Can you imagine how the world would be different if in 2003, instead of invading Iraq, we had spent that money on nuclear power?
First a few hundred billion to design and develop a standard power plant, one that was pre-approved and could be deployed nearly anywhere for about a billion dollars each. Then about 100 of them. Then, Fischer-Tropsch plants to turn the cheap electricity into cheap fuel.
I was doing pretty good keeping a straight face until you got to the part about the experts with prediction records, and then I busted out laughing. How many of your experts were on TV in 2007 telling us that there was no bubble?
Look, if you don't have data, just admit that you are repeating hearsay and move on. You don't need to spin an elaborate tale about how your friend has data and he's really smart so I should listen to you.
Sadly, the government can waive immunity. And then there is the sue&settle technique where an agency partners up with an activist group and together they come up with a plan where the activist group sues the agency, then the agency settles. The settlement then becomes a court order to do or not do something that Congress never would have agreed to.
If this isn't about feels, then certainly you have data to back it up. Note that I said data, not arguments, not models - data. Show me some data.
While you are busy researching that, try really, really hard not to notice how America prospered prior to the 1962 Trade Expansion Act, and how we have withered since.
Also, try not to notice that Britain fell into the trap of "free trade" around 1850 and over the next 50 years or so we went from half of their production, to double it. In the period from 1865 through 1900, commodity prices fell 58%, real wages grew by 53% despite a doubling of the population, GDP grew by 4% annually, and production grew by 5% annually.
How have we fared in the "free trade" era? 20 trillion in debt, and each year we sell another trillion dollars worth of our land and productive assets in exchange for consumer goods. How long do you think we can keep that up?
How confident would you be in biology if biologists had overlooked pooping as a way for animals to not grow as fast as their food intake would suggest? Now how about if they were predicting that animals would soon grow as big as houses, but the extra mass is hiding somewhere?
That's basically what we are talking about here.
Oh, and I've lived in Minnesota for a long time. It gets cold here, sometimes it gets very cold for extended periods, called a "cold snap". Calling it a polar vortex doesn't make it new.
There is no data - just confirmation bias. You believe everything that agrees with your theory, and shout down everything that contradicts it, at least until the Hockey Team can show up and "correct" it.
Wait, wasn't working for her husband Hillary's entire claim to fame? And wasn't she promising to put Bill to work if she had won? Seems a bit odd to start whining about a president getting free labor from his family now.
We were serious about what we wanted when we nominated and elected him, and we sincerely hope that he intends to follow through. Neuter the EPA, cut taxes, cut regulation, build the wall, bring jobs back - all of it. We even want to hold the enemedia accountable when they intentionally publish lies, and we'd like to have some free trade agreements, which are different from the Free Trade, Inc.(TM) agreements we've been pushing lately.
Oh, and if you want to call it isolationist and trade-war leaning to have policies that aren't designed to distribute American wealth around the world at the expense of the American people, I can't compete with your wounded feels, but that still don't make it so.
We climate "scientists" haven't even mastered the basics of our field, but we are getting better. We think that we are close to plugging a gigantic fucking hole in our ignorance. Just because we can't explain the past or the present yet doesn't stop us from being 100% sure about the future.
The neo-jacobin conceit is the insane idea that people who have neither the history of, nor desire for, democracy will suddenly turn into a polite society of Minnesotan churchgoing farmers if only we destroy the government they currently have and apparently want.
Did you learn nothing from Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya?
Shit, we've been saying that for years. You didn't need a Harvard study to tell us that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide turns people into morons, you can just open the journals and start reading. The apparent IQ of climate "scientists" is quite obviously inversely correlated, and has been since at least the 90s.
Nope, sorry. The Greatest Generation lived through The Great Depression and fought WWII. Then, with the world returned to peace and the country returned to prosperity, they spawned the Baby Boom.
And somehow managed to completely fuck up their upbringing.
The only time I've ever heard of the boomers being called "The Greatest Generation" is indirectly, like when TLP calls Millennials "the second greatest generation of narcissists ever".
