Cause when my grandparents lived in a single room farmhouse made of sticks and mud with 12 brothers and sisters sharing the same bed - the US should have been ashamed! Horror of horrors, they used to have to go a work in the field picking lettuce - and they didn't get paid for it - they had to eat it!
Is it amazing to anyone else that the American lifestyle that everyone talks about is (#1) less than 60 years old and yet (#2) is somehow supposed to be universal? Have you such lack of perspective that you miss that King George III would gladly have paid 30,000,000 pounds for a refrigerator that the poorest person in the US has? Do you not recognize that an electric stove saves a person tens of hours of chopping wood and thousand of hours of cooking time? Are you so unaware of where we have come from to realize that NOT sharing a room with many people is actually abnormal?
The fact is, the state that humans in western countries find themselves in is unprecedented in human history. Not even the Romans had public access to the internet, pre-paid telephone cards, or transportation faster than 25mph. The average poor person in the US is better off than any poor person in history, and better off than most of the richest.
So you go out there and buy your spinning rims and complain about not having money, while the smart people buy beans & rice and save up for a house. The reason that I'm "lucky" enough to have an education and a work ethic is because my grandparents had a strong work ethic, worked hard, and save their money to make the succeeding generations better. The reason that I work 8 hours a day is because my grandparents and parents worked 12-16 hours a day. When I'm feeling extra smart, I work 12-16 hours a day too because the only way you can get ahead is by working more than you need to in order to just get by.
I salute the immigrants who live in a house with 20 other people and buy groceries by the pallet load. That's the American dream. Work with whomever you can to make you life as nice as you can. I'm no more ashamed of them then they should be ashamed of themselves. By which I mean, I'm not at all ashamed.
Heh, I stopped drinking Mountain Dew when I finally read the side of the can and saw it had more calories than Miller Light (110 v 97). Let's face it, I'd much rather drink beer than soda anyway. Since I can't really drink beer at work, it really works out well for me.
I think people take too much time trying to do boring exercises in the first place. Push-ups, running, squats, are all boring. I recommend taking a class in something physical that you always wanted to do. You may not make it to the gym, but if you're taking dance lessons (or martial arts, or tennis, or rock climbing, or whatever) twice a week, you're still expending energy - and having some fun too. I set my alarm early in the morning for cardio and have never actually gotten up for it - but I never miss my Aikido class.
This may be why computer types are seriously overrepresented in the martial arts. Sitting down at a chair for 8-12 hours a day is not conducive to a svelte figure.
Being (safely) active is the only way to avoid the problems of aging. Despite popular perception, an 89 year old karate master can't really beat up a 18 year old kid - but he can still walk up and down stairs. Which in the long run, is the match I want to win.
Yep, there was a mention of it. In Prisoner (prior to the time-travel bit) Harry thought that the stag was his fathers patronus. He had been told earlier in that book that the stag was his father's...
There was a funny Savage Love article where a woman broke-up with her boyfriend because she found out he had a foot fetish. Come to find out, she was a waitress who would come home to a nice foot massage. When she found out he was enjoying the massage as much as she was, she decided he was a freak. Not noticing that 1) he liked massaging her feet and 2) he wasn't asking for anything in return for it.
Dan's response to this writer was one of the funniest things I've read. The point being, we all do things for a reason. I don't help my friends move because I like moving things - I do it for the free beer. I buy girl scout cookies because I was once a scout myself (and the cookies are also awesome). I give stuff to Goodwill because it makes more economic sense than throwing it away. I've done Habitat because I enjoy carpentry. I'm a horrible, horrible person apparently:)
Wasn't there a Friends episode about this topic? Seriously though, if someone does something nice to me and ends up feeling bad for having done it - it's not really the kind of help that I want anyway...
How is this any different from watching Hostel, or playing Resident Evil? What makes escaping from a mental facility different from Ryu Hayabusa killing ninjas? There were hockey mask wearing enemies in that game...
A game isn't a cause for a culture, it's the effect of a culture. Despite what people think, the culture isn't all that different now than it once was. Was there a point in time where there wasn't violent crime? When was that super special time that we didn't kill each other whenever we thought it was a good idea? I wasn't aware that lynchings and pogroms were because of Grand Theft Auto. I'm sure the Persians hated it when Alexander the Great got that copy of Age of Empires.
