Now, in the US, there is supposed to be a clear separation between classes of antibiotics used on animals and those used on people, although this is more porous than we might like to think. There are however no guarantees that other countries have the exact same divisions. Moreover even assuming that this is the case, it deprives us humans of the effectiveness of certain classes of antibiotics which might prove useful in the future.
That principle was abruptly defenestrated under pressure from the agricultural sector. Even the very precious vancomycin, a "last line of defense" against multiple-drug-resistant pathogens, is being fed to cows now.
The alternative is expensive beef. Antibiotics are needed in order to fatten cows on corn. The alternatives are all much more expensive, but at least they are compatible with a cow's stomach lining. Unfortunately that would mean doubling the price of beef. If that happened, then the ballast would be shrieking at their congressmen within the hour ("McDonalds sez they hafta raise the price a'burger by two dollar!"), and boom, we're right back to corn.
The problem of antibiotic use in animals falls into the class of long-term abstract hazards that democracies cannot solve. Democracy can solve only those problems that are concrete and short-term painful.
And farmers pretty much feed all of their animals antibiotics because it's easier? cheaper? than only feeding it to animals once they're sick (in general it's a lot harder to tell when an animal is sick than a human). Or at least that's my understanding, I could be wrong.
Modern industrial cattle operations feed cows corn because calorie-for-calorie it is the cheapest food available for cows. The problem is that cows evolved to eat grass, not grains, so their stomachs aren't suited to it. They come down with stomach acidosis, and they will only live about six months once the corn diet begins.
While they are alive, they get infections via the stomach ulcers. So antibiotics are mixed into the corn to somewhat protect the stomach at least long enough for the cows to get obese for market.
I didn't choose the word 'obese' lightly. Industrial cows are literally obese, which is why their meat is so fatty. Fatty meat is easier to cook, and us dumb Westerners have been trained to prefer fatty meat ("nicely marbled").
Ahh-well the government will love then that not only do corn fed cattle have higher fat contents then grass fed cattle- they also require higher levels of antibiotics.
These antibiotics in farming is what leads to super bugs and antibiotic resistance in bacteria... which leads to...... higher health costs and prescription costs.
Government should double subsidies on maize immediately to help make the loop complete.
Grass-fed meat not only has lower fat content (indeed -- it must be cooked differently than the obese meat from the grocery store), but the fats are different. I switched my family to grass-fed after I read the analysis of fat content from my local grass-fed distributor.
They deliver by UPS in insulated boxes packed with dry ice, so everything is still frozen when I get home and pick the box up off the porch.
Not only does that chart use an irregular Y axis that makes Gates' performance seem more steady and reliable than it actually was...
...but it doesn't bother to mention the dot-com bubble popping in ~2000. The fact that Ballmer kept their stock price up, while everyone else was losing theirs, is no small feat.
Please don't post any more dishonest crap from zdnet. I passionately distrust and loathe Microsoft, especially now that the B&N revelations are out. There is so much to hate about them, we don't also need to fabricate indictments of Ballmer.
I'd noticed that too. Religion was once the source of our moral compass, but it is thoroughly discredited now, and no replacement has risen to the task. Leftism sort of tried with various Collectivist / Utilitarian approaches, but was doomed to fail by its Skepticist "No one can be certain of anything" ideological foundation.
Evolution hasn't prepared us for the post-religion era.
I have to disagree with what you say; I don't think that religion is a necessary prerequisite for morality. The relation between morality and religion is a complex one, and difficult to untangle—particularly because some religions, such as the Judaic and Muslim—have taken great pains to impose a legal code on their followers. [...]
I never said otherwise... and reading your well-thought-out post, I see we already think alike on this subject.
I am one of those Camus-style thinkers who, on seeing that in our world "All is permitted" (Camus quoting Machievelli), develops a moral code and takes it seriously, even though "in reason, there is no reason to", as they say.
And yes, I'm aware of Rand's credible effort to rationally derive a moral code, which is entirely correct yet can't (to my satisfaction) answer the free-rider problem.
My daughter come home from 2nd Grade every week with a list of 'sight-words' to focus on - that is, words that were intended to be immediately recognized, not sounded out.
Glad modern science has caught up with elementary school.
That teaching method was originally introduced in the 1960s as "Look Say". It was part of the general ideological overhaul of public education, of which the "New Math" was also a part. It all sprang from Russel et. al.'s philosophy of Behaviorism, which pointed away from man-the-rational and towards man-the-animal. Hence reading by memorization rather than by rational system (phonics).
