It was your reference to the German POW camps which I am referring to by those comments. It wasn't mean to put words in your mouth though maybe I read too much into it. But again you prove my point. Those were not economic policies that caused the famine. Even in the website you pointed out, it was described(as I have always heard it) as a quasi-war in which Moscow crushed a country that didn't like it by starving it to death. It was a terrible tragedy and I"m not trying at all to defend it. I'm just saying none of those policies could even be construed as socialist. If you read what a socialist policy was and then heard of a central government starving one of its areas to make a different area extremely wealthy, woudl you believe its a socialist policy?
I am only judging those policies that are creiditted with killing people. Not looking at anything else but the description of the policy and the description of socialism, does it fit? if it doesn't, it obviously wasn't socialist. I can call my new way of going around and torturing and then raping people Judaism, but it doesn't make it Judaism, does it?
Now, it can easily be argued and shown that socialism is bad for hte economy and does not provide the most resources for the country to use, but its a really tenuous argument to say socialist economic policies cause millions of death. it seems to always require a crazy ass dictator(reminds me of the end of rush hour 2 after tucker ends up surviving while fighting Zhang ziyi, "you're one crazy ass bitch")
I hope you aren't trying to relate doing what almost all MS's competitors were also trying to do with the willful killing of american children and infirm. Of course, according to an old testament god, killing those people is alright so I guess it might be comparable as both people thought what they were doing was alright according to the higher powers they submitted to.......
I"m not sure if you think that no one can say one way or another about Gates' personal life or if you are trying to attack him as a person and make his charitable donations seem terrible. If its the second:
if you think bill gates has ever been taken to court, your an idiot. Microsoft Corporation, of which he doesn't even own close to a controlling stake in, was taken to court for its business practices. There is nothing that says William Gates III did anything wrong. He negotiated the best contracts he could for the corporation he represented. IF people were dumb enough to buy into those contracts, it was his job to make them. It was the best way to help build the corporation he headed.
Giving away money did little to nothing for Microsoft's court battles and they in no way threatened wealth that he could never spend(besides the fact that his personal assets were never at stake, the stock he had in MSFT could never be liquidated quickly because of laws against dumping stock as a major shareholder). Microsoft still lost and he still gives billions away and he has always said his children won't get much of his money at all and that he will donate almost all of his wealth to charity when he dies. Its a little disheartening when people think someone can't be a nice guy and an excellent business man. Yes, he helped microsoft crush its competition, something every business tries to do and few succeed at. People need to realize that they know a total of aobut 2 personal traits of Bill gates: 1)one of hte best businessmen in the software industry in the last 30 years, beating out every other one and 2) a man who has given away more than 1/3 of his wealth at still such a young age to charity, more than the 3 other largest donors ever(even when compensated for inflation of the dollar) combined.
make your decisions on what you know about him, not what you think you know.
but, you haven't given good counterexamples of socialist economic policies equalling millions of deaths, the exact line quoted and attempted to be refuted.
First and foremost, you have named two major groups, the USSR and 1931-45 Germany. The only problem is that neither were socialist. Germany was Fascist and was not based on any type of socialist regime. The entire purpose of the regime were things like racial cleansing. Its not an oops. Next, USSR, especially under Stalin, was a Communist regime and his policies were directly in line with that of a dictator, not a socialistic regime at all.
I again point out that the exact quote had only to do with socialist economic policies. These deaths were not caused by economic policies. These economic policies did not send any of these economies down the drain.
As to the evironmental devastation caused, one can see this happening in capitalistic economies so it isn't restricted by any means. I believe the original poster was pointing out the false attack on socialist economic policies by relating them to dictatorships that at times implement them or come to power under the guise of planning on implementing them.
The biggest killers I say, are those leaders who order the attacks. The question is why didn't we see the same kind of deaths we did under Stalin happen under any subsequent USSR leader?
no, malaria is curable. a simple google search will show you that there are several drug combinations that give cures. I personally can be certain because my dad had malaria several times as a child growing up in india and he doesn't have it now(very lucky, I guess). Now, they are now reporting strains that are resistant to our treatments. Quinine can cure malaria, but it can also be very toxic.
I don't agree with the legislation at all and I don't want to give that impression. I think they should be fully liable and ought to carry insurance(or need to prove to the government that they can pay at least a certain amount at any point in time wtih some fund or insurance). But I don't think they would ever get 1/1000 like you see. The reason is simple, you benefit from economies of scale and statistics. If your insurer was only insuring 60 cars, your rates would definitely be higher. its standard insurance theory. The other problem is that relatively minor incidents(TMI-2 didn't have any deaths or sickness to report 20 years after, the judge in a class action suit said there was only one case of cancer that was even semi-plausible) still cost 1 billion dollars. So unlike when you get car insurance for 100,000 dollars of converage and will probably never use more than 500 in a year due to little dings and dents, with only 60 plants, the insurance company would need to be able to cover its ass for even the most minor of incidents. another major issue to consider is how little the age of the plant has been a predictor of problems. Most plants have the vast majority of their emergency shutdowns in the first few years of operation. To note, TMI occurred with a brand new facility(I believe the second reactor wasn't even 2 years old). Teh statistics just aren't in favor of reasonable insurance prices(unless said insurance company doens't have a shot in hell of actually paying out benefits if anything happens).