Honestly, I thought the first Manhunt was a pretty fun game. Spooky, engrossing, and it honestly made me NOT want to be hunted for my life in a future dystopia. You know, because of the dying (myself). Also I probably don't want to go work at Black Mesa, enter the Mortal Kombat tournament, or vacation to the Mushroom Kingdom.
But, while we're at it, let's ban violent books, movies, and tv shows because your kids might read, or watch them. I also don't really like reading about serial killers on the newspaper we're using to make masks so let's ban that too. Let's then ban gangsta rap. You know, I think there's also a Kenny Roger's song about rape, an Elvis song about sex, and every Johnny Cash song about getting beat up that we can ban. Roots is pretty violent, so is every episode of America's Funniest Video (all those crotches being hit really culture a society of sexually violent humorists).
Also, Jokey Smurf and Woody Woodpecker are just total assholes.
Or you could, and I'm just putting it out there, not buy it if you don't like it. Somehow you've managed to get by without being forced to sell issues of Oui to kids - you can do it here too!
I'm probably not going to be very interested in Spanish Inquisition: The Game myself. Unless it's on the Wii, boy those heathens are gonna yell then!
I'm sorry, but we've all seen those cases where you can be 100% sure that this guy did what they say he did. Yes, there is some evidence tampering in our history, but the police didn't hide vats of acid in Dahlmer's apartment, full of bodies. John Gacy's crawlspace didn't get 20+ bodies in his crawlspace through the magic of leprechauns. Sometimes the evidence is indeed overwhelming.
I agree that one should be 100% positive before using the death penalty. I simply disagree with the idea that a person can't be 100% sure about sociopaths with no understanding of how to hide evidence. I think that we as a society should have the guts to give them the death penalty rather than letting other prisoners do our dirty work... like they did for Dahlmer.
Not that we couldn't reduce the number of death penalty cases, but to eliminate it altogether seems like we're doing our collective gene pool a disservice. I suppose you could make an argument that sociopaths can indeed adapt to some situations better, but as a social pack species, it just isn't gonna work out.
One day we'll be so against the concept that we'll shoot them out into space, and then we'll have real life Reavers! Oh boy!
How is this really an indicator? A new movie sells more copies than an old movie that people probably already have a copy of. I don't see how this really means anything?
The exciting thing is going to be if there are enough pre-orders for them to start fabrication. If they can stay in business passed this point, and OLED manufacturers start ramping up, it's only a matter of time before the price comes down. I remember when plasmas came out priced around $20000 for a 42" (if it was that big). Now you can get them for much less. We don't know how their planning on fabrication at this level. With such a small production schedule, it would suggest hand assembly. If they managed to sell out that production run, whats to stop them from licensing it to a foreign manufacturer? You know, like we do...
Nah, you don't need to worry. This is a special class of micro black holes that exist more on the quantum level, so they behave differently. There isn't enough mass on Earth (probably in the solar system) to create a black hole of the sort that would give you a really bad day. It's sort of like our fusion experiments... without enough mass for the reaction to power itself through gravity, they aren't naturally self-sustaining. These micro black holes don't have the mass to influence anything or to exist without continuous energy input.
I love this stuff so much! Arguing with an American Christian is like arguing with a illiterate about Shakespeare. They have both read about the same amount of the book they profess to know so much about.
God says man's sin created death.
Right, and what was man's sin again? Oh yeah, it was eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. God got mad and said, since you now know good and evil, I shall punish you and all of your descendants. But, ummm, if man didn't know good and evil prior to eating from the tree - how was he supposed to know it was wrong? Sure, God told him not to, but he didn't know that doing something he was told not to do was wrong. The inconstancy starts from the first book...
It's similar to the idea that "Christ came to save you"! Save you from what? He's here to save you from God! Well that's just swell. You'd think the guy who created the world in 6 days could have come up with a better way of "saving" humanity from himself than having a guy tortured and killed.
Yep, I know these aren't original points. Yep, I know I'm never going to sway a true believer with them either. I just like to point this out occasionally so other non-believing boot quakers like myself can have a nice laugh.
So many things have fallen into place coinciding with the predictions of revelation that it has got to be SCARY for a nonbeliever.