Since then it has been discredited and so it had to change its name, I think it's called "Whole Language" now. It still competes with Phonics. This new research suggests the reason why Look Say is not the total failure that I and others predicted. However, it has a bit of difficulty explaining why (as others in this thread have pointed out) we can so easily read words whose internal letters are jumbled, so long as the first and last letters are correct.
Given the absence of any sense of morality among the most intelligent of our young people, money buys all the talent the criminals need. But these guys will work for anybody who has money. The TLAs of the government, for instance. Or non-governmental agencies with an interest in destruction. There is nothing more dangerous than smart people without a moral compass.
I'd noticed that too. Religion was once the source of our moral compass, but it is thoroughly discredited now, and no replacement has risen to the task. Leftism sort of tried with various Collectivist / Utilitarian approaches, but was doomed to fail by its Skepticist "No one can be certain of anything" ideological foundation.
Evolution hasn't prepared us for the post-religion era.
Legalize drugs, and let their income of blood money vanish.
If you think legalizing drugs will stop their reign of terror, you've got another thing coming. They'll just find some other extremely lucrative (and therefore most likely illegal) market to attempt to corner, and their thuggery will continue.
Such as?
What "extremely lucrative" market is there, which Zetas can reasonably adjust itself to supply?
Here's a hint, whatever that market is, it isn't in Mexico. Not enough per capita income. The only market that could possibly bankroll an organization like Zetas is America... and what product or service other than narcotics is there such a passionate, unmet demand for in America?
You also had a law passed in the Carter years to make it easier for people who couldn't (and as we can now see, shouldn't) have been granted a mortgage provided one. This law got itself teeth during the Clinton years to aggressively push these high risk mortgages out there, or the banks would suffer fines. All of this backed up by federally created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who then started bundling these high risk loans with AAA credit loans. All the while, anything that had once been considered wise lending practices were thrown out the window.
This is horseshit. This is the "blame the poor minorities and the liberals who thought they should be subject to the same standards as everyone else" canard that was trotted out after the collapse to try to divert blame away from the deregulation that is the real obvious cause -- point of fact, even if this bull excrement explanation held any water, had the old rules about the types of securities banks could invest in and the limits to their ability to leverage were in place, the collapse wouldn't have happened.
The law never required banks to make risky loans. It only required them to not refuse loans based solely on where someone lived, or to use a higher standard to secure the loan than they would for someone who lived somewhere else.
And here is the actual text of the CRA and IBBEA laws that forced the banks' hands: IBBEA. Read up before you accidentally release any further un-data into our already troubled world.
You also had a law passed in the Carter years to make it easier for people who couldn't (and as we can now see, shouldn't) have been granted a mortgage provided one. This law got itself teeth during the Clinton years to aggressively push these high risk mortgages out there, or the banks would suffer fines. All of this backed up by federally created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who then started bundling these high risk loans with AAA credit loans. All the while, anything that had once been considered wise lending practices were thrown out the window.
This is horseshit. This is the "blame the poor minorities and the liberals who thought they should be subject to the same standards as everyone else" canard that was trotted out after the collapse to try to divert blame away from the deregulation that is the real obvious cause -- point of fact, even if this bull excrement explanation held any water, had the old rules about the types of securities banks could invest in and the limits to their ability to leverage were in place, the collapse wouldn't have happened.
The law never required banks to make risky loans. It only required them to not refuse loans based solely on where someone lived, or to use a higher standard to secure the loan than they would for someone who lived somewhere else.
Instead of paying people based on their self-inflicted stress levels, imagine paying people based on value delivered to other human beings. Then garbage men and teachers would be paid more than anyone else, and bankers would make something far closer to minimum wage.
We already do, where value is calculated by everyone else -- i.e. by the market. The means of getting a high assessment is to offer something that is both difficult (i.e. little competition) and pleasing to the customer.
Oh, you meant we have a central authority decide what the value of one's labor is. In that system, the means of getting a high assessment is to have a lot of political pull. I gather you prefer this system because the values that you currently provide are either not very difficult or not very pleasing.
"Easier" and "more universal" does NOT constitute "fundamentally different". No judge would buy that argument either. Technology makes things easier, that doesn't mean you make those things harder to do. Overruled.
Bruce Schneier has addressed this exact issue. He did a good job explaining it by drawing our attention to the difference between these two police activities:
* officers randomly punch license plates into their computer to check for stolen cars, arrest warrants, etc.