its a tougher insurance arena than home or car or even health is all I'm really trying to get across.
hm.... what about contemporary france.... or germany... or italy.... or canada.
all have quite intricate socialist economic policies. your webiste fails to address a vast majority of those countries with socialist policies in place and does not in any way answer the OP's point.
of course, let the GP talk about someone giving 1/3 of their life savings at such a young age to start a foundation. seems like a lot more then, doesn't it? 100,000 is yearly income this guy is talking about. So let's compare apple's to apple's. As Bill's official income from his job is 1 million a year, this is similar to the man making 100,000 a year giving away 24 million dollars. Should put that proportion in a different light. Net worth and Net income are two different things but people keep comparing them.
further more, everyone should note that Gates has already announced that his kid/s will only get 1 million a piece(last I heard) and the rest of his money will go to charity. seems like a really nice guy and you can't start saying that everyone does anything like that or that its for tax purposes(because 1 million is well under estate tax limits). I would say he is one of the few people in this world who would actually do this stuff(the last great possibility was Sam walton, and he didn't do that). Luckily I'm born to people like that. I've already been told I will only get family heirlooms from my parents and the rest will go to charity(as it should in my opinion).
also wondering, what do you consider sufficient insurance. Not to be nit-picky, but a Chernobyl is very different than a TMI-2. Which do you want companies to insure against? Or would you rather have it somewhere inbetween? I know our plan here in NC, which puts out about 2.2 gigawatts costs the company about 100 million dollars to run. If they ahd to insure 1 billion dollars worth(to cover a TMI-2 disaster), it would up running costs by probably 50 million (1/20 is not a lot at all as insurance goes for something that has the stigma of being incredibly dangerous). Now I'm fine with that. I don't think 50 million is a lot at all to up costs so that they have to clean up after themselves.
the problem is that nuclear accidents have effectively no cap on how much damage they can cause (a legit concern). So how much insurance is enough? we only have 1 US data point and 2 world data points to my knowledge. Chernobyl cleanup in incredible(today, that would probably be 50 billion dollars, and I think that is conservative estimate looking at the loss of life that would happen).
huh? string theory makes predictions but we haven' figured out what those are? thats like when the ID People say "what if we find a message Killroy was here". IF you don't know the prediction, then you haven't made any. If you haven't made any, you are still a pie in the sky idea. But of course, until the string theorists I know tell me they feel they have become a physical theory, then I'll probably upgrade it in my mind. It would seem if the people who spend their lives studying it don't feel its a physical theory, then it isn't.
so let me clarify, they must make unique predictions before they enter into being testable. MU has always been philosophy, not a theory. its exactly like ID. ID allows for things to evolve exactly as they did, so it can always fit all the evidence. All it says is that there is a force we can never know or test for that exists to guide it. Sounds like those other universes. It adds no understanding to any physical phenomenon. String theory has yet to even become physical(its still completely math). The only thing that could have been considered a prediction(but was then incorporated into the Standard model while easily) was supersymmetry. Physicists and mathematicians are still trying to figure out a framework in which to work forward. And hten there are new branches of mathematics that will have to be discovered to give a solution and hten a prediction.
no, what I grasp just fine is those containers are put through amazing tests to make sure they won't just up and break. so even if it does get driven through cities its a non-issue.
people get all worried about this spent fuel being driven through their city but they don't say a word when daily the waste gets driven through from reactor to reactor (because only some reactors have the permits to store this stuff). people who are concerned with accidents on the road or such don't realize that these containers they will be shipped in are the same containers that the fuel is stored in on site at the reactors. As the damn things are built to get run into walls at 70 + miles per hour ( I believe if I remember the specs corrects, at lesat 50g's are requried for it to take, which is insane acceleration). If you are so worried about htese things in transport, then you should be against nuclear power at all(or do you think the nuclear power plants get their u-235/238 mix on site?) It gets done everyday. This is just fear mongering that goes on and since most people don't care to realize this stuff they keep worrying about goes on all the time in much more dangerous places(as natural disasters are concerned).
and what you propose is to keep things like nuclear waste sites in areas that are incredibly prone to natural disasters and leave the government 60 nuclear waste sites to protect from a nut job(none of which are underground because they were never meant to be permanent. which means you are in a much worse position than having the stuff at Yucca.
no, wrong again. string theory and multiple universes are impossible to test and are not physics yet. They aren't scientific theories at all. They are still just possibilities. MU comes from a very suble philosophy from quantum mechanics. String theory is just math(and horribly named because it isn't a scientific theory yet, at all). Physics don't call these things real theories because they aren't. So don't call ID a real theory until it reaches that point scientifically. If it ever does, so be it. It will then be testable and people will begin drawing up tests and give evidence towards it as a possible explanation. but until then, it remains philosophy(and religion for most).
do you mean taxpayers in that region(you said ratepayers)? because if you are talking about those who use the electricity, damn straight they should pay for clean up. that is part of buying the electricity. your rates reflect what the owner needs to make to pay for accidents if they occur. I haven't seen anything to show that it was the tax payers of hte region to bore the full burden of the ~1 billion dollars in damage. I would be quite surprised. part of running a plant would be paying up for clena up. but I Guess they didn't.
talk to the senator from Nevada. While the science says its the best place, one of the biggest hold ups is that they(being hte host state) are allowed to continually ask for tests to be redone and they do. So what should be a 5 year test gets run 2 or 3 times. These things rae quite ridiculous.