Right, because the Black Plague and World War 2 proved that if things are going bad, the end MUST be near! It must be fun to be in a doomsday cult!
Biofuels aren't (currently) environmentally friendly because of the amount of power to takes to generate the fuels. When you factor in the energy costs of collection and processing, it's still a negative energy investment unless you are using high sugar methods like in Brazil (which the US couldn't do anyway). This still ignores the various impacts of agriculture in general, which raises the energy investment higher.
I'd love to see this work, but right now biofuels are not much more than a nice thumb at OPEC.
Hydroelectric is actually not very environmentally friendly. A study was performed in the last few years (I swear I'd linky if I could remember where I saw it) that showed that when an area is filled with water, the terrestrial plant matter at the bottom decomposes in an anaerobic environment. This anaerobic decomposition produces methane gas in vast quantities, and as we all know, methane gas is a great greenhouse gas. The study itself tried to find a number for the amount of methane generated - and while I cannot remember the exact number - it was much higher than I expected.
Here is the dirty little secret of capitalism --- it thrives on a huge class of impoverished workers. That's a fact
Hate to disagree with you there, but thats not really true. Yes, there are some companies that operate off of that principle (and are asshats who deserve to be put out of business in favor of better companies). But the majority (and most competitive) of companies actually thrive on a huge class of skilled and/or educated workers. A smart worker makes more money for the company than an ignorant worker. A well fed worker makes more money for the company than a starving worker. And most people tend to work better when they are improving their own life.
Maybe you mean foreign workers with longer hours and lower wages? I think that comparing their lives to your life is an unfair comparison. You have compare their life to what it was before the capitalistic system when in place. They may not drive a Hummer, but if they are eat more, are warmer in the winter, and have access to communications, and things like vaccines - capitalism is done very well for them.
Or have you forgotten that your ancestors once lived in exactly the same way? That they, at one time, had to work through the same level of development as other now do in foreign lands? Most likely the smartest in those lands will also save their money, invest in a new enterprise and create new jobs with higher wages - as we have had to do (and are still doing) today. Nowhere is a true capitalistic society is being satisfied with your life getting worse a requirement.
Ummm, maybe because before the New Deal the vast majority of Americans were family plot farmers? That's not a really good argument. It's kinda like saying, oh yeah, why didn't Julius Caesar have cable? The fact is, there are a number of reasons that poor people exist. The historic reason for poor people is due to over-taxation of the poor. It was called feudalism, and was when you had a very small number of lords living in nice castles, and poor people living in dung heaps. Another possible reason for poor people might very well be predatory capitalism. Before unions started, people got paid crap wages in unsafe living conditions.
Either side of the story has it's negative effects. However, one must agree that the poorest person today is no worse off today than back then. They still lived on the streets, in the cold. Though you could say that thanks to the innovative spirit that capitalistic systems produce, the poorest are still better off. They have access to basic medical care, and inexpensive warm clothing. For us peasants, the running clean water is pretty nice too.
Feudal societies not being well known for innovation, cheap textiles, and running water.
No one is so crass as to want to see another person suffer needlessly; some people simply choose to live their lives in a self-reliant manner. I applaud the great-grandparent for offering a nice solution for those of us who feel that you should pull your own weight. Each person who is able to afford their own health coverage ultimately improves coverage for everyone else anyway. From removing needless expenses off the public tab, to paying for advanced procedures that - once perfected - help everyone.
A government "safety net" is a needed safeguard to allow people to make large risks without starving. Even the most self-reliant libertarian knows that this safety system is absolutely necessary. Libertarian minded people only complain about people "abusing" such a system. You may not agree that wasting emergency room time for a cold medicine solution is ludicrous; but that doesn't make us evil. At the worst, it makes us frugal. It's for the same reason that when I drive through the local trailer park on the way to work I wonder why there are so many brand new cars.
I only disagree with some of their economic choices - I do not want them to get sick and die. Please try to see the difference.
And since when is exercise such a bad solution? Oh yeah, this is Slashdot:-)
You know, this was the first shareholders vote that I actually participated in. Normally, I don't really care - and recognize that my measly holdings won't change anything - but this got me off my ass.