* automatic cameras mounted on the roof of police cars read and check a thousand license plates per hour per police cruiser
The difference is that we, as a society, consented to the low-grade surveillance of police officers driving around personally observing us... but the latter approach, with its many technological and informational advances, is a level of surveillance that we did not consent to, and WOULD NOT have consented to when we originally consented to the low-tech approach.
A good reason to withhold consent is that the collected information is not universally accessible. The information is kept by law enforcement for their own use. It will be used to prove you guilty, but you cannot use it (or even learn of its existence) to prove yourself not-guilty. It worsens the already serious power disparity between citizens and the executive branch.
And, "the market" applauds when the prime minister of Greece announces that no, the Greek people won't have a say in their future after all. All you have to do is turn on the news tonight, any channel from Fox to NPR to hear the economic elite talk about how pleased they are that the people won't have a say in their future.
Not all statements are correct. Not all opinions are wise or even meaningful. Asking for economic advice from Greek citizens, more than 50% of whom are collecting a check for parasitic employment in a comically bloated public sector of a dead economy, is unlikely to yield anything useful.
In fact, left to their own devices, most citizens (not merely Greeks) will make short-sighted short-term-pain-minimizing decisions that will eventually wreck their culture's pattern. Democracy exists as a check on tyranny, NOT as a source of omniscience.
Yes, because by then it was apparent that a frame job was in progress.
That's absurd. Just because Assange supporters think he's being framed doesn't mean he's above the law. If the witnesses are questionable, that's a job for his defense lawyer. If he is innocent, and it's nothing but his word against theirs, that's not enough to convict.
Normally yes. In this situation, the odd behavior of the prosecutor, and then the other prosecutor, is sufficient evidence to conclude that something is very fishy. Given this, Mr. Assange would be insane to expect a normal trial that respects law and precedent.
Don't hate Mr. Assange because he has the courage to do what you do not. Be thankful that there is somebody out there who is willing to shine the light into dark castles.
This has nothing to do with the issue of Assange breaking the law by refusing to appear for questioning, and it's melodramatic and goofy, painting him as some courageous knight "willing to shine light into dark castles." Give us a freaking break.
I am sorry that you don't see the larger role that Mr. Assange plays. He is a hero to me, the only living hero I've ever had. He bravely stood as the lightning-rod for an organization that took on entrenched corruption. The ugliness in Sweden cannot change that, even if he's guilty as charged. I'm sorry that this makes you feel venomous or resentful... but real life hero worship is still possible, even in the current cynical sceptical anti-certainty era.
If you yourself do something similarly brave and worthy, then I will worship you too.
It's also ironic since Assange has been fighting against having his own personal details plastered online. It sounds as if your hero worship of Julian Assange is preventing you from objectively assessing both the accusations and his behavior in response to them.
That's not irony. At most it is hypocrisy, which is a minor sin -- and a sin only practicable by those who at least have the certainty to profess a moral code at all, in the face of today's legions of shrieking sceptics.
...but I don't concede that it is even hypocrisy. Mr. Assange is not a corrupt institution pilfering trainloads of wealth out of an unsuspecting society. Therefore, his personal details are not worthy of exposure.
Assange is one man. Do you believe that HE IS WIKILEAKS? I know he certainly does, but he isn't.
In the mind of most of the ballast members of our society, Assange == Wikileaks. And you must admit that if Mr. Assange is successfully railroaded on this charge, then forever after, the media will refer to wikileaks as "Wikileaks, founded by disgraced sex offender Julian . ..".
Guess what, there was whistle blowing before Assange, and most of the time, it wasn't done by attention whores who care more about being in the media and spending other peoples donations than actually getting the truth out. And by truth I mean one of two things, either highly edited and manipulative to the point of flat out lying releases of specific documents or say... video. Or release a whole bunch of random documents that were simply stolen for no reason other than to be embarrassing.
Unlike you, I am not willing to speculate about Mr. Assange's motivations, or to wildly assert that I know all of the conflicting pressures and perils he faces. So I am willing to cut him a LOT of slack, because he is personally risking his life by exposing very powerful people and organizations.
Coward? He left Sweden legally, after asking whether there were any objections or challenges that would have prevented this. He was told that he was free to go.
He was also told, and agreed to, make himself available for future questioning if necessary. When it became necessary, he decided to refuse to return for questioning, a warrant was issued, and he began fighting extradition.
Yes, because by then it was apparent that a frame job was in progress. Do you know that one of the two original accusers has already tried to back out?
In other news, I would like you to consider the following question: What do you suppose would happen to the world if, tomorrow, we invented a foolproof way to stop all whistleblowing?
