Like many people in this day and age, I couldn't maintain any car, no matter how "simple" or "user maintainable" it is. The Model S Sedan is therefore equally as maintainable for me as a mid 70s pick-up truck.
If they sell ever these things in Germany and sell them for less than 55k euro (which I'd bloody well hope so considering how much of a rip off that already is after the exchange rate - their website still says TBD though - I'm REALLY hoping for sub 50k (even if just by a tiny bit)), and have a service centre within the driving range from where I live, I'll definitely be getting one. I wanted the Roadster originally, but the price tag is just a little TOO much for me - 55k I can handle, 89k not so much.
The law says that you own the copyright to your work, so you do deserve something from it.
In your post, you didn't say anything about the law, you said, "then it's only fair that he should get a cut for his contribution". My reply was addressing this, not any legal matters around it.
Perhaps the law is wrong, but nobody was making that argument.
Almost every thread here on this story is about how the copyright laws are wrong or being abused and therefore need to be changed/tweaked, so I didn't address that aspect at all (although I 100% agree with the people saying that).
No it isn't. Typing this post here is my "work" (as in, it's taken my time and effort to do), but if you decide to use it to make millions of dollars somehow, I deserve NOTHING from that - I'll probably kick myself for not having the smarts to figure out how to get rich off it myself, but I am in NO WAY entitled to one cent of what you make from it.
To say that evolution was architected by God does not make sense. Evolution, in the layman use of it given this context, is the *unguided* natural process of life. Not guided. Period. It's random happenstances that occurred in an unbelievably lucky sequence to form life.
That is completely contradictory to the Biblical account in Genesis. So it doesn't "kind of solve" it. Evolution is antithetical to Biblical teaching.
I don't think that's the case. I was raised in a religious family (my stepfather is a minister in the Anglican church) and I am well versed in the Bible, especially Genesis, having read it many times over. From my perspective, the account describes a creation story, but doesn't specify "how" in the slightest, only that it was done. God, as a divine creator, is often shown to be subtly influencing things in a less than direct fashion (although in the old testament in general, he did have a bit more of a hands-on approach it seems), and so evolution could well be considered as the "how" of Genesis. This is, as far as I'm aware, my step-father's take on it also.
And "cummon".. evolution is a theory. It is not a scientifically proven fact.
Neither is radiation, gravity or the existence of extra-solar planets. All of these are theories. There are NO "facts" in science - only REALLY well evidenced theories (the evidence is generally referred to as "proofs", but that shouldn't confuse you as to thinking it's fact - evolution has many proofs also, which are most likely right, but may be wrong, just as with gravity et al)
You must choose whether or not you believe.
Belief is not a choice - or at least, not for people who don't have serious cognitive reasoning problems.
I believe that there is a country called France, since I was there a couple of weeks ago. I believe that I just drank a cup of coffee. I believe that the jeans I am wearing are black. These are all very strongly evidenced beliefs and it would take a LOT to shake my belief in these things.
I also believe in a country called Canada (although I've never been there). I believe that the milk in my fridge is the processed form of the milk from a cow. I believe that my desk at work is currently unoccupied (I'm on holiday). These are quite strongly evidenced beliefs, but not quite as strong as the previous set and while it'd take a bit to shake my belief in these things, it'd be easier to do.
And lastly, I believe that there is life on other planets somewhere in our galaxy. I believe that the legends of King Arthur are based more on a conglomeration of different stories than any one man. I believe that taking LSD very infrequently is more beneficial than harmful to a human body and brain. All of these are relatively weakly evidenced beliefs, and a good argument against any of them is likely to make me reconsider.
Now please consider, just for yourself, where your belief in God falls in to the above categories... Or do you even believe at all? I'm not saying you don't, but the last time I presented this case of belief to a Christian friend of mine, he admitted that he doesn't REALLY believe in God - he just hopes, wishes, and goes through the appropriate motions "in case it's right".