Will my 15 votes change anything? Hell no, but it's like voting for a 3rd party presidential candidate. At the end of the day I can go home happy that I actually did what I thought was right.
Interestingly enough, another ballot item was (paraphrased) "should we give the directors a big bonus for being so awesome?" I figure, since the directors don't want to fight censorship, then they don't deserve the bonus either.
Says the person who made 35% on Google stock lately. Yes, I'm a dumbass.
Technically, we did find WMD's - depending on your definition of WMD. Nothing nuclear (to my knowledge), but we found a wide variety of chemical weapons. We even got attacked by a sarin gas bomb in May of 2004. We also found over 500 filled chemical warheads containing sarin or mustard gas (some of each) - and separately some 1200 gallons of chemicals.
Not to forget that we've found modern aircraft buried in the sands (meaning the likelihood of finding buried weapons is also feasible). Now, does this provide a reason for invasion? Hell I don't know; but I think perpetuating the myth that nothing has been found is wrong.
I don't know about this specifically being an issue of an Orwellian state of fear, but it does tell you about an interesting byproduct of our legal system.
Let's face it... this isn't so much a fear that this kid is gonna come into class and start shooting up the place and then having sex with the dead bodies. Though that is mildly disturbing, it isn't too different from stories I wrote as a teenager either (I would have known the difficulty of wielding 2 P90's though:).
No, this is a response to the fear of the kid shooting up the school - the press finding out that such a paper had been written by the shooter - and then people losing their jobs over NOT having done anything. Hell, while the VTech incident was occurring all the media did was criticize the school administration for their lack of omnipotence about what was going on. You know someone is going to find some random ass note in the margin of a test paper that implies he wasn't all together, meaning a scapegoat will lose their treasured tenured position.
We don't have a police state because people are fascist. We have paranoid state that does nothing but cover it's own ass. We deserve the society that we create...
I'm gonna have to disagree with your view on this one.
Am I against it because of the low percent of people who get AIDS from transfusions; because their mom had it; or because some asshat wanted to 'put you in your place'? I could, but that's not why I disagree. Am I against it because the logical extension of your argument is that anyone who catches a disease of any type somehow shot themselves in the foot and no longer deserves treatment? Neh, because you probably didn't see the logical error - though you should have.
No, I disagree because parents who have diabetes (or any other weird genetic defect) and choose to reproduce are just as culpable as people who share heroin with their favorite condom-hating male prostitute. You seem to be arguing from the perspective that people with AIDS deserve it because they did something "wrong". Any attempt to apply anthropomorphism to the spread of a germ as some sort of God's will while totally ignoring the logical extension - God must have given little Timmy diabetes for a reason too - is intellectually deficient.
The minute that children start coming out of their mother's snatch, fully aware of the dangers of fornicating without protection and the necessity of not sharing needles, will I consider your moral stance relevant. Until then, ignorance shields both the AIDS patient and the diabetic parents who wonder if Timmy will need some insulin for Christmas.
I'll go out on a line here and say that I don't know how much money AIDS treatments are. I also agree that we should probably spend a great deal of money to come up with treatments. I've known one person who died from AIDS and two people who have died from diabetes and I have to say - they both suck ass.
Yeah, insulin is pretty cheap. Kidney dialysis however is still pretty darn expensive. and transplants are REALLY expensive. When my grandfather was experiencing diabetic complications, the 4 amputations he went through were also pretty expensive. Then he died, so I guess diabetes is also a terminal illness.
But, so if the flu if you get the right version.
I'm not trying to fight a 'my disease is better than your disease' argument though. I think we can all agree that disease of any type is one of the worst things about being a biological organism; and trying to determine which is the absolute worst is along the lines of trying to figure out who would win in a fight between the Hulk and the Thing. Because in the end, the disease that YOU have is the worst.
So we can either bitch and moan about $X.XX dollars going to X disease that might be better spent on that disease my mom has, or we can be happy that Bob (or Gunter) the scientist thinks that fixing diseases is fun. Me? I'm gonna freeze myself with Walt and worry about it all later.
Slashdot Mirror
Cause when my grandparents lived in a single room farmhouse made of sticks and mud with 12 brothers and sisters sharing the same bed - the US should have been ashamed! Horror of horrors, they used to have to go a work in the field picking lettuce - and they didn't get paid for it - they had to eat it!