Don't hate Mr. Assange because he has the courage to do what you do not. Be thankful that there is somebody out there who is willing to shine the light into dark castles.
The fact that we can disprove the Christian god does not mean that we can disprove all gods, though, just as you cannot disprove my claim that there is an invisible, incorporeal dragon in my garage that leaves no footprints and breathes undetectable fire as long as I am willing to tack on additional absurd attributes.
The problem is that to be unprovable, an object must have no effects on reality... and an object that has no effects on reality does not matter.
Believing there is no God is unreasonable. As an atheist, I have no belief pro or against the existence of god(s).
Believing that there are no tiny warty green demons in my printer, hand-painting each pixel at unearthly speed, is unreasonable. After all, I can imagine it being true, so that gives it equal epistemological weight with other data that I have personally observed to be true... right? Right?
This would indeed be a consistent theory, but it's also not the kind of God that's usefull in a religious persons life. (Some) people need a god that can provide practical guidance in moral matters, and give a reassuring sense of purpose to their life.
I rather thought the main purpose of a god was to explain the unexplainable (why/how are we here?) and to reassure that there's something after death. Of course, the mere existence of a creator doesn't guarantee life after death.
You're right, but so is the parent article...
On a personal level, gods exist to alleviate cognitive dissonance and to give a feeling of certainty to one's judgements and decisions.
On a social level, gods exist to impose control on the masses and to cheaply prevent free-riding.
In other words, the Chief has a very different use for religion than do the Braves. And ideally, the Chief doesn't fall for the religion . . . on those occasions when he did (Elegabolas, the Pharoahs) it was ruinously expensive.
No. They have not. The Supreme Court decision happened in 1892, IIANM, when a former railroad lobbyist turned clerk of a Supreme Court Justice inserted it into an unrelated decision. The corporate lawyers ran with it, and it became impossible to call back. The trusts and tycoons had been try, without success, for decades to have the SCOTUS declare corporations people. One pro-corp lobbyist in a powerful position did the trick when law and reason wouldn't.
Looks like it happened in 1886, in Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific. The skullduggery occurred in the case's headnote as published in subsequent law journals. It was perpetrated by former president of the Newburgh and New York Railway Company, J.C. Bancroft Davis.
Welcome to world where you do what's good for you at the moment. It's not like this is a new concept for US either. China practically owns US now, and in 10-20 years it will start to really show. In the end, they will probably fall again, but it will be China who controls the world soon (again). It's the cycle of life.
It's hard to 'own' a country by holding its currency, when you don't also control its printing presses. In the past decade, the US has doubled its money supply (M2), which via inflation has pulled about 40% of the rug out from under the US currency holdings in China's central bank. And there is no let-up in sight. In terms of money, China has been royally screwed.
Of course they weren't after money; what they wanted was to industrialize and modernize, getting their hands on our IP. They did, but you are mistaken if you think that such a thing is a net loss for the US. When the world contains many new manufacturers of the goods we desire, the real cost of those goods goes down. Have you noticed that even though your money has been inflating like crazy over the past decade, manufactured goods have nevertheless cost fewer dollars? A microwave oven these days costs $35!
Not to mention new R&D. China is beginning to invent new things, and make new discoveries. While these things have temporary effects on the movements of money, in the long run we benefit from having other people making discoveries alongside us, rather than continuing to scrabble in rice paddies.
You're not a very good capitalist if you believe that stuff. Industrialist, perhaps, entrepreneur, businessman, maybe, but not capitalist. A true capitalist only cares about maximizing profit above all other concerns.
Besides, why should we believe some random Slashdot poster rather than one of the many experts that Harvard graduates from its MBA school every year?
Are you sure you've correctly defined the concept 'capitalist'? Is that one parameter really the best way to explain the other properties observed in the group?
In a well regulated free market, terrestrial fission plants would not exist, because there aren't enough customers willing to pay for the decommissioning costs they would have to charge up front. In a laissez-faire market, of course, the plants would never be decommissioned, because there's no profit in it. The people who built them would just design them to fail after they died, and in the absence of regulation that would work... for them.
Fission might very well be feasible in a well regulated free market, if "well regulated" is defined to include regulation of negative externalitites.
Today, coal, oil-, and gas-burning plants are allowed to skate on the very public cost of raw materials (i.e. drilling subsidies, wars) and on the real costs of emissions and disposal. If all of those costs could be quantified (a hard problem I know), and then billed to the industries, consumers would feel the real cost of energy. At that point they would automatically and subconsciously take steps to become more efficient... and nuclear power would probably be a contender.