May I remind you that Darwin himself recanted?
As the other replier to your post pointed out - that's a fable.
Christ was either who the Bible claims, a liar, or crazy. You must decide.
You missed a valid option - he didn't exist. It's possible there was a man named Jesus around that time, who did a few things vaguely similar to the stories told about him, but it's extremely unlikely that many of the stories are true, as they bear too much resemblance to much older tales from other religions and are far more likely to therefore be borrowings. (note: I was going to say "a man named Jesus of Nazareth", but that's actually a bit less likely -
You ask Obama "So when do you believe life begins?". Simple question, but...
That is NOT a simple question. Primarily, because you haven't defined what you mean by "life". The answer can vary wildly depending on your belief structure as well as your understanding of the question.
Exactly as you phrased it there, I would say, "About 3.4 billion years ago...", as a child is not "new life" - it's a continuation of the life from its parents.
However, if you add a single article to the question and say "So when do you believe a life begins?", then clearly you're trying to separate out the individual being rather than the "life" in general. There are, in this case, many different answers depending on your understanding of "a life".
As an individual entity, you could say it exists the moment the sperm fertilises the egg and becomes a parasite in the mother's womb.
Or, maybe you could say it's the moment it develops a soul (if you believe in souls (disclaimer: I don't)), which probably varies based on your religious teachings/understanding.
Another possibility is that you could say it's when the brain's grey matter develops, since that's what defines our personalities and individuality (given you don't believe in souls that do this (independent of whether you believe in souls in general or not)).
Or, perhaps you could say it's the moment it exists physically independent of the parent, in which case it's not until shortly AFTER birth when the umbilical cord is cut.
Or maybe even you might go to the point where you say it's not a life until it's capable of forming long term memory and reasoning capabilities, in which case it's a variable range somewhere between birth and a couple of years after birth.
All of these options are valid lines of reasoning, and most thinking people are likely to at least be able to consider these arguments on their various merits. So, not such a simple question after all...
Are you sure it was your position that they were disagreeing with and not the way that you said it?
Remember, people on the 'net can't see you or hear the way your post sounds in your own head. For that reason, I am generally very careful to phrase my posts in such a way as to remove as much ambiguity about my thoughts as possible, and also reply in as civil a manner as possible to avoid my manner being misconstrued as anything else (except on the aforementioned bad days, when I quite rightly deserve flamebait mods). Even when I think someone is dead wrong, I know that flat out saying, "You're wrong" is going to be modded (quite rightly) as a troll no matter how many other valid points I make in the same post. A little civility goes a long way to keeping good karma 'round these parts.
(note: I haven't looked at your post history, so it's possible you may be completely correct, but I've seen other people say the same thing, and it's quite clear why they were modded down in the instances that they were - if you could link to the posts in question where you believe you were unfairly modded, that might give some more weight to your claim)
I can see how groupthink could occur from such a system, but I really don't think it does happen all that much in reality. If you look at the comments on any article, you'll generally find quite a lot of "disagreement" and people being modded up (and down) on both sides of any debate. I'll concede that it may be bad for completely "off the side" arguments in some cases, but I really don't think all. I also think that a trust metrics system as proposed in TFA would work even better, since it'd be mostly free of the kind of petty attitudes that do from time to time negatively affect the slashdot mod system.
Want a glimpse of how this works out? Think about Karma on slashdot or karma on reddit. If you've participated attentively in either of those systems you already know how problematic this will be.
Honestly, I've seen a lot of people complain about the Karma/moderation system on slashdot, but I've never seen a problem with it. I actually find it works quite well (for me at least). If I'm having a really bad day and write a flamebait sort of post, it'll generally be modded as such. The majority of my posts don't get modded at all, and when I write something that particularly interests people, it tends to get up-modded accordingly.
It may just be that I've never been targetted by any of those types that downmod based purely on their personal feelings of me personally, but looking at the mods in general on posts, I do tend to agree with them, so clearly it's working in general at least.