Is it amazing to anyone else that the American lifestyle that everyone talks about is (#1) less than 60 years old and yet (#2) is somehow supposed to be universal? Have you such lack of perspective that you miss that King George III would gladly have paid 30,000,000 pounds for a refrigerator that the poorest person in the US has? Do you not recognize that an electric stove saves a person tens of hours of chopping wood and thousand of hours of cooking time? Are you so unaware of where we have come from to realize that NOT sharing a room with many people is actually abnormal?
The fact is, the state that humans in western countries find themselves in is unprecedented in human history. Not even the Romans had public access to the internet, pre-paid telephone cards, or transportation faster than 25mph. The average poor person in the US is better off than any poor person in history, and better off than most of the richest.
So you go out there and buy your spinning rims and complain about not having money, while the smart people buy beans & rice and save up for a house. The reason that I'm "lucky" enough to have an education and a work ethic is because my grandparents had a strong work ethic, worked hard, and save their money to make the succeeding generations better. The reason that I work 8 hours a day is because my grandparents and parents worked 12-16 hours a day. When I'm feeling extra smart, I work 12-16 hours a day too because the only way you can get ahead is by working more than you need to in order to just get by.
I salute the immigrants who live in a house with 20 other people and buy groceries by the pallet load. That's the American dream. Work with whomever you can to make you life as nice as you can. I'm no more ashamed of them then they should be ashamed of themselves. By which I mean, I'm not at all ashamed.
Heh, I stopped drinking Mountain Dew when I finally read the side of the can and saw it had more calories than Miller Light (110 v 97). Let's face it, I'd much rather drink beer than soda anyway. Since I can't really drink beer at work, it really works out well for me.
I think people take too much time trying to do boring exercises in the first place. Push-ups, running, squats, are all boring. I recommend taking a class in something physical that you always wanted to do. You may not make it to the gym, but if you're taking dance lessons (or martial arts, or tennis, or rock climbing, or whatever) twice a week, you're still expending energy - and having some fun too. I set my alarm early in the morning for cardio and have never actually gotten up for it - but I never miss my Aikido class.
This may be why computer types are seriously overrepresented in the martial arts. Sitting down at a chair for 8-12 hours a day is not conducive to a svelte figure.
Being (safely) active is the only way to avoid the problems of aging. Despite popular perception, an 89 year old karate master can't really beat up a 18 year old kid - but he can still walk up and down stairs. Which in the long run, is the match I want to win.
Yep, there was a mention of it. In Prisoner (prior to the time-travel bit) Harry thought that the stag was his fathers patronus. He had been told earlier in that book that the stag was his father's...
There was a funny Savage Love article where a woman broke-up with her boyfriend because she found out he had a foot fetish. Come to find out, she was a waitress who would come home to a nice foot massage. When she found out he was enjoying the massage as much as she was, she decided he was a freak. Not noticing that 1) he liked massaging her feet and 2) he wasn't asking for anything in return for it.
:)
Dan's response to this writer was one of the funniest things I've read. The point being, we all do things for a reason. I don't help my friends move because I like moving things - I do it for the free beer. I buy girl scout cookies because I was once a scout myself (and the cookies are also awesome). I give stuff to Goodwill because it makes more economic sense than throwing it away. I've done Habitat because I enjoy carpentry. I'm a horrible, horrible person apparently
Wasn't there a Friends episode about this topic? Seriously though, if someone does something nice to me and ends up feeling bad for having done it - it's not really the kind of help that I want anyway...
How is this any different from watching Hostel, or playing Resident Evil? What makes escaping from a mental facility different from Ryu Hayabusa killing ninjas? There were hockey mask wearing enemies in that game...
A game isn't a cause for a culture, it's the effect of a culture. Despite what people think, the culture isn't all that different now than it once was. Was there a point in time where there wasn't violent crime? When was that super special time that we didn't kill each other whenever we thought it was a good idea? I wasn't aware that lynchings and pogroms were because of Grand Theft Auto. I'm sure the Persians hated it when Alexander the Great got that copy of Age of Empires.
