices will rise. Second, consumption will drop. Third, development of alternatives will accelerate.
Of course, doing so would mean an inconvenience to those in power, so it will not be happening any time soon.
Russia's just as interested in churning money through its military industrial complex as the US is, because it drives huge segments of both country's economies.
"Success" in modern military undertakings doesn't mean "I win", it means "spend like Imelda Marcos in a shoe store while wallowing in kickback."
This is the entire reason for both the Iraq and Afghanistan undertakings the US has been wallowing in. All the babbling about "terrorism" and so forth is just the bread and circuses on top. Terrorism is meaningless to the government and the 1% in the economic picture. If deaths of citizens before their time were even remotely of concern to the power structure, the first place to put money and attention would be the roads. They're not doing that, in fact they are letting the infrastructure decay instead of improving it and making it safer, so it is plainly obvious they don't care -- at all -- about citizens randomly being killed.
What they do care about is power and profit. And war without any chance of significant damage at home is, as it has ever been, a path to both. The roads aren't. And there you have it.
This is why the US will *always* be waging war, or at the very least, pumping huge amounts of money into its military in order to prepare for the next cobbled-up war. The Russians are tuning up a capitalist model right now, and they're going to be right in there doing the same thing if they actually figure out how capitalist economies max out; making war on foreign soil that does not put the country at internal risk. Count on it.
You know, there's also this thing called "insulation." All you have to do if you want to be adequately warm (or cool, for that matter) without requiring a lot of energy is not build your dwelling with the idea that it's perfectly ok to allow heat to leak between your building's interior and the great outdoors. The tech is fully up to it, and it isn't even expensive. it *does* require actual thinking, so we don't see it much, but to imply that one must shiver or sweat "because wind/solar"... it just isn't true.
Slashdot Mirror
The actual facts: there are enormous numbers of instances where people have driven under the influence (of all manner of debilitating things... alcohol, drugs [but I repeat myself], emotions, injuries, sleep deprivation, children in the car, fox news on the radio, texting, coughing fits, etc.) which reduced their general ability to react and think and have caused no one any vehicle-related problems at all. Because it is a complete myth that you have to be at your best when driving for almost all circumstances (and you can control many aspects of what circumstances you face as well.)
No, I'm not a drinker beyond a single glass of wine with my spaghetti... but I recognize the differences between impaired driving, incompetent driving, and an actual accident. Not saying it's optimum to drive impaired, either. No matter what the impairment is. Or even to intentionally become intoxicated under any circumstances at all. But it isn't a "guaranteed" road to injury and/or damage by any means.
Treat the issue with honesty and you're a lot more likely to arrive at realistic conclusions instead of hyperbolic exaggerations. There's plenty to worry about. But not ~"guaranteed ruination of other people's lives."
If I sell you X, and say that X does Y, but it doesn't, then my obligation is to fix it so it does or otherwise make good on it if that is possible. Which, in this case, it certainly was.
The mindset you are talking about is one of the things seriously wrong with the software industry. It is born of a massively misguided urge to go forward, abandoning previous work, regardless of how much damage it does to one's current customers and regardless of the lack of honor such behavior brings to the vendor/customer relationship. It is toxic behavior. There are other aspects to it, such as removing or disabling already existing features for no particular reason, "deprecating" things that work just fine for no (or stupid, or selfish, or hubris-driven) reasons... I readily admit that the way you describe things is the way it actually works, but that doesn't in any way justify the behavior(s.)
In the case of Apple, they have not just a surplus, but an actual embarrassment of resources: there is no possible sufficient excuse for not issuing a recompile to address the faulty product they sold. None. It wasn't even a coding error - it was a code *generation* error.
We're not talking about Windows 3.1, either; the OS in question was 10.6.8, and the version they sold me to "fix" it was 10.7, just one version later. And they were still building for 10.6.8 -- they kept issuing new versions of the appstore and iTunes for it long after that.