They can't, for two reasons. The first is that their message is utter garbage to the core, and has been ever since Marx wrote it. This was recognized instantly by, among others, Bastiat, who wrote an excellent rebuttal which shouldn't take anyone more than an hour or so to read. The translation from economic terms to cultural terms by the Frankfurt School didn't make it any better.
The second is that they don't possess the equipment necessary for thinking.
And no, I don't mean brains. I mean introspection, self awareness, curiosity, etc. Well, maybe I do mean brains too, a little bit. The people "protesting" the election results, to pick one example, probably aren't ditching their local Mensa meetings to be there.
I wish stories like this included a disclaimer. No one on the planet is opposed to network neutrality. Lots and lots of us are opposed to Network Neutrality, Inc.(TM) - a government overreach brought to you by corporate sponsors to use against their corporate opponents and customers which may or may not involve networks and certainly contains no neutrality.
Part of the reason we all hate the media so much is that they tend to switch back and forth between the concept and the instance in an intentionally deceptive way. Please, slashdot editors, for each story like this, insist that the submitter pick a meaning, tell us which, and stick to it.
Congratulations to Facebook for stepping up against the spreaders of fake news and kicking CNN, (MS)NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, BBC and Fox off their platform! Oh, and all of the polling organizations that got everything 100% wrong for the last 18 months. Very happy to see them go too.
Enjoy your CSPAN and Breitbart News, facebook users.
Here is the text from his website. You may notice that it is slightly more detailed than his 15 second debate answer. The first link is to a 4 page PDF. I'm not going to convert the links for his sources, but they are there.
Repeal and replace Obamacare with Health Savings Accounts (HSAs).
Work with Congress to create a patient-centered health care system that promotes choice, quality, and affordability.
Work with states to establish high-risk pools to ensure access to coverage for individuals who have not maintained continuous coverage.
Allow people to purchase insurance across state lines, in all 50 states, creating a dynamic market.
Maximize flexibility for states via block grants so that local leaders can design innovative Medicaid programs that will better serve their low-income citizens.
KEY ISSUES
President Obama said his health plan would cut the cost of family premiums by up to $2,500 a year. Instead, premiums have gone up by almost $5,000 since Obamacare passed. [Kaiser Family Foundation]
Nearly two-thirds of Obamacare Exchange plans lost over $2.2 billion just in 2014. [Mercatus Center, April 22, 2016]
Health insurance companies are fleeing the Obamacare Exchanges. Five states, one-third of all counties, and 19% of Americans eligible for Obamacare will have only one Exchange insurer this year. [New York Times, Aug. 19, 2016], [Kaiser Family Foundation, Aug. 28, 2016], [McKinsey on Healthcare, Aug. 18, 2016]
Premiums have skyrocketed across the nation, with a national average of almost 25%, with some states experiencing rate increases up to 70%. In Iowa, one plan got a 43% increase approved. In Florida, the individual market will see an average rate increase of 19%. In Pennsylvania, at least three plans requested rate increases over 40%. And the average rate requested in Minnesota is 54%. [ACA Signups], [Health Insurance], [Miami Herald], [Health Insurance]
More than half the Exchange plans have deductibles of $3,000 or more. [The New York Times, Nov. 14, 2015]
Deductibles are going up in 2017, some as high as $7,000 per person on the âoecheapestâ Obamacare plans. [Investors Business Daily, May 13, 2016]
People are going without needed medical care because they canâ(TM)t afford these amounts. [The Boston Globe, Nov. 16, 2015]
Most of the people getting covered under Obamacare are getting it through the government run Medicaid program. [Heritage Foundation]
Almost 12 million more Americans were enrolled in Medicaid or the Childrenâ(TM)s Health Insurance Plan since October 2013. [Obamacarefacts.com]
By 2026 one-fourth of our population will be on Medicaid or the Childrenâ(TM)s Health Insurance Program. [Congressional Budget Office, March 2016]
Numerous studies show that Medicaid enrollees canâ(TM)t find doctors. [Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Inspector General, Dec. 2014]
Medicaid beneficiaries have worse health compared to everyone else. Add to that higher death rates, misuse of the emergency room and higher overall costs. [âoeHow to Fix Medicaid,â National Affairs, 2014]
Obamacare has reduced pay for workers in small businesses and reduced employment
Anything posted in the immediate aftermath of the election is part of coping, so I take this sort of thing with a great heaping helping of salt. The right wing did it when Obama was elected
Yes to the coping mechanism theory, no to the idea that this is some sort of left-right symmetry. There were no riots in dumbfuckistan in 2008.