Honestly, I thought the first Manhunt was a pretty fun game. Spooky, engrossing, and it honestly made me NOT want to be hunted for my life in a future dystopia. You know, because of the dying (myself). Also I probably don't want to go work at Black Mesa, enter the Mortal Kombat tournament, or vacation to the Mushroom Kingdom.
But, while we're at it, let's ban violent books, movies, and tv shows because your kids might read, or watch them. I also don't really like reading about serial killers on the newspaper we're using to make masks so let's ban that too. Let's then ban gangsta rap. You know, I think there's also a Kenny Roger's song about rape, an Elvis song about sex, and every Johnny Cash song about getting beat up that we can ban. Roots is pretty violent, so is every episode of America's Funniest Video (all those crotches being hit really culture a society of sexually violent humorists).
Also, Jokey Smurf and Woody Woodpecker are just total assholes.
Or you could, and I'm just putting it out there, not buy it if you don't like it. Somehow you've managed to get by without being forced to sell issues of Oui to kids - you can do it here too!
I'm probably not going to be very interested in Spanish Inquisition: The Game myself. Unless it's on the Wii, boy those heathens are gonna yell then!
I'm sorry, but we've all seen those cases where you can be 100% sure that this guy did what they say he did. Yes, there is some evidence tampering in our history, but the police didn't hide vats of acid in Dahlmer's apartment, full of bodies. John Gacy's crawlspace didn't get 20+ bodies in his crawlspace through the magic of leprechauns. Sometimes the evidence is indeed overwhelming.
I agree that one should be 100% positive before using the death penalty. I simply disagree with the idea that a person can't be 100% sure about sociopaths with no understanding of how to hide evidence. I think that we as a society should have the guts to give them the death penalty rather than letting other prisoners do our dirty work... like they did for Dahlmer.
Not that we couldn't reduce the number of death penalty cases, but to eliminate it altogether seems like we're doing our collective gene pool a disservice. I suppose you could make an argument that sociopaths can indeed adapt to some situations better, but as a social pack species, it just isn't gonna work out.
One day we'll be so against the concept that we'll shoot them out into space, and then we'll have real life Reavers! Oh boy!
How is this really an indicator? A new movie sells more copies than an old movie that people probably already have a copy of. I don't see how this really means anything?
It has what plants need... it has electrolytes...
How is this modded insightful?
The exciting thing is going to be if there are enough pre-orders for them to start fabrication. If they can stay in business passed this point, and OLED manufacturers start ramping up, it's only a matter of time before the price comes down. I remember when plasmas came out priced around $20000 for a 42" (if it was that big). Now you can get them for much less. We don't know how their planning on fabrication at this level. With such a small production schedule, it would suggest hand assembly. If they managed to sell out that production run, whats to stop them from licensing it to a foreign manufacturer? You know, like we do...
Nah, you don't need to worry. This is a special class of micro black holes that exist more on the quantum level, so they behave differently. There isn't enough mass on Earth (probably in the solar system) to create a black hole of the sort that would give you a really bad day. It's sort of like our fusion experiments... without enough mass for the reaction to power itself through gravity, they aren't naturally self-sustaining. These micro black holes don't have the mass to influence anything or to exist without continuous energy input.
Sure, you may not get Space AIDS, but space hay-fever is gonna be a big problem. You know, until someone comes up with a space Claritin...
In all seriousness, getting the flu isn't nearly as likely as simple anaphylactic shock.
Right, and what was man's sin again? Oh yeah, it was eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. God got mad and said, since you now know good and evil, I shall punish you and all of your descendants. But, ummm, if man didn't know good and evil prior to eating from the tree - how was he supposed to know it was wrong? Sure, God told him not to, but he didn't know that doing something he was told not to do was wrong. The inconstancy starts from the first book...
It's similar to the idea that "Christ came to save you"! Save you from what? He's here to save you from God! Well that's just swell. You'd think the guy who created the world in 6 days could have come up with a better way of "saving" humanity from himself than having a guy tortured and killed.
Yep, I know these aren't original points. Yep, I know I'm never going to sway a true believer with them either. I just like to point this out occasionally so other non-believing boot quakers like myself can have a nice laugh.
Right, because the Black Plague and World War 2 proved that if things are going bad, the end MUST be near! It must be fun to be in a doomsday cult!