And hten people start complaining about transporting the waste. if you have ever seen the containers they transport this stuff in, they seem unbreakable. I got to watch some of the testing for them by duke power. When you see this stuff run into a solid conrete wall and 70 miles an hour, dropped on a spike, and loads of other things and then come out without any damage to the internals, you can be pretty damn sure a trip across the country will cause few if any problems. I mean hell, they transport nuclear material all the time between plants to hold the stuff at locations with nuclear waste permits(the McGuire power plant near Charlotte has permit for 96 storage facilities or so) but when it comes to this kind of transporting that gets reported nationally, everyone gets their panties in a knot.
then you should also know that the site is complete. It has been ready to take on waste for a long time. The hold up is that your great senators have the right and keep calling for multiple independent verifications of tests htat have already been done and the site has passed. Its because they don't want it.
its not ganging up, its the best place in the US to keep it. oh wait, I guess you would rather have 60 or so nuclear waste sites across the US(very unsafe) as compared to one, specialized site constantly being overseen for safety issues. Its what we have right now and that is much more worrying.
well then, obviously bill gates is the biggest visionary there is. I mean, who controls almost all business interaction and over 90% of the desktop market? MS and its software.
now, of course by 80% of the music players you do mean 80% of mobile MP3 players. And of course, they weren't first in this, jsut the first to popularize it. But we don't say Windows is a revolutionary, do we? just by being the biggest doesn't always make you the visionary. every now and then, even apple just takes what others started and improves it.
you are spreading outright lies about the 3 1/2 inch drive.
scroll down at:
http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/timeline.p hp?timeline_category=cmpnt
Components Sony introduced and shipped the first 3 1/2" floppy drives and diskettes in 1981. The first signficant company to adopt the 3 1/2" floppy for general use was Hewlett-Packard in 1982, an event which was critical in establishing momentum for the 3 1/2" format and which helped it prevail over the other contenders for the microfloppy standard, including 3 1/4", 3", and 3.9" formats.
let's not give credit where it isn't due. Let's do give credit where it is due. Apple was the first to give the world a PC that used a mouse and GUI that a non-business entity might buy(though equivalent to about 4700 dollars today, affordable is a little bit of an overstatement). Its specific Windowing system did become the de facto style but was not by any means the only one or the first.
so being told you have terminal cancer and then that evening finding out it was a misdiagnosis tells you a lot about a person? You don't even get to find out what he did with that day. let's not put him up on a pedastal for going through a 12 hour scare. it'll probably happen to you or someone you know one day.
Its nice to hear that he didn't have to suffer through telling his children that he would be dead soon. Its a horible thing to watch when a child realizes they won't ever see their parent again(mother and father). But I don't see what insight you get about the man from his going through a scare like that.
I think what we would all pray to be spared is actually having terminal cancer(the count in my family is at 4 people who I have had to watch go through it) and have to make our family watch that deterioration and care for us through it.
I would say its more enlightening to hear him say those words to realize what kind of speaker and writer he is. It says he has the rare gift of speech.
I think the GP is talking about complete conformity. Its funny to watch a company that talks about thinking differently constantly to create such a homogenous group of followers. The company that says it wants to be different really does enjoy the benefits of creating a following of people that all act the same. its just ironic.
he could.... but then he couldn't say he has a 1 dollar salary. even though, looking at historical prices, he got, as you said, 30 million shares (with a value between 15 adn 25 dollars) and a 90 million dollar jet. hm...... seems like he got paid about 150 million dollars over the course of 4 years... yeah.... sounds like a real down to earth compensation package. I mean, I wouldn't feel like I could retire on that kind of income.....
I guess he could earn as much as his MS counterparts. I mean, that extra 1 million a year would make such a huge difference over the last 6 years....
he gets more than enough money. but I would still bet what motivates him is what motivates most people in his position, power. Money he has coming out his ears. But power is the hard thing to keep a hold of. and Jobbs knows it. He has gone through the ups and severe downs.
yes, agreed. if no one was there, then no one knows absolutely what did happen.
its unfortunate that we have executed so many people without eye witnesses to the crimes. I mean, that means that we can never be sure if they did it, right? no matter how much evidence is put up in support of it, it would be wrong to convict on such weak grounds.
Hell, while we are at it, I think all history classes need to be thrown out, right? No one alive today actually saw the civil war occur so we shouldn't teach about it. I mean hell, soon enough one can easily make the argument that the holocaust didn't accur by your standards. But then again, we are going to have to close every church out there because all they have ever done is teach things that could never be seen(or heard, or touched, or interacted with). It would be a shame if we let people be 'educated' by such frauds, wouldn't it?
The theory of evolution predicts what types of fossils we will find and gives them rough ages given a certain predecessor and a modern member of the same genus. So it gives predictions on what are the most likely fossils to be found and unfortunately for those still stuck in the science of the 1850's(because it seems those are the fossil records creationists are looking at since its all they ever refer to), it's actually been quite accurate.