Just finished reading it... don't have time to post a long critique, but short version: Excellent! Compelling storyline, comfortable pace, good style. Overall, a quality read! Thankyou very much for making it available - if you actually got something for the printed book, I'd buy it just to reward you (but, since you said you don't, I won't)
I'd say go with any manufacturer as long as they support standards - then you don't NEED specific "drivers".
For printers, that's anything that prints LPR or Raw (AKA "Port 9100 printing", AKA "Socket", AKA "Jet Direct") over network or offers a standard USB interface identifying itself as a printer; and interprets PCL5, PCLXL or PostScript.
For scanners, anything that implements TWAIN over USB correctly (which is a much smaller subset than "has TWAIN drivers") or has network scanning support (FTP, SMB, Email, etc, take your pick)
And yes, I do work in the printer/scanner industry, but I won't hype my company's products.
Thankfully, not everywhere in the world. Mostly just the Americas I believe. They still use sugar in Europe, Australia and NZ at the very least. Haven't specifically checked elsewhere. I almost choked first time I had a bottle of coke in the US - the HFCS just makes it "thicker" which is quite disturbing when you're not used to it.
Depends what you mean by "watch TV"... Like many other posters here, I download all of my content and watch it at my leisure. Currently, that's just on a 20" monitor, but if I ever feel like I want to upgrade the experience, I'll buy a big wide-screen TV or maybe a projector. Currently, I do not own, nor plan to own, a television (box with screen for receiving and displaying broadcast signals).
There's a number of MythBusters fans, for example.
Yep - I'm one of 'em... but "watching TV programs" has very little to do with "owning a TV", which I think is the point that many posters are trying to get across here.
Just remember that if you don't, that's still an anecdote, and the plural of anecdote is not data.
I've always thought this is an odd phrase. How many anecdotes does it take before it is data? There are currently 6750000000 or so people on earth. If I provide you with 10 anecdotes, you can pretty easily just pass it off as meaningless. If I provide you with half a million anecdotes, are they still just anecdotes, or is that data?
Personally, I'd say that each anecdote is one datum, and therefore the plural of anecdote IS data... it's not particularly useful data if there's only 10 data points out of a possible 6.75 milliard, but it's data nevertheless.
It's not just that it's used in sci-fi... personally, I prefer "Sol" and "Luna" to refer to our sun and our moon, because it reduces confusion. There is only ONE "Sol" and only ONE "Luna", but there are many suns and there are many moons. Trying to distinguish between "Sun" and "sun" or "Moon" and "moon" is of course simple in written form, but in spoken form can easily lead to confusion. If I were able to go live on a planet in another solar system which was orbiting just one sun and had one moon orbiting it, there's no way I'd bother "naming" them in normal conversation and would just say "the sun" and "the moon" in normal speech like I do here. To clarify WHICH sun and WHICH moon I meant, I would then use the names, just as I do here.
So, official names or not, "Sol" and "Luna" make sense.
I apologise in advance in that I'm not normally a spelling Nazi, but you seem to have used the word "durestriction" a lot. I was unsure if it was perhaps I word I had never heard, and even after sounding it out to myself was confused as to what you meant. I performed a quick search on Google and found it appears to be a relatively uncommon (but still common enough to have just over 100 hits) misspelling of "jurisdiction", which I then mentally replaced in your post and found it finally makes sense.
Since the rest of your post is well written with excellent grammar and spelling, and also makes some excellent points, I really don't mean to flame you, just to attempt to politely inform you of your rather unusual error.
Actually, without asking Google (or similar), I don't generally memorise conversions like that (I have never used imperial measurements in my life), so no, we don't all know that.
I really hate to say this, since I would truly wish to justify that 1. we make more because we are more effective, and 2. we make more because the standard of living is much higher here.
It's worth mentioning though that both of these are not always the case. You don't need to feel TOO guilty about making too much, since here in Germany, I make about 1.5 times what I could make in the US for a similar job (according to most "average income" websites that I've seen). And the standard of living here is definitely very high*.