Thanks for pointing out that site. I think I'll give it a shot!
They speak English in China now? Awesome!
Crap, should have previewed...
Article based on World Commission on Dams Study
Sorry...
Yay! I found the study (or at least a couple of articles that links to the study)! I'm not THAT guy anymore!
Article based on World Commission on Dams Study
Article based on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Study
Biofuels aren't (currently) environmentally friendly because of the amount of power to takes to generate the fuels. When you factor in the energy costs of collection and processing, it's still a negative energy investment unless you are using high sugar methods like in Brazil (which the US couldn't do anyway). This still ignores the various impacts of agriculture in general, which raises the energy investment higher.
I'd love to see this work, but right now biofuels are not much more than a nice thumb at OPEC.
Hydroelectric is actually not very environmentally friendly. A study was performed in the last few years (I swear I'd linky if I could remember where I saw it) that showed that when an area is filled with water, the terrestrial plant matter at the bottom decomposes in an anaerobic environment. This anaerobic decomposition produces methane gas in vast quantities, and as we all know, methane gas is a great greenhouse gas. The study itself tried to find a number for the amount of methane generated - and while I cannot remember the exact number - it was much higher than I expected.
Hate to disagree with you there, but thats not really true. Yes, there are some companies that operate off of that principle (and are asshats who deserve to be put out of business in favor of better companies). But the majority (and most competitive) of companies actually thrive on a huge class of skilled and/or educated workers. A smart worker makes more money for the company than an ignorant worker. A well fed worker makes more money for the company than a starving worker. And most people tend to work better when they are improving their own life.
Maybe you mean foreign workers with longer hours and lower wages? I think that comparing their lives to your life is an unfair comparison. You have compare their life to what it was before the capitalistic system when in place. They may not drive a Hummer, but if they are eat more, are warmer in the winter, and have access to communications, and things like vaccines - capitalism is done very well for them.
Or have you forgotten that your ancestors once lived in exactly the same way? That they, at one time, had to work through the same level of development as other now do in foreign lands? Most likely the smartest in those lands will also save their money, invest in a new enterprise and create new jobs with higher wages - as we have had to do (and are still doing) today. Nowhere is a true capitalistic society is being satisfied with your life getting worse a requirement.
It economic evolution baby!
Ummm, maybe because before the New Deal the vast majority of Americans were family plot farmers? That's not a really good argument. It's kinda like saying, oh yeah, why didn't Julius Caesar have cable? The fact is, there are a number of reasons that poor people exist. The historic reason for poor people is due to over-taxation of the poor. It was called feudalism, and was when you had a very small number of lords living in nice castles, and poor people living in dung heaps. Another possible reason for poor people might very well be predatory capitalism. Before unions started, people got paid crap wages in unsafe living conditions.
:-)
Either side of the story has it's negative effects. However, one must agree that the poorest person today is no worse off today than back then. They still lived on the streets, in the cold. Though you could say that thanks to the innovative spirit that capitalistic systems produce, the poorest are still better off. They have access to basic medical care, and inexpensive warm clothing. For us peasants, the running clean water is pretty nice too.
Feudal societies not being well known for innovation, cheap textiles, and running water.
No one is so crass as to want to see another person suffer needlessly; some people simply choose to live their lives in a self-reliant manner. I applaud the great-grandparent for offering a nice solution for those of us who feel that you should pull your own weight. Each person who is able to afford their own health coverage ultimately improves coverage for everyone else anyway. From removing needless expenses off the public tab, to paying for advanced procedures that - once perfected - help everyone.
A government "safety net" is a needed safeguard to allow people to make large risks without starving. Even the most self-reliant libertarian knows that this safety system is absolutely necessary. Libertarian minded people only complain about people "abusing" such a system. You may not agree that wasting emergency room time for a cold medicine solution is ludicrous; but that doesn't make us evil. At the worst, it makes us frugal. It's for the same reason that when I drive through the local trailer park on the way to work I wonder why there are so many brand new cars.
I only disagree with some of their economic choices - I do not want them to get sick and die. Please try to see the difference.