There's no possible excuse. It's appalling to me that you would think there is. When a customer gives me the fee I asked for in exchange for a product I told them will do some specific thing, it is my most important obligation to see to it that it does, in fact, do the thing I told them it would do. Not even just because of the money -- but because the customer enters into a situation where that functionality is more significant than "just some feature"; in my case, I put in weeks of work depending upon the OS simply working as advertised on Apple's hardware, and Apple's action not only cost me time, but money, or if I hadn't spent the money, I would have done harm to my friend's interests. This is one of the things that happens when you have no honor, no sense that you establish an obligation with your statements -- and that, in a nutshell, is a serious social problem.
Also -- I write software for a living. I behave exactly this way. I make sure bugs are addressed for many years after any sale. I don't charge people for upgrades if an upgrade is what it takes to fix it. Applications I release today still run under 10.5; and they run under the latest OS, too. All the fixes I write today are provided to every customer that ever invested their time and/or money and/or effort in my software. Every time Apple has broken the playing field moving "forward", which they have done multiple times, I have succeeded in going back in and make things work again. Why do I do these things? Several reasons: Because I respect the customer; because I have made statements about functionality that I consider to be representative of my personal word; and because I appreciate their patronage. All of this is basically an extension of one specific gentlemanly concept: If I say I will do something, then by Grapthar's hammer, I will do it if it's humanly possible. Not only if it is convenient, or only if I can make a profit on it, or only if I feel like it.
If you are comfortable claiming you will do something, and then in failing to perform, you either won't admit it, or you blow it off, refusing to make good on what you said if that is possible to do, you are a completely different person than I am and we will never, ever see eye to eye. What I suggest here is possible, I eat my own dog food (and am happy to do it, because I am not in the least interested in being a deceitful, undependable shit), and the premise that justification can be found in "others do it" or "most do it that way" is bankrupt right out of the gate. That just means they have no honor. It doesn't mean I
Since the advent of the scientific method, philosophy is where people go who aren't competent to do actual science.
Prior to that, yes. Philosophy was all they had, so that's where the smart people went.
You're trying to divide us, aren't you? You figure what divides us, multiplies all you Akbars on the other side. Well, let me simplify this for you: we don't need your stinking al-gebra. We just count on our fingers. :P
That would still be better than what Apple did to me. I wrote an integrated, dual-language point-of-sale system for a Chinese restaurant, friends of the family. They had a Mac Mini, perfect for this kind of low-cpu-load app; I designed and built the app on my mac pro, under the exact same level of OS X, got it working 100%, installed it on the mini... and it wouldn't print. Debugged a bit, and found that CUPS was going nipples north every time UTF-8 data (Chinese text, perfectly normal use of UTF-8) got sent to it. Only on the mini. Mac pro continued to print the Chinese text perfectly. Receipts, kitchen order printouts, reports, etc. So, I called Apple.
me: "I found a 100% repeatable bug in the CUPS printing engine that prevents output via the shell of UTF-8 text"
them: "um, yeah, we confirm that, turns out there was a bug in the object generation for Intel core 2 duos."
me: "So, a fix, when?"
them: Oh, already fixed, just upgrade OS X. Was only a bug in the code generator.
me: ok [buys upgrade on USB stick] [tries to upgrade the mini]
quoth the upgrade: "your computer cannot be upgraded, core 2 duo not supported"
me: "Hey, I can't upgrade, core 2 duo here"
them: "time for a new computer!"
me: "computer isn't broken. The OS is broken. Your OS. You told me so. It doesn't do what you said it would."
them: "...time for a new computer"
me: [ATH0] [buys used mini of later vintage for my friends out of my pocket - it certainly wasn't their fault - got all that working.]
Since then, they have tried to push many upgrades of the Apple app store and iTunes to the same machine. So they're definitely still building for the architecture.
Never bought another computer from them. I don't plan to, either. I still use OS X, but I only buy used machines, I don't buy apps or music or anything from the Apple store, and I now have an Android phone and my brand new S7 will be here in 8 days.
Apple isn't to be trusted. Period.
This is also why many people live with crushing debt. They had little -- or no -- understanding of how interest works.
A little math, a few curves... intuitive understanding of those things should lead any thinking person to run screaming from interest-bearing debt.