* It's hard to measure quality of life though, as it's quite subjective - if I lived in the US, I'd definitely have a MUCH larger apartment than I do here, but how much you consider "apartment size" to be "quality of life" is difficult to say... I wouldn't want to trade in "cheap and widely available extremely high quality beer" for "have to drive 10 minutes to find a shop that only sells slightly alcoholic gnat's urine". Nor would I want to trade in "surrounded by beautiful old buildings" for "surrounded by drab skyscrapers or suburban streets with a thousand identical houses". Or "walk safely through ANY streets at ANY time of night" for "be careful of these areas when it's dark". Or even "cheap and TRULY unlimited high speed broadband" for "capped without telling you how much by and highly priced broadband". I know that not all of those apply to every part of the US, but each of them definitely applies to at least some places, and I do definitely prefer the quality of life here in mainland Western Europe to any place in the US that I've visited.
You sir, are either a troll or are one of the most horribly ignorant and destructive people I've ever had the displeasure to read a post from and I would happily see people with your beliefs eradicated from the earth. Yes, I really do mean that.
Patriotism, in moderation, is fine. Patriotism to this level borders on insanity in the modern GLOBAL economy and society that we live in. We are ONE race - the human race - and it's about time people like you woke up and realised it. Stop caring so much about your country and start caring more about your WORLD and things will get better for everyone.
Do I care about the success and wellbeing of the United States? YES! I do! Just as much as I care about Germany, Australia, Uganda, Brazil, Iraq, New Zealand, Tuvalu and every other nation on this planet.
The way I see it, plenty of Europeans, and most asian countries will never buy an American product no matter what the USA produces, so, to hell with them.
Not true at all. The vast majority of people in Europe will buy "what they think is best". Whether it's made here, there or somewhere else is totally irrelevant. If it's the best (including such factors as value for money obviously), that's what people will pick.
Re:You're afraid to send out a resume?
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I enjoy my work. I'd enjoy not working more. Therefore work is (much like the person you quoted) the horrible thing I do in order to have money.
So because one thing is more enjoyable than another, you'd describe the lesser thing as "horrible"? That doesn't quite make sense to me. I'd enjoy spending all day having sex with lingerie models much more than I enjoy my job, but it's not going to happen... what I spend around 60 hours a week doing is truly enjoyable to me. Not as good as the lingerie models, but still good. I'd definitely never describe it as "the horrible thing I do".
I left a company about one and a half years ago to move to greener pastures (well to be precise, same global company, different country, but I did still technically quit the old job). I wrote a fairly standard and "nice" goodbye email to everyone and they threw me a nice farewell party.
However, what I found humorous was the emails I RECEIVED as I left. Some were nice ("been a pleasure working with you, blah blah"), a minority were nasty ("finally getting rid of you - fuck off and don't come back"), and some were just incredibly surprising (cute girl: "I'm so disappointed I never got to sleep with you!"... damn, had I only known earlier!).
The best thing though was a large banner that my co-workers printed. As I was the "resident uber-geek", they wanted to try and do something they thought I might appreciate. They used some kind of online tool to convert ASCII to binary, and printed a large poster that was SUPPOSED to say "01000111 01101111 01101111 01100100 01100010 01111001 01100101 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01100111 01101111 01101111 01100100 00100000 01101100 01110101 01100011 01101011". Unfortunately, it got truncated somehow and ended up as "01000111 01101111 01101111 01100100 01100010 01111001 01100101 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01100111 01101111". Now, they all sort of expected me to decode it in my head instantly, so were a little disappointed when I didn't... but, being the "geek", I did so (slowly, but surely) and about 20 seconds later started laughing... they couldn't figure out why, and so I did have to eventually explain it to them. I do still wonder if someone deliberately truncated it at that point (there were other geeks there after all), but I think it's more than likely just a humorous coincidence.