The poor will get poorer, the rich will get richer
Now I think you are just trolling. This is clearly a progressive/democrat ideal, sometimes shared with a small (and soon to be defunct) part of the Republican party, not a conservative ideal. Haven't you been paying attention to the last 8 (or 28) years?
If you and your family are starving, you'll do pretty much anything to get food,
Just stop. No one is starving here, and no one is going to start starving in the next 8 years.
If he starts taking a pickaxe to things that have been part of America for the last sixty or seventy, all bets are off.
The glass ceiling was quietly removed 20 or 30 years ago. I have never in my adult life met even a single human being that believed that women were incapable of becoming president, and no one my age or younger seriously believed that it would be any more difficult for the right woman than it is for men.
If Margaret Thatcher wasn't a conservative, she would probably get the credit for it.
Slashdot Mirror
Jerry Pournelle has been saying this for years.
Can you imagine how the world would be different if in 2003, instead of invading Iraq, we had spent that money on nuclear power?
First a few hundred billion to design and develop a standard power plant, one that was pre-approved and could be deployed nearly anywhere for about a billion dollars each. Then about 100 of them. Then, Fischer-Tropsch plants to turn the cheap electricity into cheap fuel.
I'd throw a billion at Bussard's group for inertial electrostatic containment fusion research too.
I was doing pretty good keeping a straight face until you got to the part about the experts with prediction records, and then I busted out laughing. How many of your experts were on TV in 2007 telling us that there was no bubble?
Look, if you don't have data, just admit that you are repeating hearsay and move on. You don't need to spin an elaborate tale about how your friend has data and he's really smart so I should listen to you.
Sadly, the government can waive immunity. And then there is the sue&settle technique where an agency partners up with an activist group and together they come up with a plan where the activist group sues the agency, then the agency settles. The settlement then becomes a court order to do or not do something that Congress never would have agreed to.
If this isn't about feels, then certainly you have data to back it up. Note that I said data, not arguments, not models - data. Show me some data.
While you are busy researching that, try really, really hard not to notice how America prospered prior to the 1962 Trade Expansion Act, and how we have withered since.
Also, try not to notice that Britain fell into the trap of "free trade" around 1850 and over the next 50 years or so we went from half of their production, to double it. In the period from 1865 through 1900, commodity prices fell 58%, real wages grew by 53% despite a doubling of the population, GDP grew by 4% annually, and production grew by 5% annually.
How have we fared in the "free trade" era? 20 trillion in debt, and each year we sell another trillion dollars worth of our land and productive assets in exchange for consumer goods. How long do you think we can keep that up?
How confident would you be in biology if biologists had overlooked pooping as a way for animals to not grow as fast as their food intake would suggest? Now how about if they were predicting that animals would soon grow as big as houses, but the extra mass is hiding somewhere?
That's basically what we are talking about here.
Oh, and I've lived in Minnesota for a long time. It gets cold here, sometimes it gets very cold for extended periods, called a "cold snap". Calling it a polar vortex doesn't make it new.
There is no data - just confirmation bias. You believe everything that agrees with your theory, and shout down everything that contradicts it, at least until the Hockey Team can show up and "correct" it.
Wait, wasn't working for her husband Hillary's entire claim to fame? And wasn't she promising to put Bill to work if she had won? Seems a bit odd to start whining about a president getting free labor from his family now.
That war has been won. Now, they spend their time doing things like this.
Yes, we intend to hold him to his promises.
We were serious about what we wanted when we nominated and elected him, and we sincerely hope that he intends to follow through. Neuter the EPA, cut taxes, cut regulation, build the wall, bring jobs back - all of it. We even want to hold the enemedia accountable when they intentionally publish lies, and we'd like to have some free trade agreements, which are different from the Free Trade, Inc.(TM) agreements we've been pushing lately.