In general, those of us who did understand it before lenders managed to get their hooks into us are capable of, and many are, living completely different lives from those who didn't.
Math. It's the "big hammer."
That is what is known as a "contradiction in terms."
jeeez, why couldn't you have just said:
"the average segment of the population who can variously pass stats, algebra Ii and calculus is 18.81%"
About 80% of the time, that would have been perfectly sufficient. I'm 140% sure of that, pal.
This
Just as not everyone can pick up a pen or brush and draw well, and not everyone is physically coordinated, and not everyone is spiritually inclined, not everyone can manipulate mathematical abstracts comfortably or well.
We're not all the same. We're not all special butterflies either, but we sure don't all have the same intellectual resources.
You let me know when the typical job at McDonalds provides a living wage, m'kay?
Your understanding of daily life is no doubt better, though. You understand, probably intuitively, how things relate to one another better than you would without having been walked through these windows on the world.
I won't go as far as the offered snippet does, but I am pretty confident that the more math you know, the more likely you are to gain an improved understanding of the world around you. I think that's entirely a good thing.
Same thing for the scientific method. I'm not too worried about how much data you know about any one area of scientific endeavor, but if you actually have been taught and have understood the scientific method, the world is much more of an open book to you -- because you then have an open window on objective reality. You can draw the appropriate distinction between a baseless assertion and experimentally validated results; you're a lot less likely to be taken in by various scams, religions, and superstitions.
Same thing for history. It isn't about preparing to repeat the battle of Hastings. It is about developing an overview of human nature. If you have a good overview, you can be more effective for yourself, for your family, as a positive force within your society, etc. If you don't, as the old saw says, you're probably going to just be repeating mistakes, or supporting others who are repeating mistakes.
Learning isn't just about collecting facts and learning procedures. It's about building a big picture that actually represents the world you live in. The closer you can get to that, the more effective you can be, the more your choices can actually bring you closer to your goals, the better you get at winnowing the wheat from the chaff at every level.
Finally, learning does not have to come from schooling. You can pursue it yourself. The autodidact can easily become better informed than the person who has been through a rote process designed to fit the average student. Most people aren't really comfortable in that role, but for those who are, the world can be a truly open book.
If imposing math reduces the number of philosophers, sports figures, and poets... I unconditionally support us becoming a lot more focused on adding math requirements.
Sadly, I don't think it will do anything of the kind.
But it was still amusing to read. :)
There isn't a lot of actual nationalism on display in the US. Mostly what is smeared all over everything is jingoism. Nothing wrong with nationalism in a world comprised of discrete nations. The trick is finding any.
There are three boxes to use in support of liberty:
o The idiot box
o The Amazon box
o Any box from the liquor store
You just can't fool Americans. We know how to keep the status quo stable.
Does the phrase "shit sandwich or turd croissant" ring any bells?
Does "bought and paid for congress" seem familiar?
Does/do any or all of terrorism, save the children, for your own good, in god we trust, infringe, interstate, amend, warrant, war on drugs, surveillance, censorship, corporate ownership of broadcasting... seem familiar?
I'm thinking "fixing itself" doesn't mean the same thing to you and I.
We've been dealing with trolls... well, pretty much forever. Lots of fun to be had. No actual need to get pushy. A light hand is customary here (well, except for moderation, but of course that's completely broken, so it gets ignored a lot. Moderation without accountability and that permanently submerges perfectly good comments on a very regular basis can never be worth a tinker's damn.)
Specifically...
TL;DC: (too lazy, didn't click): Well over ten billion dollars a year in taxpayer funded support, quite aside from what the petroleum products actually cost when we buy them intentionally. Of course, that's just the US. Internationally, it's over half a trillion dollars yearly.
Personally, I would rather see that money go elsewhere, and have petroleum users pay the actual cost, as that would tend to cause the market to correct itself into an actual sane producer/consumer mold.