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Like many people in this day and age, I couldn't maintain any car, no matter how "simple" or "user maintainable" it is. The Model S Sedan is therefore equally as maintainable for me as a mid 70s pick-up truck.
If they sell ever these things in Germany and sell them for less than 55k euro (which I'd bloody well hope so considering how much of a rip off that already is after the exchange rate - their website still says TBD though - I'm REALLY hoping for sub 50k (even if just by a tiny bit)), and have a service centre within the driving range from where I live, I'll definitely be getting one. I wanted the Roadster originally, but the price tag is just a little TOO much for me - 55k I can handle, 89k not so much.
Not so much in the late 80s, but in the early 80s I streaked a lot... but then again, I was under the age of 5, so that's probably a fair excuse.
If it were mandatory, that may be the case... but as it's optional, it wouldn't really be so effective at what you're suggesting.
And for many years after... I was arrested for phreaking in the late '90s.
The law says that you own the copyright to your work, so you do deserve something from it.
In your post, you didn't say anything about the law, you said, "then it's only fair that he should get a cut for his contribution". My reply was addressing this, not any legal matters around it.
Perhaps the law is wrong, but nobody was making that argument.
Almost every thread here on this story is about how the copyright laws are wrong or being abused and therefore need to be changed/tweaked, so I didn't address that aspect at all (although I 100% agree with the people saying that).
No it isn't. Typing this post here is my "work" (as in, it's taken my time and effort to do), but if you decide to use it to make millions of dollars somehow, I deserve NOTHING from that - I'll probably kick myself for not having the smarts to figure out how to get rich off it myself, but I am in NO WAY entitled to one cent of what you make from it.
When browser-based apps came out, a lot of people said that we're all better off with thick client apps that can have a more responsive UI.
There are those of us that STILL say that... and we're right!
Yes, but Arthur Conan Doyle was real, and he wrote that... quoting a fictional character is no less "relevant" than quoting a real person.
To say that evolution was architected by God does not make sense. Evolution, in the layman use of it given this context, is the *unguided* natural process of life. Not guided. Period. It's random happenstances that occurred in an unbelievably lucky sequence to form life.
That is completely contradictory to the Biblical account in Genesis. So it doesn't "kind of solve" it. Evolution is antithetical to Biblical teaching.
I don't think that's the case. I was raised in a religious family (my stepfather is a minister in the Anglican church) and I am well versed in the Bible, especially Genesis, having read it many times over. From my perspective, the account describes a creation story, but doesn't specify "how" in the slightest, only that it was done. God, as a divine creator, is often shown to be subtly influencing things in a less than direct fashion (although in the old testament in general, he did have a bit more of a hands-on approach it seems), and so evolution could well be considered as the "how" of Genesis. This is, as far as I'm aware, my step-father's take on it also.
And "cummon".. evolution is a theory. It is not a scientifically proven fact.
Neither is radiation, gravity or the existence of extra-solar planets. All of these are theories. There are NO "facts" in science - only REALLY well evidenced theories (the evidence is generally referred to as "proofs", but that shouldn't confuse you as to thinking it's fact - evolution has many proofs also, which are most likely right, but may be wrong, just as with gravity et al)
You must choose whether or not you believe.
Belief is not a choice - or at least, not for people who don't have serious cognitive reasoning problems.
I believe that there is a country called France, since I was there a couple of weeks ago. I believe that I just drank a cup of coffee. I believe that the jeans I am wearing are black. These are all very strongly evidenced beliefs and it would take a LOT to shake my belief in these things.
I also believe in a country called Canada (although I've never been there). I believe that the milk in my fridge is the processed form of the milk from a cow. I believe that my desk at work is currently unoccupied (I'm on holiday). These are quite strongly evidenced beliefs, but not quite as strong as the previous set and while it'd take a bit to shake my belief in these things, it'd be easier to do.