Of course, scientists have been at odds with religion ever since science became modern(probably a good 400 years ago). It seems the church just takes a lot longer to evolve(no pun intended) than the scientific community. The religious community finally accepted that the earth was neither the center of the universe nor flat. And while not as dramatic, finally gave its seal of approval on attempts to make a true vacuum. It just requires more evidence and time. And luckily, real scientists will always be happy to continue giving snippets of evidence until the next breakthrough. That is how the community works.
The real fight right now is to see if in a science class, real science will be taught. Scientists don't go running into every church pointing out gross contradictions in the bible and historicallly inaccurate statements that fill it. IF you want to believe it, go ahead. But keep such "evidence" out of the science classroom. Scientists set there standards on what is to be accepted as true and we don't parade around calling it a religion, or worse yet, christianity. That would be disrespectful. So why not stop parading around religion and calling it science, because its not by any measuring stick.
I agree, in most of the ancient religions, things like life are held scared, so on and so forth. But not in all by any means. The connective thread I would put forth is simply that the mystery of life(something we still can't really understand the why of, not to guarantee one exists, but imply the possibility) attracted people to put a huge value on it. Or possibly, our natural instincts tell us that in order to maximize survival in our type of species, a strong value for life and family are required. And of course, it can easily be shown that this only applies to local groupings. The vikings, like the original jews and any literal reader of the bible will believe, did not believe in randomly killing there own. They only believe in murdering, plundering, and robbing from outsiders. To give you a direct christian analogy(old testament), look at the laws put forward in deuteronomy. many call for the mass murder of those groups that one defeats followed by the rape and enslavement of the women and children. So obviously, even religions see a limited value of life, and very little for those outside of one's circle. This can be attributed to competition in a world where resources required for sustanence were scarce.
But very similar activity can be seen in elephant herds. But I will say, I had a great discussion with a good friend of mine. I don't even think he finished high school,and has been extremely religious his entire life, but is one of the most well spoken people I have heard. As he said(slightly butured due to memory), "science and religion are just explanations for what we see infront of us. YOu can have yours and I can have mine but in the end, you either believe one or the other and you will have to make amends in the end with what you believed." I wish everyone could just except that basic separation of the two. They conflict. without taking all religious texts incredibly figuratively(and thereby giving the authors incredible leeway in what they did and did not know{I am talking about those who carried the stories on, not those who 'heard' it from god}), one cannot reconcile what we consider modern knowledge without assuming "hey, its not written, but the bible really means this" or "god did all these things to fool us so that is why there isn't any evidence". Both are acceptable explanations and internally consistent and therefore, can never be refuted. But always remember to reconcile the two, one must read into the underlying meaning of the text. I say go for it because it will give science a break from defending itself for having a different, internally consistent set of beliefs(our scientific axioms are like any religious text, any differences are only qualitative).
I haven't read a great deal on the anthropic principles besides what Hawking has written, but as string theory goes, I'll quote one of the founders of the field(James S. Gates): "String theory is a nice mathematical formula".
he went on to reject the notion that it was physics at all until it gave some unique predictive results that already icorporated into the standard model(super symmetric partners would have been one, except they do fit into the standard model).
I'm sorry , I think I replied to the incorrect post. after reading your comment, either I was somehow incapacitated or didn't mean that response for you.
so in other words(just clarifying), humans not having reached an equilibrium means no equilibrium exists? and we have over farmed areas before. ever heard of crop rotation? it was invented because we were over farming areas and farmers realized there was a better way about it. sounds like a negative feedback loop to improving how we use land. we have also overhunted species, but this has just caused humans to shift what they eat(american indians filled the lack of buffalo in their diet with other food sources). Animals do the same thing. Tigers, when they are unable to hunt wild animals, can become maneaters because humans such easy prey, though not as nutricious as other animals.
maybe as a global species we have never done that(overhunted or over-farmed to the detriment of the world population), but if you have ever been to areas that aren't getting the help you speak of, populations are dropping because of starvation. it does happen,but not globally. the decimation of the wolf packs in the yellowstone didn't spell anything for the wolf packs in canada because they were separated groups. so no, in no way does the integration of two populations of humans say anything about a third population(sending food aid is effectively taking two groups and making them into one as resource distribution is concerned). The world wide wolf population can grow while one local species is wiped out.
If you honestly believe we reach and exceed our food needs every year, you need to get yourself a history book. Food supplies have always been able to outpace the growth of the world population, and it probably will for a while, but it is biologically impossible to happen forever. It has usually been expected to occur but we have been able to use land extremely efficiently. And from what I've heard, we haven't used the most fertile land yet do to foolish wars(the Sudan).
and again, just to point out the same thing I have been saying, when you define genocide and torture in ways that non-humans are elimiated from the definition, then of course you can't have it happen outside of the human species. you have again defined it to be limited to humans by rejecting the notion that another species could make a deliberate attempt to wipe out another population. my point is made by your words, not my own. My original notion was simply that if you define genocide(and all its major words, for the pedantically minded) in such a way that can encapsulate more than humans, you will be ambiguous at best in saying it doesn't happen in the animal kingdom. This includes you having to make the allowance that animals can do things deliberately. but again, you might reply with something like "animals can't make deliberate choices to wipe out a species, they only do it because it is their nature" which of course, is an infinite loop. I'm not sure if you will understand this, but just step outside of your definition just enough so that it isn't limited to humans and then think about it. And when I say don't limit it to humans, I don't mean changing only the last word to another species(or local population).