It's very reminiscent of buying a pizza. You think it costs X, and only when you buy the pizza: "Not buying a pizza tonight, I'll not be spending any money on pizza." Wrong. You pay social safety net costs that are incurred because Pizza Hut and so forth are paying workers less than a living wage so the cost of the pizza can appear to be lower. But it still costs what it costs; and you pay it anyway. It's just hidden in your taxes. Same thing for petroleum products. You're paying a lot more than you think you are, and it's not only when you actually buy the product.
In both cases -- Pizza Producers and Big Oil -- the businesses slough off the costs onto your shoulders indirectly, via government largess. I won't even eat at Papa John's (the pizza is horrifically bad) but I pay for that crap anyway. As a pizza lover, I find that offensive.
Walmart?
Same thing. They underpay, the taxpayer takes up the slack.
Etc.
What's really amusing here is just how absurd the "must pass background check" hurdle is. It's an isolated system. There is zero risk. The DOD would benefit from any reveal of a vulnerability within this system from anyone. And of course there are many accomplished hackers out there who could contribute and would likely do so for the bounty, assuming it isn't trivial. but couldn't pass a background check under any circumstances. This approach is a poster child for "cutting off your nose to spite your face."
"Oh, you've hacked corporation X? Getoudaheah, you backround-check-failing-lowlife"
Sure. That will help them out a lot. Oh, the pitfalls of not having an actual profit motive...
Well, we will see. I remain confident in my assessment. Also quite convinced Obama's done the right thing in most, not all, of the areas he's had the opportunity to do anything at all. The ACA is not the single payer system he asked for. It's a mutation created by Congress. It's still far better than the previous state of affairs, and I'm sure it will continue to evolve. Clinton won't be indicted, IMHO. Too entwined with the power structure. Not to mention they'd have to indict Colin Powell and Susan Rice at the same time, and probably lots of other high powered types. Doesn't seem even slightly likely.
But time will show us both how good our assessments are. Reality has this consistent factual bias. :)
The money comes out of the citizen's pocket. It's not just pulled off a magic tree somewhere. Same thing for oil subsidies.
It's just not paid at the pump. It is just as effective at reducing the money the citizens have left to spend on anything else.
If we stop the wars and stop subsidizing oil directly, then three things happen, one after the other: First, oil prices will rise. Second, consumption will drop. Third, development of alternatives will accelerate.
Of course, doing so would mean an inconvenience to those in power, so it will not be happening any time soon.
Russia's just as interested in churning money through its military industrial complex as the US is, because it drives huge segments of both country's economies.
"Success" in modern military undertakings doesn't mean "I win", it means "spend like Imelda Marcos in a shoe store while wallowing in kickback."
This is the entire reason for both the Iraq and Afghanistan undertakings the US has been wallowing in. All the babbling about "terrorism" and so forth is just the bread and circuses on top. Terrorism is meaningless to the government and the 1% in the economic picture. If deaths of citizens before their time were even remotely of concern to the power structure, the first place to put money and attention would be the roads. They're not doing that, in fact they are letting the infrastructure decay instead of improving it and making it safer, so it is plainly obvious they don't care -- at all -- about citizens randomly being killed.
What they do care about is power and profit. And war without any chance of significant damage at home is, as it has ever been, a path to both. The roads aren't. And there you have it.
This is why the US will *always* be waging war, or at the very least, pumping huge amounts of money into its military in order to prepare for the next cobbled-up war. The Russians are tuning up a capitalist model right now, and they're going to be right in there doing the same thing if they actually figure out how capitalist economies max out; making war on foreign soil that does not put the country at internal risk. Count on it.
I don't think he'd go for it, but imagine the reaction if Clinton tapped Sanders for VP and he accepted.
Interesting times.
Okay. Just so I'm clear, now we're talking about wind chimes per chain-furlong, is that right?
You know, there's also this thing called "insulation." All you have to do if you want to be adequately warm (or cool, for that matter) without requiring a lot of energy is not build your dwelling with the idea that it's perfectly ok to allow heat to leak between your building's interior and the great outdoors. The tech is fully up to it, and it isn't even expensive. it *does* require actual thinking, so we don't see it much, but to imply that one must shiver or sweat "because wind/solar"... it just isn't true.