And lastly, I believe that there is life on other planets somewhere in our galaxy. I believe that the legends of King Arthur are based more on a conglomeration of different stories than any one man. I believe that taking LSD very infrequently is more beneficial than harmful to a human body and brain. All of these are relatively weakly evidenced beliefs, and a good argument against any of them is likely to make me reconsider.
Now please consider, just for yourself, where your belief in God falls in to the above categories...
Or do you even believe at all? I'm not saying you don't, but the last time I presented this case of belief to a Christian friend of mine, he admitted that he doesn't REALLY believe in God - he just hopes, wishes, and goes through the appropriate motions "in case it's right".
May I remind you that Darwin himself recanted?
As the other replier to your post pointed out - that's a fable.
Christ was either who the Bible claims, a liar, or crazy. You must decide.
You missed a valid option - he didn't exist. It's possible there was a man named Jesus around that time, who did a few things vaguely similar to the stories told about him, but it's extremely unlikely that many of the stories are true, as they bear too much resemblance to much older tales from other religions and are far more likely to therefore be borrowings. (note: I was going to say "a man named Jesus of Nazareth", but that's actually a bit less likely -
You ask Obama "So when do you believe life begins?". Simple question, but...
That is NOT a simple question. Primarily, because you haven't defined what you mean by "life". The answer can vary wildly depending on your belief structure as well as your understanding of the question.
Exactly as you phrased it there, I would say, "About 3.4 billion years ago...", as a child is not "new life" - it's a continuation of the life from its parents.
However, if you add a single article to the question and say "So when do you believe a life begins?", then clearly you're trying to separate out the individual being rather than the "life" in general. There are, in this case, many different answers depending on your understanding of "a life".
All of these options are valid lines of reasoning, and most thinking people are likely to at least be able to consider these arguments on their various merits. So, not such a simple question after all...
Are you sure it was your position that they were disagreeing with and not the way that you said it?
Remember, people on the 'net can't see you or hear the way your post sounds in your own head. For that reason, I am generally very careful to phrase my posts in such a way as to remove as much ambiguity about my thoughts as possible, and also reply in as civil a manner as possible to avoid my manner being misconstrued as anything else (except on the aforementioned bad days, when I quite rightly deserve flamebait mods). Even when I think someone is dead wrong, I know that flat out saying, "You're wrong" is going to be modded (quite rightly) as a troll no matter how many other valid points I make in the same post. A little civility goes a long way to keeping good karma 'round these parts.
(note: I haven't looked at your post history, so it's possible you may be completely correct, but I've seen other people say the same thing, and it's quite clear why they were modded down in the instances that they were - if you could link to the posts in question where you believe you were unfairly modded, that might give some more weight to your claim)
I can see how groupthink could occur from such a system, but I really don't think it does happen all that much in reality. If you look at the comments on any article, you'll generally find quite a lot of "disagreement" and people being modded up (and down) on both sides of any debate. I'll concede that it may be bad for completely "off the side" arguments in some cases, but I really don't think all. I also think that a trust metrics system as proposed in TFA would work even better, since it'd be mostly free of the kind of petty attitudes that do from time to time negatively affect the slashdot mod system.
Want a glimpse of how this works out? Think about Karma on slashdot or karma on reddit. If you've participated attentively in either of those systems you already know how problematic this will be.
Honestly, I've seen a lot of people complain about the Karma/moderation system on slashdot, but I've never seen a problem with it. I actually find it works quite well (for me at least). If I'm having a really bad day and write a flamebait sort of post, it'll generally be modded as such. The majority of my posts don't get modded at all, and when I write something that particularly interests people, it tends to get up-modded accordingly.
It may just be that I've never been targetted by any of those types that downmod based purely on their personal feelings of me personally, but looking at the mods in general on posts, I do tend to agree with them, so clearly it's working in general at least.