Slashdot Mirror
It was your reference to the German POW camps which I am referring to by those comments. It wasn't mean to put words in your mouth though maybe I read too much into it. But again you prove my point. Those were not economic policies that caused the famine. Even in the website you pointed out, it was described(as I have always heard it) as a quasi-war in which Moscow crushed a country that didn't like it by starving it to death. It was a terrible tragedy and I"m not trying at all to defend it. I'm just saying none of those policies could even be construed as socialist. If you read what a socialist policy was and then heard of a central government starving one of its areas to make a different area extremely wealthy, woudl you believe its a socialist policy?
I am only judging those policies that are creiditted with killing people. Not looking at anything else but the description of the policy and the description of socialism, does it fit? if it doesn't, it obviously wasn't socialist. I can call my new way of going around and torturing and then raping people Judaism, but it doesn't make it Judaism, does it?
Now, it can easily be argued and shown that socialism is bad for hte economy and does not provide the most resources for the country to use, but its a really tenuous argument to say socialist economic policies cause millions of death. it seems to always require a crazy ass dictator(reminds me of the end of rush hour 2 after tucker ends up surviving while fighting Zhang ziyi, "you're one crazy ass bitch")
I hope you aren't trying to relate doing what almost all MS's competitors were also trying to do with the willful killing of american children and infirm. Of course, according to an old testament god, killing those people is alright so I guess it might be comparable as both people thought what they were doing was alright according to the higher powers they submitted to.......
a little troublesome
I"m not sure if you think that no one can say one way or another about Gates' personal life or if you are trying to attack him as a person and make his charitable donations seem terrible. If its the second:
if you think bill gates has ever been taken to court, your an idiot. Microsoft Corporation, of which he doesn't even own close to a controlling stake in, was taken to court for its business practices. There is nothing that says William Gates III did anything wrong. He negotiated the best contracts he could for the corporation he represented. IF people were dumb enough to buy into those contracts, it was his job to make them. It was the best way to help build the corporation he headed.
Giving away money did little to nothing for Microsoft's court battles and they in no way threatened wealth that he could never spend(besides the fact that his personal assets were never at stake, the stock he had in MSFT could never be liquidated quickly because of laws against dumping stock as a major shareholder). Microsoft still lost and he still gives billions away and he has always said his children won't get much of his money at all and that he will donate almost all of his wealth to charity when he dies. Its a little disheartening when people think someone can't be a nice guy and an excellent business man. Yes, he helped microsoft crush its competition, something every business tries to do and few succeed at. People need to realize that they know a total of aobut 2 personal traits of Bill gates: 1)one of hte best businessmen in the software industry in the last 30 years, beating out every other one and 2) a man who has given away more than 1/3 of his wealth at still such a young age to charity, more than the 3 other largest donors ever(even when compensated for inflation of the dollar) combined.
make your decisions on what you know about him, not what you think you know.
but, you haven't given good counterexamples of socialist economic policies equalling millions of deaths, the exact line quoted and attempted to be refuted.
First and foremost, you have named two major groups, the USSR and 1931-45 Germany. The only problem is that neither were socialist. Germany was Fascist and was not based on any type of socialist regime. The entire purpose of the regime were things like racial cleansing. Its not an oops. Next, USSR, especially under Stalin, was a Communist regime and his policies were directly in line with that of a dictator, not a socialistic regime at all.
I again point out that the exact quote had only to do with socialist economic policies. These deaths were not caused by economic policies. These economic policies did not send any of these economies down the drain.
As to the evironmental devastation caused, one can see this happening in capitalistic economies so it isn't restricted by any means. I believe the original poster was pointing out the false attack on socialist economic policies by relating them to dictatorships that at times implement them or come to power under the guise of planning on implementing them.
The biggest killers I say, are those leaders who order the attacks. The question is why didn't we see the same kind of deaths we did under Stalin happen under any subsequent USSR leader?
no, malaria is curable. a simple google search will show you that there are several drug combinations that give cures. I personally can be certain because my dad had malaria several times as a child growing up in india and he doesn't have it now(very lucky, I guess). Now, they are now reporting strains that are resistant to our treatments. Quinine can cure malaria, but it can also be very toxic.
I don't agree with the legislation at all and I don't want to give that impression. I think they should be fully liable and ought to carry insurance(or need to prove to the government that they can pay at least a certain amount at any point in time wtih some fund or insurance). But I don't think they would ever get 1/1000 like you see. The reason is simple, you benefit from economies of scale and statistics. If your insurer was only insuring 60 cars, your rates would definitely be higher. its standard insurance theory. The other problem is that relatively minor incidents(TMI-2 didn't have any deaths or sickness to report 20 years after, the judge in a class action suit said there was only one case of cancer that was even semi-plausible) still cost 1 billion dollars. So unlike when you get car insurance for 100,000 dollars of converage and will probably never use more than 500 in a year due to little dings and dents, with only 60 plants, the insurance company would need to be able to cover its ass for even the most minor of incidents. another major issue to consider is how little the age of the plant has been a predictor of problems. Most plants have the vast majority of their emergency shutdowns in the first few years of operation. To note, TMI occurred with a brand new facility(I believe the second reactor wasn't even 2 years old). Teh statistics just aren't in favor of reasonable insurance prices(unless said insurance company doens't have a shot in hell of actually paying out benefits if anything happens).