And since when is exercise such a bad solution? Oh yeah, this is Slashdot
Totally agree with everything you said except for the "let's repeal making horses wear diapers law". Cause man, they can't use a toilet at all :)
You know, this was the first shareholders vote that I actually participated in. Normally, I don't really care - and recognize that my measly holdings won't change anything - but this got me off my ass.
Will my 15 votes change anything? Hell no, but it's like voting for a 3rd party presidential candidate. At the end of the day I can go home happy that I actually did what I thought was right.
Interestingly enough, another ballot item was (paraphrased) "should we give the directors a big bonus for being so awesome?" I figure, since the directors don't want to fight censorship, then they don't deserve the bonus either.
Says the person who made 35% on Google stock lately. Yes, I'm a dumbass.
Technically, we did find WMD's - depending on your definition of WMD. Nothing nuclear (to my knowledge), but we found a wide variety of chemical weapons. We even got attacked by a sarin gas bomb in May of 2004. We also found over 500 filled chemical warheads containing sarin or mustard gas (some of each) - and separately some 1200 gallons of chemicals.
Not to forget that we've found modern aircraft buried in the sands (meaning the likelihood of finding buried weapons is also feasible). Now, does this provide a reason for invasion? Hell I don't know; but I think perpetuating the myth that nothing has been found is wrong.
I don't know about this specifically being an issue of an Orwellian state of fear, but it does tell you about an interesting byproduct of our legal system.
:).
Let's face it... this isn't so much a fear that this kid is gonna come into class and start shooting up the place and then having sex with the dead bodies. Though that is mildly disturbing, it isn't too different from stories I wrote as a teenager either (I would have known the difficulty of wielding 2 P90's though
No, this is a response to the fear of the kid shooting up the school - the press finding out that such a paper had been written by the shooter - and then people losing their jobs over NOT having done anything. Hell, while the VTech incident was occurring all the media did was criticize the school administration for their lack of omnipotence about what was going on. You know someone is going to find some random ass note in the margin of a test paper that implies he wasn't all together, meaning a scapegoat will lose their treasured tenured position.
We don't have a police state because people are fascist. We have paranoid state that does nothing but cover it's own ass. We deserve the society that we create...
I'm gonna have to disagree with your view on this one.
Am I against it because of the low percent of people who get AIDS from transfusions; because their mom had it; or because some asshat wanted to 'put you in your place'? I could, but that's not why I disagree. Am I against it because the logical extension of your argument is that anyone who catches a disease of any type somehow shot themselves in the foot and no longer deserves treatment? Neh, because you probably didn't see the logical error - though you should have.
No, I disagree because parents who have diabetes (or any other weird genetic defect) and choose to reproduce are just as culpable as people who share heroin with their favorite condom-hating male prostitute. You seem to be arguing from the perspective that people with AIDS deserve it because they did something "wrong". Any attempt to apply anthropomorphism to the spread of a germ as some sort of God's will while totally ignoring the logical extension - God must have given little Timmy diabetes for a reason too - is intellectually deficient.
The minute that children start coming out of their mother's snatch, fully aware of the dangers of fornicating without protection and the necessity of not sharing needles, will I consider your moral stance relevant. Until then, ignorance shields both the AIDS patient and the diabetic parents who wonder if Timmy will need some insulin for Christmas.
I'll go out on a line here and say that I don't know how much money AIDS treatments are. I also agree that we should probably spend a great deal of money to come up with treatments. I've known one person who died from AIDS and two people who have died from diabetes and I have to say - they both suck ass.
Yeah, insulin is pretty cheap. Kidney dialysis however is still pretty darn expensive. and transplants are REALLY expensive. When my grandfather was experiencing diabetic complications, the 4 amputations he went through were also pretty expensive. Then he died, so I guess diabetes is also a terminal illness.
But, so if the flu if you get the right version.
I'm not trying to fight a 'my disease is better than your disease' argument though. I think we can all agree that disease of any type is one of the worst things about being a biological organism; and trying to determine which is the absolute worst is along the lines of trying to figure out who would win in a fight between the Hulk and the Thing. Because in the end, the disease that YOU have is the worst.
So we can either bitch and moan about $X.XX dollars going to X disease that might be better spent on that disease my mom has, or we can be happy that Bob (or Gunter) the scientist thinks that fixing diseases is fun. Me? I'm gonna freeze myself with Walt and worry about it all later.