Just finished reading it... don't have time to post a long critique, but short version: Excellent! Compelling storyline, comfortable pace, good style. Overall, a quality read! Thankyou very much for making it available - if you actually got something for the printed book, I'd buy it just to reward you (but, since you said you don't, I won't)
I'd say go with any manufacturer as long as they support standards - then you don't NEED specific "drivers".
For printers, that's anything that prints LPR or Raw (AKA "Port 9100 printing", AKA "Socket", AKA "Jet Direct") over network or offers a standard USB interface identifying itself as a printer; and interprets PCL5, PCLXL or PostScript.
For scanners, anything that implements TWAIN over USB correctly (which is a much smaller subset than "has TWAIN drivers") or has network scanning support (FTP, SMB, Email, etc, take your pick)
And yes, I do work in the printer/scanner industry, but I won't hype my company's products.
Thankfully, not everywhere in the world. Mostly just the Americas I believe. They still use sugar in Europe, Australia and NZ at the very least. Haven't specifically checked elsewhere. I almost choked first time I had a bottle of coke in the US - the HFCS just makes it "thicker" which is quite disturbing when you're not used to it.
But of course, there are nicer fiords* in the world...
* (not a mis-spelling)
How many people on here still watch TV?
Depends what you mean by "watch TV"... Like many other posters here, I download all of my content and watch it at my leisure. Currently, that's just on a 20" monitor, but if I ever feel like I want to upgrade the experience, I'll buy a big wide-screen TV or maybe a projector. Currently, I do not own, nor plan to own, a television (box with screen for receiving and displaying broadcast signals).
There's a number of MythBusters fans, for example.
Yep - I'm one of 'em... but "watching TV programs" has very little to do with "owning a TV", which I think is the point that many posters are trying to get across here.
Just remember that if you don't, that's still an anecdote, and the plural of anecdote is not data.
I've always thought this is an odd phrase. How many anecdotes does it take before it is data? There are currently 6750000000 or so people on earth. If I provide you with 10 anecdotes, you can pretty easily just pass it off as meaningless. If I provide you with half a million anecdotes, are they still just anecdotes, or is that data?
Personally, I'd say that each anecdote is one datum, and therefore the plural of anecdote IS data... it's not particularly useful data if there's only 10 data points out of a possible 6.75 milliard, but it's data nevertheless.
It's not just that it's used in sci-fi... personally, I prefer "Sol" and "Luna" to refer to our sun and our moon, because it reduces confusion. There is only ONE "Sol" and only ONE "Luna", but there are many suns and there are many moons. Trying to distinguish between "Sun" and "sun" or "Moon" and "moon" is of course simple in written form, but in spoken form can easily lead to confusion. If I were able to go live on a planet in another solar system which was orbiting just one sun and had one moon orbiting it, there's no way I'd bother "naming" them in normal conversation and would just say "the sun" and "the moon" in normal speech like I do here. To clarify WHICH sun and WHICH moon I meant, I would then use the names, just as I do here.
So, official names or not, "Sol" and "Luna" make sense.
I apologise in advance in that I'm not normally a spelling Nazi, but you seem to have used the word "durestriction" a lot. I was unsure if it was perhaps I word I had never heard, and even after sounding it out to myself was confused as to what you meant. I performed a quick search on Google and found it appears to be a relatively uncommon (but still common enough to have just over 100 hits) misspelling of "jurisdiction", which I then mentally replaced in your post and found it finally makes sense.
Since the rest of your post is well written with excellent grammar and spelling, and also makes some excellent points, I really don't mean to flame you, just to attempt to politely inform you of your rather unusual error.
we all know 2.2 pounds = 1 kilogram
Actually, without asking Google (or similar), I don't generally memorise conversions like that (I have never used imperial measurements in my life), so no, we don't all know that.
I really hate to say this, since I would truly wish to justify that 1. we make more because we are more effective, and 2. we make more because the standard of living is much higher here.
