I was a typical smart kid, and entered an Honors College at a big state university after graduation. There, I made a lot of friends who were also smart people.
It is now 12 years later. Virtually all of my friends from that era are successful, with good jobs, husbands/wives, houses, kids, etc.
I am a post-doctoral researcher, slogging along on a $26000 per year stipend in the world's second-most-expensive place to live. I have no savings, uncertain job prospects, a 60h/week job, and an effective hourly wage that barely exceeds that of my janitor brother. I am single, in large part due to the fact that I have no money and no time outside of the lab to meet women (and there are sure as heck none in it). Most of my friends from graduate school are also single for the same reason.
Simply put, there is little incentive for bright Americans to become scientists right now. A career in business, law, or medicine is both more lucrative and more stable, and puts you in the real world making money a lot sooner. By the time I finally get my first 'real' job, most of my friends with BS engineering degrees will be making about the same as I am, without having to have slaved away for peanuts for a decade as a grad student and post-doc. They will have cars, homes, savings, and a family. I will be a ground zero. Go figure.
I'd be interested in knowing your theory for how you decide which roads are for 'private' and 'public' benefit. Clearly, the road outside your apartment or house benefits your private self. Is this government support of your private life an unfair subsidy? Remember, your house was also in the middle of nowhere once.
sticking your head in the sand. We had several choices. All of them were bad. We used the correct logic and chose the course of action that appeared least-bad. It is impossible to know without any doubt if we were right, because one cannot replay history in order to test alternate events. However, even with the benefit of hindsight it appears likely that what we did WAS the best course of action. All others lead logically to a prolonged war in which almost assuredly more people died, as well as political disasters such as a hostile Japan or a Japan split like Korea.
Either way, Truman used the correct, moral reasoning, whether or not his choice turned out to be right.
concerning the obvious that you are willing to let MILLIONS die because of them.
The projects were made by some pretty crude comparisons with various other islands we had to kick the Japanese from followed by extrapolation. Of course, you wind up with a pretty wide range but by any count the numbers were in the hundreds of thousands to millions - not counting deaths by famine and disease.
It is extremely unlikely that conventional bombs plus invasions of kyuushuu and kanto (the alternative plan) would have killed fewer people. There was no serious peace offer anywhere in sight, despite the claims of modern peaceniks. Yes, a few Japanese were whispering about it by they did not have power. Saying they offered a viable surrender option before the bombs is therefore meaningless.
The numbers given to Truman ranged from around 20 thousand to 500 thousand dead Americans (depending on the length, nature, and location of the invasasion and bombing campaigns) and dead Japanese numbering in the hundreds of thousands up to the millions. These did not include Japanese that would have been killed by famine or lack of health infrastructure, which was becoming a massive concern at the time.
It is obviously impossible to prove that the course of action Truman chose save human life. But is obvious from the records that this was Truman's ultimate calculation. Given what we know now, he was probably right - more people would have died in any alternative course of action.
Even after the two bombs, the Japanese military did not want to surrender. They adamantly supported a plan to defend the island of Kyuushuu (closest to Korea and easiest to invade) to the man, and force such a high price upon us that we would let them keep their sovereignty. Fortunately, the emperor over-ruled them and avoided the attempted coup.
The Japanese have gotten over this. Perhaps we should, too
I live in Japan, too. While I am definitely not fluent, I always text in Japanese, because it is much, much faster - even when the recipient speaks much better English than I do Japanese.
Essentially, you get the two-for-one character bonus in addition to excellent guessing on word/sentence completion.
Despite being easier to type, I wouldn't recommend this system for any new language. It is far too difficult to learn to read and write.
Why the hell do you NEED to pirate software, music, and movies?
I have precisely zero copies of pirated files of any type. Yet I have access to tons of music (300 CDs I have gathered over the years, internet and broadcast radio, borrowed material from friends), movies (about a 100 DVDs of my own, plus renting and borrowing), and all the software I need and more, both freeware and paid. Honestly, I have far more media lying around than I could possibly consume - all for a minute fraction of my income (less than 2% in the last five years). And that is even before I waste tons of time in places on the internet like slashdot or (heaven forbid) the local library.
Come on, folks. Quit whining and pay for your goodies - and learn to appreciate what you already have.
Humans are not you. Therefore, you are are not human. X is not theft because theft does not include X (well, at least in my opinion, not the law!).
Trying to define your problems away is not an argument. Please try again.
First, our bombing wasn't that accurate in WWII. Japanese civilian and military facilities were intertwined. Heck, it still hard now with GPS guided missiles.
Second, your plan would not have ended the war. It was the utter shock of the bombs that caused the Japanese to quit. Yet another round of conventional bombs would have killed just as many people, but the war would have dragged on for months, killing far more.
Yes, we are sending two bombers, one of which will care a nuclear weapon. They will be arriving in the Nagasaki area around 7am on August the 9th. Please evacuate the area before we attack....
Whether you like it or not, surprise is an element of any military attack, let alone one as precarious as the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were. Remember, we didn't even HAVE another nuke at that point. Fortunately, the Japanese didn't know this.
I fail to see how a non-profit has much of an 'interest' in this context.
Lots of organizations have more than one meeting per year. For example, the Materials Research Society also meets twice a year, and it is a fraction of the size of ACS. ACS national meetings are very large and well-attended.