Slashdot Mirror
Now, in the US, there is supposed to be a clear separation between classes of antibiotics used on animals and those used on people, although this is more porous than we might like to think. There are however no guarantees that other countries have the exact same divisions. Moreover even assuming that this is the case, it deprives us humans of the effectiveness of certain classes of antibiotics which might prove useful in the future.
That principle was abruptly defenestrated under pressure from the agricultural sector. Even the very precious vancomycin, a "last line of defense" against multiple-drug-resistant pathogens, is being fed to cows now.
The alternative is expensive beef. Antibiotics are needed in order to fatten cows on corn. The alternatives are all much more expensive, but at least they are compatible with a cow's stomach lining. Unfortunately that would mean doubling the price of beef. If that happened, then the ballast would be shrieking at their congressmen within the hour ("McDonalds sez they hafta raise the price a'burger by two dollar!"), and boom, we're right back to corn.
The problem of antibiotic use in animals falls into the class of long-term abstract hazards that democracies cannot solve. Democracy can solve only those problems that are concrete and short-term painful.
And farmers pretty much feed all of their animals antibiotics because it's easier? cheaper? than only feeding it to animals once they're sick (in general it's a lot harder to tell when an animal is sick than a human). Or at least that's my understanding, I could be wrong.
Modern industrial cattle operations feed cows corn because calorie-for-calorie it is the cheapest food available for cows. The problem is that cows evolved to eat grass, not grains, so their stomachs aren't suited to it. They come down with stomach acidosis, and they will only live about six months once the corn diet begins.
While they are alive, they get infections via the stomach ulcers. So antibiotics are mixed into the corn to somewhat protect the stomach at least long enough for the cows to get obese for market.
I didn't choose the word 'obese' lightly. Industrial cows are literally obese, which is why their meat is so fatty. Fatty meat is easier to cook, and us dumb Westerners have been trained to prefer fatty meat ("nicely marbled").
Ahh-well the government will love then that not only do corn fed cattle have higher fat contents then grass fed cattle- they also require higher levels of antibiotics.
These antibiotics in farming is what leads to super bugs and antibiotic resistance in bacteria... which leads to... ... higher health costs and prescription costs.
Government should double subsidies on maize immediately to help make the loop complete.
Grass-fed meat not only has lower fat content (indeed -- it must be cooked differently than the obese meat from the grocery store), but the fats are different. I switched my family to grass-fed after I read the analysis of fat content from my local grass-fed distributor.
They deliver by UPS in insulated boxes packed with dry ice, so everything is still frozen when I get home and pick the box up off the porch.
"Do you think that maybe, just maybe, it might help to have more women in positions of power?"
Put them in Iran and let us know how that works out.
Also, Indira Ghandi and Margaret Thatcher.
Not to mention Golda Meier, former PM of Israel.
An oldie but goodie: The Ballmer Stagnation
Not only does that chart use an irregular Y axis that makes Gates' performance seem more steady and reliable than it actually was...
...but it doesn't bother to mention the dot-com bubble popping in ~2000. The fact that Ballmer kept their stock price up, while everyone else was losing theirs, is no small feat.
Please don't post any more dishonest crap from zdnet. I passionately distrust and loathe Microsoft, especially now that the B&N revelations are out. There is so much to hate about them, we don't also need to fabricate indictments of Ballmer.
I'd noticed that too. Religion was once the source of our moral compass, but it is thoroughly discredited now, and no replacement has risen to the task. Leftism sort of tried with various Collectivist / Utilitarian approaches, but was doomed to fail by its Skepticist "No one can be certain of anything" ideological foundation.
Evolution hasn't prepared us for the post-religion era.
I have to disagree with what you say; I don't think that religion is a necessary prerequisite for morality. The relation between morality and religion is a complex one, and difficult to untangle—particularly because some religions, such as the Judaic and Muslim—have taken great pains to impose a legal code on their followers. [...]
I never said otherwise... and reading your well-thought-out post, I see we already think alike on this subject.
I am one of those Camus-style thinkers who, on seeing that in our world "All is permitted" (Camus quoting Machievelli), develops a moral code and takes it seriously, even though "in reason, there is no reason to", as they say.
And yes, I'm aware of Rand's credible effort to rationally derive a moral code, which is entirely correct yet can't (to my satisfaction) answer the free-rider problem.