Oh, and if you want to call it isolationist and trade-war leaning to have policies that aren't designed to distribute American wealth around the world at the expense of the American people, I can't compete with your wounded feels, but that still don't make it so.
Allow me to translate this into English.
Woah! Are you saying that I can avoid responsibility for my actions by hiring an intermediary to pull the trigger?
Wait... What was Assad doing in Libya? Did Ghadaffi know he was there?
The neo-jacobin conceit is the insane idea that people who have neither the history of, nor desire for, democracy will suddenly turn into a polite society of Minnesotan churchgoing farmers if only we destroy the government they currently have and apparently want.
Did you learn nothing from Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya?
Shit, we've been saying that for years. You didn't need a Harvard study to tell us that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide turns people into morons, you can just open the journals and start reading. The apparent IQ of climate "scientists" is quite obviously inversely correlated, and has been since at least the 90s.
Nope, sorry. The Greatest Generation lived through The Great Depression and fought WWII. Then, with the world returned to peace and the country returned to prosperity, they spawned the Baby Boom.
And somehow managed to completely fuck up their upbringing.
The only time I've ever heard of the boomers being called "The Greatest Generation" is indirectly, like when TLP calls Millennials "the second greatest generation of narcissists ever".
But, but, muh vast right wing conspiracy!
Two days of nonstop "Trump is evil and he's going to kill us all" stories makes me think that maybe it is going to take /. a while to settle down.
They can't, for two reasons. The first is that their message is utter garbage to the core, and has been ever since Marx wrote it. This was recognized instantly by, among others, Bastiat, who wrote an excellent rebuttal which shouldn't take anyone more than an hour or so to read. The translation from economic terms to cultural terms by the Frankfurt School didn't make it any better.
The second is that they don't possess the equipment necessary for thinking.
And no, I don't mean brains. I mean introspection, self awareness, curiosity, etc. Well, maybe I do mean brains too, a little bit. The people "protesting" the election results, to pick one example, probably aren't ditching their local Mensa meetings to be there.
I wish stories like this included a disclaimer. No one on the planet is opposed to network neutrality. Lots and lots of us are opposed to Network Neutrality, Inc.(TM) - a government overreach brought to you by corporate sponsors to use against their corporate opponents and customers which may or may not involve networks and certainly contains no neutrality.
Part of the reason we all hate the media so much is that they tend to switch back and forth between the concept and the instance in an intentionally deceptive way. Please, slashdot editors, for each story like this, insist that the submitter pick a meaning, tell us which, and stick to it.
Congratulations to Facebook for stepping up against the spreaders of fake news and kicking CNN, (MS)NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, BBC and Fox off their platform! Oh, and all of the polling organizations that got everything 100% wrong for the last 18 months. Very happy to see them go too.
Enjoy your CSPAN and Breitbart News, facebook users.
Here is the text from his website. You may notice that it is slightly more detailed than his 15 second debate answer. The first link is to a 4 page PDF. I'm not going to convert the links for his sources, but they are there.
Yes to the coping mechanism theory, no to the idea that this is some sort of left-right symmetry. There were no riots in dumbfuckistan in 2008.
Now I think you are just trolling. This is clearly a progressive/democrat ideal, sometimes shared with a small (and soon to be defunct) part of the Republican party, not a conservative ideal. Haven't you been paying attention to the last 8 (or 28) years?
Just stop. No one is starving here, and no one is going to start starving in the next 8 years.
I'm pretty sure that one particular 51 year old law is on the chopping block.
Do you mean the civil case that was dropped on November 4th after it was widely exposed as a hoax?
Well, I still think you should seek help if you need it. Even if people are more understanding of your racism, it isn't good for your soul.
I'm hopeful that there will be no such attempts because he chose his running mate well. Not many people that dislike Trump want Pence instead.
The glass ceiling was quietly removed 20 or 30 years ago. I have never in my adult life met even a single human being that believed that women were incapable of becoming president, and no one my age or younger seriously believed that it would be any more difficult for the right woman than it is for men.
If Margaret Thatcher wasn't a conservative, she would probably get the credit for it.