its a tougher insurance arena than home or car or even health is all I'm really trying to get across.
hm.... what about contemporary france.... or germany... or italy.... or canada.
all have quite intricate socialist economic policies. your webiste fails to address a vast majority of those countries with socialist policies in place and does not in any way answer the OP's point.
or most of the people on slashdot for that matter.
of course, let the GP talk about someone giving 1/3 of their life savings at such a young age to start a foundation. seems like a lot more then, doesn't it? 100,000 is yearly income this guy is talking about. So let's compare apple's to apple's. As Bill's official income from his job is 1 million a year, this is similar to the man making 100,000 a year giving away 24 million dollars. Should put that proportion in a different light. Net worth and Net income are two different things but people keep comparing them.
further more, everyone should note that Gates has already announced that his kid/s will only get 1 million a piece(last I heard) and the rest of his money will go to charity. seems like a really nice guy and you can't start saying that everyone does anything like that or that its for tax purposes(because 1 million is well under estate tax limits). I would say he is one of the few people in this world who would actually do this stuff(the last great possibility was Sam walton, and he didn't do that). Luckily I'm born to people like that. I've already been told I will only get family heirlooms from my parents and the rest will go to charity(as it should in my opinion).
also wondering, what do you consider sufficient insurance. Not to be nit-picky, but a Chernobyl is very different than a TMI-2. Which do you want companies to insure against? Or would you rather have it somewhere inbetween? I know our plan here in NC, which puts out about 2.2 gigawatts costs the company about 100 million dollars to run. If they ahd to insure 1 billion dollars worth(to cover a TMI-2 disaster), it would up running costs by probably 50 million (1/20 is not a lot at all as insurance goes for something that has the stigma of being incredibly dangerous). Now I'm fine with that. I don't think 50 million is a lot at all to up costs so that they have to clean up after themselves.
the problem is that nuclear accidents have effectively no cap on how much damage they can cause (a legit concern). So how much insurance is enough? we only have 1 US data point and 2 world data points to my knowledge. Chernobyl cleanup in incredible(today, that would probably be 50 billion dollars, and I think that is conservative estimate looking at the loss of life that would happen).
huh? string theory makes predictions but we haven' figured out what those are? thats like when the ID People say "what if we find a message Killroy was here". IF you don't know the prediction, then you haven't made any. If you haven't made any, you are still a pie in the sky idea. But of course, until the string theorists I know tell me they feel they have become a physical theory, then I'll probably upgrade it in my mind. It would seem if the people who spend their lives studying it don't feel its a physical theory, then it isn't. so let me clarify, they must make unique predictions before they enter into being testable. MU has always been philosophy, not a theory. its exactly like ID. ID allows for things to evolve exactly as they did, so it can always fit all the evidence. All it says is that there is a force we can never know or test for that exists to guide it. Sounds like those other universes. It adds no understanding to any physical phenomenon. String theory has yet to even become physical(its still completely math). The only thing that could have been considered a prediction(but was then incorporated into the Standard model while easily) was supersymmetry. Physicists and mathematicians are still trying to figure out a framework in which to work forward. And hten there are new branches of mathematics that will have to be discovered to give a solution and hten a prediction.
no, what I grasp just fine is those containers are put through amazing tests to make sure they won't just up and break. so even if it does get driven through cities its a non-issue.
people get all worried about this spent fuel being driven through their city but they don't say a word when daily the waste gets driven through from reactor to reactor (because only some reactors have the permits to store this stuff). people who are concerned with accidents on the road or such don't realize that these containers they will be shipped in are the same containers that the fuel is stored in on site at the reactors. As the damn things are built to get run into walls at 70 + miles per hour ( I believe if I remember the specs corrects, at lesat 50g's are requried for it to take, which is insane acceleration). If you are so worried about htese things in transport, then you should be against nuclear power at all(or do you think the nuclear power plants get their u-235/238 mix on site?) It gets done everyday. This is just fear mongering that goes on and since most people don't care to realize this stuff they keep worrying about goes on all the time in much more dangerous places(as natural disasters are concerned).
and what you propose is to keep things like nuclear waste sites in areas that are incredibly prone to natural disasters and leave the government 60 nuclear waste sites to protect from a nut job(none of which are underground because they were never meant to be permanent. which means you are in a much worse position than having the stuff at Yucca.
no, wrong again. string theory and multiple universes are impossible to test and are not physics yet. They aren't scientific theories at all. They are still just possibilities. MU comes from a very suble philosophy from quantum mechanics. String theory is just math(and horribly named because it isn't a scientific theory yet, at all). Physics don't call these things real theories because they aren't. So don't call ID a real theory until it reaches that point scientifically. If it ever does, so be it. It will then be testable and people will begin drawing up tests and give evidence towards it as a possible explanation. but until then, it remains philosophy(and religion for most).
do you mean taxpayers in that region(you said ratepayers)? because if you are talking about those who use the electricity, damn straight they should pay for clean up. that is part of buying the electricity. your rates reflect what the owner needs to make to pay for accidents if they occur.
I haven't seen anything to show that it was the tax payers of hte region to bore the full burden of the ~1 billion dollars in damage. I would be quite surprised. part of running a plant would be paying up for clena up. but I Guess they didn't.
talk to the senator from Nevada. While the science says its the best place, one of the biggest hold ups is that they(being hte host state) are allowed to continually ask for tests to be redone and they do. So what should be a 5 year test gets run 2 or 3 times. These things rae quite ridiculous.