My daughter come home from 2nd Grade every week with a list of 'sight-words' to focus on - that is, words that were intended to be immediately recognized, not sounded out.
Glad modern science has caught up with elementary school.
That teaching method was originally introduced in the 1960s as "Look Say". It was part of the general ideological overhaul of public education, of which the "New Math" was also a part. It all sprang from Russel et. al.'s philosophy of Behaviorism, which pointed away from man-the-rational and towards man-the-animal. Hence reading by memorization rather than by rational system (phonics).
Since then it has been discredited and so it had to change its name, I think it's called "Whole Language" now. It still competes with Phonics. This new research suggests the reason why Look Say is not the total failure that I and others predicted. However, it has a bit of difficulty explaining why (as others in this thread have pointed out) we can so easily read words whose internal letters are jumbled, so long as the first and last letters are correct.
Given the absence of any sense of morality among the most intelligent of our young people, money buys all the talent the criminals need. But these guys will work for anybody who has money. The TLAs of the government, for instance. Or non-governmental agencies with an interest in destruction. There is nothing more dangerous than smart people without a moral compass.
I'd noticed that too. Religion was once the source of our moral compass, but it is thoroughly discredited now, and no replacement has risen to the task. Leftism sort of tried with various Collectivist / Utilitarian approaches, but was doomed to fail by its Skepticist "No one can be certain of anything" ideological foundation.
Evolution hasn't prepared us for the post-religion era.
Legalize drugs, and let their income of blood money vanish.
If you think legalizing drugs will stop their reign of terror, you've got another thing coming. They'll just find some other extremely lucrative (and therefore most likely illegal) market to attempt to corner, and their thuggery will continue.
Such as?
What "extremely lucrative" market is there, which Zetas can reasonably adjust itself to supply?
Here's a hint, whatever that market is, it isn't in Mexico. Not enough per capita income. The only market that could possibly bankroll an organization like Zetas is America... and what product or service other than narcotics is there such a passionate, unmet demand for in America?
You also had a law passed in the Carter years to make it easier for people who couldn't (and as we can now see, shouldn't) have been granted a mortgage provided one. This law got itself teeth during the Clinton years to aggressively push these high risk mortgages out there, or the banks would suffer fines. All of this backed up by federally created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who then started bundling these high risk loans with AAA credit loans. All the while, anything that had once been considered wise lending practices were thrown out the window.
This is horseshit. This is the "blame the poor minorities and the liberals who thought they should be subject to the same standards as everyone else" canard that was trotted out after the collapse to try to divert blame away from the deregulation that is the real obvious cause -- point of fact, even if this bull excrement explanation held any water, had the old rules about the types of securities banks could invest in and the limits to their ability to leverage were in place, the collapse wouldn't have happened.
The law never required banks to make risky loans. It only required them to not refuse loans based solely on where someone lived, or to use a higher standard to secure the loan than they would for someone who lived somewhere else.
And here is the actual text of the CRA and IBBEA laws that forced the banks' hands: IBBEA. Read up before you accidentally release any further un-data into our already troubled world.
You also had a law passed in the Carter years to make it easier for people who couldn't (and as we can now see, shouldn't) have been granted a mortgage provided one. This law got itself teeth during the Clinton years to aggressively push these high risk mortgages out there, or the banks would suffer fines. All of this backed up by federally created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who then started bundling these high risk loans with AAA credit loans. All the while, anything that had once been considered wise lending practices were thrown out the window.
This is horseshit. This is the "blame the poor minorities and the liberals who thought they should be subject to the same standards as everyone else" canard that was trotted out after the collapse to try to divert blame away from the deregulation that is the real obvious cause -- point of fact, even if this bull excrement explanation held any water, had the old rules about the types of securities banks could invest in and the limits to their ability to leverage were in place, the collapse wouldn't have happened.
The law never required banks to make risky loans. It only required them to not refuse loans based solely on where someone lived, or to use a higher standard to secure the loan than they would for someone who lived somewhere else.
So, are you woefully uninformed, or are you lying? I'm guessing lying.
Instead of paying people based on their self-inflicted stress levels, imagine paying people based on value delivered to other human beings. Then garbage men and teachers would be paid more than anyone else, and bankers would make something far closer to minimum wage.
We already do, where value is calculated by everyone else -- i.e. by the market. The means of getting a high assessment is to offer something that is both difficult (i.e. little competition) and pleasing to the customer.
Oh, you meant we have a central authority decide what the value of one's labor is. In that system, the means of getting a high assessment is to have a lot of political pull. I gather you prefer this system because the values that you currently provide are either not very difficult or not very pleasing.