It's worth mentioning though that both of these are not always the case. You don't need to feel TOO guilty about making too much, since here in Germany, I make about 1.5 times what I could make in the US for a similar job (according to most "average income" websites that I've seen). And the standard of living here is definitely very high*.
* It's hard to measure quality of life though, as it's quite subjective - if I lived in the US, I'd definitely have a MUCH larger apartment than I do here, but how much you consider "apartment size" to be "quality of life" is difficult to say... I wouldn't want to trade in "cheap and widely available extremely high quality beer" for "have to drive 10 minutes to find a shop that only sells slightly alcoholic gnat's urine". Nor would I want to trade in "surrounded by beautiful old buildings" for "surrounded by drab skyscrapers or suburban streets with a thousand identical houses". Or "walk safely through ANY streets at ANY time of night" for "be careful of these areas when it's dark". Or even "cheap and TRULY unlimited high speed broadband" for "capped without telling you how much by and highly priced broadband". I know that not all of those apply to every part of the US, but each of them definitely applies to at least some places, and I do definitely prefer the quality of life here in mainland Western Europe to any place in the US that I've visited.
You sir, are either a troll or are one of the most horribly ignorant and destructive people I've ever had the displeasure to read a post from and I would happily see people with your beliefs eradicated from the earth. Yes, I really do mean that.
Patriotism, in moderation, is fine. Patriotism to this level borders on insanity in the modern GLOBAL economy and society that we live in. We are ONE race - the human race - and it's about time people like you woke up and realised it. Stop caring so much about your country and start caring more about your WORLD and things will get better for everyone.
Do I care about the success and wellbeing of the United States? YES! I do! Just as much as I care about Germany, Australia, Uganda, Brazil, Iraq, New Zealand, Tuvalu and every other nation on this planet.
The way I see it, plenty of Europeans, and most asian countries will never buy an American product no matter what the USA produces, so, to hell with them.
Not true at all. The vast majority of people in Europe will buy "what they think is best". Whether it's made here, there or somewhere else is totally irrelevant. If it's the best (including such factors as value for money obviously), that's what people will pick.
I enjoy my work. I'd enjoy not working more. Therefore work is (much like the person you quoted) the horrible thing I do in order to have money.
So because one thing is more enjoyable than another, you'd describe the lesser thing as "horrible"? That doesn't quite make sense to me. I'd enjoy spending all day having sex with lingerie models much more than I enjoy my job, but it's not going to happen... what I spend around 60 hours a week doing is truly enjoyable to me. Not as good as the lingerie models, but still good. I'd definitely never describe it as "the horrible thing I do".
I left a company about one and a half years ago to move to greener pastures (well to be precise, same global company, different country, but I did still technically quit the old job). I wrote a fairly standard and "nice" goodbye email to everyone and they threw me a nice farewell party.
However, what I found humorous was the emails I RECEIVED as I left. Some were nice ("been a pleasure working with you, blah blah"), a minority were nasty ("finally getting rid of you - fuck off and don't come back"), and some were just incredibly surprising (cute girl: "I'm so disappointed I never got to sleep with you!"... damn, had I only known earlier!).
The best thing though was a large banner that my co-workers printed. As I was the "resident uber-geek", they wanted to try and do something they thought I might appreciate. They used some kind of online tool to convert ASCII to binary, and printed a large poster that was SUPPOSED to say "01000111 01101111 01101111 01100100 01100010 01111001 01100101 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01100111 01101111 01101111 01100100 00100000 01101100 01110101 01100011 01101011". Unfortunately, it got truncated somehow and ended up as "01000111 01101111 01101111 01100100 01100010 01111001 01100101 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01100111 01101111". Now, they all sort of expected me to decode it in my head instantly, so were a little disappointed when I didn't... but, being the "geek", I did so (slowly, but surely) and about 20 seconds later started laughing... they couldn't figure out why, and so I did have to eventually explain it to them. I do still wonder if someone deliberately truncated it at that point (there were other geeks there after all), but I think it's more than likely just a humorous coincidence.