And hten people start complaining about transporting the waste. if you have ever seen the containers they transport this stuff in, they seem unbreakable. I got to watch some of the testing for them by duke power. When you see this stuff run into a solid conrete wall and 70 miles an hour, dropped on a spike, and loads of other things and then come out without any damage to the internals, you can be pretty damn sure a trip across the country will cause few if any problems. I mean hell, they transport nuclear material all the time between plants to hold the stuff at locations with nuclear waste permits(the McGuire power plant near Charlotte has permit for 96 storage facilities or so) but when it comes to this kind of transporting that gets reported nationally, everyone gets their panties in a knot.
then you should also know that the site is complete. It has been ready to take on waste for a long time. The hold up is that your great senators have the right and keep calling for multiple independent verifications of tests htat have already been done and the site has passed. Its because they don't want it.
its not ganging up, its the best place in the US to keep it. oh wait, I guess you would rather have 60 or so nuclear waste sites across the US(very unsafe) as compared to one, specialized site constantly being overseen for safety issues. Its what we have right now and that is much more worrying.
well then, obviously bill gates is the biggest visionary there is. I mean, who controls almost all business interaction and over 90% of the desktop market? MS and its software. now, of course by 80% of the music players you do mean 80% of mobile MP3 players. And of course, they weren't first in this, jsut the first to popularize it. But we don't say Windows is a revolutionary, do we? just by being the biggest doesn't always make you the visionary. every now and then, even apple just takes what others started and improves it. you are spreading outright lies about the 3 1/2 inch drive. scroll down at: http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/timeline.p hp?timeline_category=cmpnt
Components Sony introduced and shipped the first 3 1/2" floppy drives and diskettes in 1981. The first signficant company to adopt the 3 1/2" floppy for general use was Hewlett-Packard in 1982, an event which was critical in establishing momentum for the 3 1/2" format and which helped it prevail over the other contenders for the microfloppy standard, including 3 1/4", 3", and 3.9" formats.
let's not give credit where it isn't due. Let's do give credit where it is due. Apple was the first to give the world a PC that used a mouse and GUI that a non-business entity might buy(though equivalent to about 4700 dollars today, affordable is a little bit of an overstatement). Its specific Windowing system did become the de facto style but was not by any means the only one or the first.
so being told you have terminal cancer and then that evening finding out it was a misdiagnosis tells you a lot about a person? You don't even get to find out what he did with that day. let's not put him up on a pedastal for going through a 12 hour scare. it'll probably happen to you or someone you know one day.
Its nice to hear that he didn't have to suffer through telling his children that he would be dead soon. Its a horible thing to watch when a child realizes they won't ever see their parent again(mother and father). But I don't see what insight you get about the man from his going through a scare like that.
I think what we would all pray to be spared is actually having terminal cancer(the count in my family is at 4 people who I have had to watch go through it) and have to make our family watch that deterioration and care for us through it.
I would say its more enlightening to hear him say those words to realize what kind of speaker and writer he is. It says he has the rare gift of speech.
I think the GP is talking about complete conformity. Its funny to watch a company that talks about thinking differently constantly to create such a homogenous group of followers. The company that says it wants to be different really does enjoy the benefits of creating a following of people that all act the same. its just ironic.
he could.... but then he couldn't say he has a 1 dollar salary. even though, looking at historical prices,
he got, as you said, 30 million shares (with a value between 15 adn 25 dollars) and a 90 million dollar jet. hm...... seems like he got paid about 150 million dollars over the course of 4 years... yeah.... sounds like a real down to earth compensation package. I mean, I wouldn't feel like I could retire on that kind of income.....
I guess he could earn as much as his MS counterparts. I mean, that extra 1 million a year would make such a huge difference over the last 6 years....
he gets more than enough money. but I would still bet what motivates him is what motivates most people in his position, power. Money he has coming out his ears. But power is the hard thing to keep a hold of. and Jobbs knows it. He has gone through the ups and severe downs.
yes, agreed. if no one was there, then no one knows absolutely what did happen.
its unfortunate that we have executed so many people without eye witnesses to the crimes. I mean, that means that we can never be sure if they did it, right? no matter how much evidence is put up in support of it, it would be wrong to convict on such weak grounds.
Hell, while we are at it, I think all history classes need to be thrown out, right? No one alive today actually saw the civil war occur so we shouldn't teach about it. I mean hell, soon enough one can easily make the argument that the holocaust didn't accur by your standards. But then again, we are going to have to close every church out there because all they have ever done is teach things that could never be seen(or heard, or touched, or interacted with). It would be a shame if we let people be 'educated' by such frauds, wouldn't it?
The theory of evolution predicts what types of fossils we will find and gives them rough ages given a certain predecessor and a modern member of the same genus. So it gives predictions on what are the most likely fossils to be found and unfortunately for those still stuck in the science of the 1850's(because it seems those are the fossil records creationists are looking at since its all they ever refer to), it's actually been quite accurate.