"Easier" and "more universal" does NOT constitute "fundamentally different". No judge would buy that argument either. Technology makes things easier, that doesn't mean you make those things harder to do. Overruled.
Bruce Schneier has addressed this exact issue. He did a good job explaining it by drawing our attention to the difference between these two police activities:
The difference is that we, as a society, consented to the low-grade surveillance of police officers driving around personally observing us... but the latter approach, with its many technological and informational advances, is a level of surveillance that we did not consent to, and WOULD NOT have consented to when we originally consented to the low-tech approach.
A good reason to withhold consent is that the collected information is not universally accessible. The information is kept by law enforcement for their own use. It will be used to prove you guilty, but you cannot use it (or even learn of its existence) to prove yourself not-guilty. It worsens the already serious power disparity between citizens and the executive branch.
And, "the market" applauds when the prime minister of Greece announces that no, the Greek people won't have a say in their future after all. All you have to do is turn on the news tonight, any channel from Fox to NPR to hear the economic elite talk about how pleased they are that the people won't have a say in their future.
Not all statements are correct. Not all opinions are wise or even meaningful. Asking for economic advice from Greek citizens, more than 50% of whom are collecting a check for parasitic employment in a comically bloated public sector of a dead economy, is unlikely to yield anything useful.
In fact, left to their own devices, most citizens (not merely Greeks) will make short-sighted short-term-pain-minimizing decisions that will eventually wreck their culture's pattern. Democracy exists as a check on tyranny, NOT as a source of omniscience.
That's absurd. Just because Assange supporters think he's being framed doesn't mean he's above the law. If the witnesses are questionable, that's a job for his defense lawyer. If he is innocent, and it's nothing but his word against theirs, that's not enough to convict.
Normally yes. In this situation, the odd behavior of the prosecutor, and then the other prosecutor, is sufficient evidence to conclude that something is very fishy. Given this, Mr. Assange would be insane to expect a normal trial that respects law and precedent.
This has nothing to do with the issue of Assange breaking the law by refusing to appear for questioning, and it's melodramatic and goofy, painting him as some courageous knight "willing to shine light into dark castles." Give us a freaking break.
I am sorry that you don't see the larger role that Mr. Assange plays. He is a hero to me, the only living hero I've ever had. He bravely stood as the lightning-rod for an organization that took on entrenched corruption. The ugliness in Sweden cannot change that, even if he's guilty as charged. I'm sorry that this makes you feel venomous or resentful... but real life hero worship is still possible, even in the current cynical sceptical anti-certainty era.
If you yourself do something similarly brave and worthy, then I will worship you too.
It's also ironic since Assange has been fighting against having his own personal details plastered online. It sounds as if your hero worship of Julian Assange is preventing you from objectively assessing both the accusations and his behavior in response to them.
That's not irony. At most it is hypocrisy, which is a minor sin -- and a sin only practicable by those who at least have the certainty to profess a moral code at all, in the face of today's legions of shrieking sceptics.
...but I don't concede that it is even hypocrisy. Mr. Assange is not a corrupt institution pilfering trainloads of wealth out of an unsuspecting society. Therefore, his personal details are not worthy of exposure.
Assange is one man. Do you believe that HE IS WIKILEAKS? I know he certainly does, but he isn't.
In the mind of most of the ballast members of our society, Assange == Wikileaks. And you must admit that if Mr. Assange is successfully railroaded on this charge, then forever after, the media will refer to wikileaks as "Wikileaks, founded by disgraced sex offender Julian . . .".
Guess what, there was whistle blowing before Assange, and most of the time, it wasn't done by attention whores who care more about being in the media and spending other peoples donations than actually getting the truth out. And by truth I mean one of two things, either highly edited and manipulative to the point of flat out lying releases of specific documents or say ... video. Or release a whole bunch of random documents that were simply stolen for no reason other than to be embarrassing.
Unlike you, I am not willing to speculate about Mr. Assange's motivations, or to wildly assert that I know all of the conflicting pressures and perils he faces. So I am willing to cut him a LOT of slack, because he is personally risking his life by exposing very powerful people and organizations.
He was also told, and agreed to, make himself available for future questioning if necessary. When it became necessary, he decided to refuse to return for questioning, a warrant was issued, and he began fighting extradition.
Yes, because by then it was apparent that a frame job was in progress. Do you know that one of the two original accusers has already tried to back out?
In other news, I would like you to consider the following question: What do you suppose would happen to the world if, tomorrow, we invented a foolproof way to stop all whistleblowing?
Don't hate Mr. Assange because he has the courage to do what you do not. Be thankful that there is somebody out there who is willing to shine the light into dark castles.
The fact that we can disprove the Christian god does not mean that we can disprove all gods, though, just as you cannot disprove my claim that there is an invisible, incorporeal dragon in my garage that leaves no footprints and breathes undetectable fire as long as I am willing to tack on additional absurd attributes.
The problem is that to be unprovable, an object must have no effects on reality... and an object that has no effects on reality does not matter.
As an atheist, I believe that there is no god
Believing there is no God is unreasonable. As an atheist, I have no belief pro or against the existence of god(s).
Believing that there are no tiny warty green demons in my printer, hand-painting each pixel at unearthly speed, is unreasonable. After all, I can imagine it being true, so that gives it equal epistemological weight with other data that I have personally observed to be true... right? Right?
This would indeed be a consistent theory, but it's also not the kind of God that's usefull in a religious persons life. (Some) people need a god that can provide practical guidance in moral matters, and give a reassuring sense of purpose to their life.
I rather thought the main purpose of a god was to explain the unexplainable (why/how are we here?) and to reassure that there's something after death. Of course, the mere existence of a creator doesn't guarantee life after death.
You're right, but so is the parent article...
On a personal level, gods exist to alleviate cognitive dissonance and to give a feeling of certainty to one's judgements and decisions.
On a social level, gods exist to impose control on the masses and to cheaply prevent free-riding.
In other words, the Chief has a very different use for religion than do the Braves. And ideally, the Chief doesn't fall for the religion . . . on those occasions when he did (Elegabolas, the Pharoahs) it was ruinously expensive.
If they both erupt the "is man effecting climate" argument would become moot.
WORLD ENDS. MINORITIES DISPROPORTIONATELY AFFECTED.
No. They have not. The Supreme Court decision happened in 1892, IIANM, when a former railroad lobbyist turned clerk of a Supreme Court Justice inserted it into an unrelated decision. The corporate lawyers ran with it, and it became impossible to call back. The trusts and tycoons had been try, without success, for decades to have the SCOTUS declare corporations people. One pro-corp lobbyist in a powerful position did the trick when law and reason wouldn't.
Looks like it happened in 1886, in Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific. The skullduggery occurred in the case's headnote as published in subsequent law journals. It was perpetrated by former president of the Newburgh and New York Railway Company, J.C. Bancroft Davis.
Welcome to world where you do what's good for you at the moment. It's not like this is a new concept for US either. China practically owns US now, and in 10-20 years it will start to really show. In the end, they will probably fall again, but it will be China who controls the world soon (again). It's the cycle of life.
It's hard to 'own' a country by holding its currency, when you don't also control its printing presses. In the past decade, the US has doubled its money supply (M2), which via inflation has pulled about 40% of the rug out from under the US currency holdings in China's central bank. And there is no let-up in sight. In terms of money, China has been royally screwed.
Of course they weren't after money; what they wanted was to industrialize and modernize, getting their hands on our IP. They did, but you are mistaken if you think that such a thing is a net loss for the US. When the world contains many new manufacturers of the goods we desire, the real cost of those goods goes down. Have you noticed that even though your money has been inflating like crazy over the past decade, manufactured goods have nevertheless cost fewer dollars? A microwave oven these days costs $35!
Not to mention new R&D. China is beginning to invent new things, and make new discoveries. While these things have temporary effects on the movements of money, in the long run we benefit from having other people making discoveries alongside us, rather than continuing to scrabble in rice paddies.
You're not a very good capitalist if you believe that stuff. Industrialist, perhaps, entrepreneur, businessman, maybe, but not capitalist. A true capitalist only cares about maximizing profit above all other concerns.
Besides, why should we believe some random Slashdot poster rather than one of the many experts that Harvard graduates from its MBA school every year?
Are you sure you've correctly defined the concept 'capitalist'? Is that one parameter really the best way to explain the other properties observed in the group?
Fission might very well be feasible in a well regulated free market, if "well regulated" is defined to include regulation of negative externalitites.
Today, coal, oil-, and gas-burning plants are allowed to skate on the very public cost of raw materials (i.e. drilling subsidies, wars) and on the real costs of emissions and disposal. If all of those costs could be quantified (a hard problem I know), and then billed to the industries, consumers would feel the real cost of energy. At that point they would automatically and subconsciously take steps to become more efficient... and nuclear power would probably be a contender.