Of course, scientists have been at odds with religion ever since science became modern(probably a good 400 years ago). It seems the church just takes a lot longer to evolve(no pun intended) than the scientific community. The religious community finally accepted that the earth was neither the center of the universe nor flat. And while not as dramatic, finally gave its seal of approval on attempts to make a true vacuum. It just requires more evidence and time. And luckily, real scientists will always be happy to continue giving snippets of evidence until the next breakthrough. That is how the community works.
The real fight right now is to see if in a science class, real science will be taught. Scientists don't go running into every church pointing out gross contradictions in the bible and historicallly inaccurate statements that fill it. IF you want to believe it, go ahead. But keep such "evidence" out of the science classroom. Scientists set there standards on what is to be accepted as true and we don't parade around calling it a religion, or worse yet, christianity. That would be disrespectful. So why not stop parading around religion and calling it science, because its not by any measuring stick.
I agree, in most of the ancient religions, things like life are held scared, so on and so forth. But not in all by any means. The connective thread I would put forth is simply that the mystery of life(something we still can't really understand the why of, not to guarantee one exists, but imply the possibility) attracted people to put a huge value on it. Or possibly, our natural instincts tell us that in order to maximize survival in our type of species, a strong value for life and family are required. And of course, it can easily be shown that this only applies to local groupings. The vikings, like the original jews and any literal reader of the bible will believe, did not believe in randomly killing there own. They only believe in murdering, plundering, and robbing from outsiders. To give you a direct christian analogy(old testament), look at the laws put forward in deuteronomy. many call for the mass murder of those groups that one defeats followed by the rape and enslavement of the women and children. So obviously, even religions see a limited value of life, and very little for those outside of one's circle. This can be attributed to competition in a world where resources required for sustanence were scarce.
But very similar activity can be seen in elephant herds. But I will say, I had a great discussion with a good friend of mine. I don't even think he finished high school,and has been extremely religious his entire life, but is one of the most well spoken people I have heard. As he said(slightly butured due to memory), "science and religion are just explanations for what we see infront of us. YOu can have yours and I can have mine but in the end, you either believe one or the other and you will have to make amends in the end with what you believed." I wish everyone could just except that basic separation of the two. They conflict. without taking all religious texts incredibly figuratively(and thereby giving the authors incredible leeway in what they did and did not know{I am talking about those who carried the stories on, not those who 'heard' it from god}), one cannot reconcile what we consider modern knowledge without assuming "hey, its not written, but the bible really means this" or "god did all these things to fool us so that is why there isn't any evidence". Both are acceptable explanations and internally consistent and therefore, can never be refuted. But always remember to reconcile the two, one must read into the underlying meaning of the text. I say go for it because it will give science a break from defending itself for having a different, internally consistent set of beliefs(our scientific axioms are like any religious text, any differences are only qualitative).
I haven't read a great deal on the anthropic principles besides what Hawking has written, but as string theory goes, I'll quote one of the founders of the field(James S. Gates):
"String theory is a nice mathematical formula".
he went on to reject the notion that it was physics at all until it gave some unique predictive results that already icorporated into the standard model(super symmetric partners would have been one, except they do fit into the standard model).
I'm sorry , I think I replied to the incorrect post. after reading your comment, either I was somehow incapacitated or didn't mean that response for you.
so in other words(just clarifying), humans not having reached an equilibrium means no equilibrium exists? and we have over farmed areas before. ever heard of crop rotation? it was invented because we were over farming areas and farmers realized there was a better way about it. sounds like a negative feedback loop to improving how we use land. we have also overhunted species, but this has just caused humans to shift what they eat(american indians filled the lack of buffalo in their diet with other food sources). Animals do the same thing. Tigers, when they are unable to hunt wild animals, can become maneaters because humans such easy prey, though not as nutricious as other animals.
maybe as a global species we have never done that(overhunted or over-farmed to the detriment of the world population), but if you have ever been to areas that aren't getting the help you speak of, populations are dropping because of starvation. it does happen,but not globally. the decimation of the wolf packs in the yellowstone didn't spell anything for the wolf packs in canada because they were separated groups. so no, in no way does the integration of two populations of humans say anything about a third population(sending food aid is effectively taking two groups and making them into one as resource distribution is concerned). The world wide wolf population can grow while one local species is wiped out.
If you honestly believe we reach and exceed our food needs every year, you need to get yourself a history book. Food supplies have always been able to outpace the growth of the world population, and it probably will for a while, but it is biologically impossible to happen forever. It has usually been expected to occur but we have been able to use land extremely efficiently. And from what I've heard, we haven't used the most fertile land yet do to foolish wars(the Sudan).
and again, just to point out the same thing I have been saying, when you define genocide and torture in ways that non-humans are elimiated from the definition, then of course you can't have it happen outside of the human species. you have again defined it to be limited to humans by rejecting the notion that another species could make a deliberate attempt to wipe out another population. my point is made by your words, not my own. My original notion was simply that if you define genocide(and all its major words, for the pedantically minded) in such a way that can encapsulate more than humans, you will be ambiguous at best in saying it doesn't happen in the animal kingdom. This includes you having to make the allowance that animals can do things deliberately. but again, you might reply with something like "animals can't make deliberate choices to wipe out a species, they only do it because it is their nature" which of course, is an infinite loop. I'm not sure if you will understand this, but just step outside of your definition just enough so that it isn't limited to humans and then think about it. And when I say don't limit it to humans, I don't mean changing only the last word to another species(or local population).