As for someones's pay, it is pretty simple - that is what the market pays for such positions. Getting to the top ain't easy, especially when the bulk of your 'base' members are PhDs to begin with. I don't begrudge him a penny.
Why do you insist on using forcibly taken money to do something that private money is already doing perfectly well, at cost?
I have always thought that choosing the lesser evil is a moral obligation, and those that stick their head in the sands while ignoring the greater evil are cowards who bear the full responsibility of their inaction.
Was dropping the bombs evil? Yep.
Were the viable alternatives worse? Yep.
It was an easy decision that even with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight was almost assuredly correct. Of course, no one can ever know for sure, as we are dealing with counter-factuals. But there is little indication that Japan was close to surrender and that the war could have been ended in a manner that better saved both the Japanese and Americans. The Japanese have gotten over this issue. You should, too.
There is no need for the government to make a redundant database, when someone else is already doing it and selling access at-cost. Even if ACS was trying to make a buck, the argument wouldn't change.
How about a clock based on LED's that GLOWS in the DARK so you can see it at night?
I seem to remember this technology in America, but apparently it has not made it across the pond. I have been looking since I moved here three months ago and have found nothing but battery-operated LCD and simple mechanical-arm clocks.
Japan has this unnatural fixation with saving electricity, but this one particular issue drives me the battiest. Yes, an LCD clock uses less eletricity than an LED clock, though it is not obvious whether the use of batteries, which are very environmentally unfriendly, offsets the energy savings. Either way, in my case, they lose. I have set up a electric night-light to shine directly on my battery-powered mechanical clock so I can see what time it is when I wake up at three AM. I am sure this wastes a hundred times the electricity they have tried to force me to save.
And don't get me started on the elevators in my building, which in their quixotic quest to save electricity, waste workers' time that I have calculated is roughly one hundred times as valuable, at minimum.
I will boycott any that do.
Why can't people in the states learn to text message. Here in Japan, I have a 20:1 text/call ratio at least, as does everyone else. It is far less intrusive for everyone around you and the recipient, who can answer the call at their leisure. Talking on cells is forbidden anywhere to do with public transporation. Think about it - the vast majority of your calls are nothing more than 'hey, I'm gonna be ten minutes late' or something else you can type quickly.
Japan really doesn't have it, or rather, it is so fundamentally different here in nature that it really doesn't feel like swearing.
My personal favorite: Goddamnmotherfuckingsonofabitch!
I live in Japan, and probably send twenty text messages for each call that I make. Though I must admit, the Japanese software seems better than what I remember in the states. The word-completion is usally really clever if I am typing in Japanese. Also, typing in Japanese is intrinsically easier because in general, each kana corresponds to two English letters.
I wish people would use this service more in the states, for all of the reasons people have been mentioning. Despite the enormous number of cell phones in Japan relative to the US, you are forced to listen to people yapping away on them far, far less often. This might be my favorite element of Japanese society, I swear.
The appeared to be the least-bad option at the time, and in hindsight, Truman was probably right. Of course, one can never be sure concerning counter-factuals.
I live in Japan and have talked about this topic with plenty of Japanese. They have gotten over this. Perhaps you should, too?
that thousands of people around here keep claiming that the music and movie industries should 'get a new business model', yet precisely zero of these people ever note what exactly this mystical business model should be?
It is hard to build a business model that can beat free, now isn't it.
Naruto or any other anime worth a dime will do perfectly fine abroad without fan-subbing. In the meantime, the majority of those who downloaded and liked it will not purchase it, from my experience. Fortunately, this is only around 70k people, which is much smaller than the anime base.
For those of you who download, ask yourself the honest question - what fraction of series that you downloaded more than one episode of did you actually purchase?
This article made me laugh. Yes, Japanese kids aren't given a lot of 'homework', because they are expected to study outside of school on their own - and they do. Most Japanese students have a two hour club of some sort after school, followed by a trip to 'Juku', or cram school, where they prepare for upcoming placement tests for a few hours. Many college-bound seniors drop their club activities so they can spend even more hours in Juku. They also spending about 60 days more per year in school than American kids (240 to 180).
My Japanese coworkers about blew a fuse when I told them that I did homework exactly twice in my four years of high school, and did no serious studying outside of the limited time I spent in class. (Yes, my teachers assigned trivial homework, which I could always finish in class, between classes, or before school).
is not a legitimate excuse to steal.
I cannot comment on dubbing, as I always use subtitles. They are much, much better, as Japanese really doesn't translate into English worth a dime, which is the core reason for silly translations. Reading something that is not-quite-right is much less disconcerting than hearing it, for some reason. Anyhow, you might learn some nihongo.
Slashdot Mirror
I was a typical smart kid, and entered an Honors College at a big state university after graduation. There, I made a lot of friends who were also smart people. It is now 12 years later. Virtually all of my friends from that era are successful, with good jobs, husbands/wives, houses, kids, etc. I am a post-doctoral researcher, slogging along on a $26000 per year stipend in the world's second-most-expensive place to live. I have no savings, uncertain job prospects, a 60h/week job, and an effective hourly wage that barely exceeds that of my janitor brother. I am single, in large part due to the fact that I have no money and no time outside of the lab to meet women (and there are sure as heck none in it). Most of my friends from graduate school are also single for the same reason. Simply put, there is little incentive for bright Americans to become scientists right now. A career in business, law, or medicine is both more lucrative and more stable, and puts you in the real world making money a lot sooner. By the time I finally get my first 'real' job, most of my friends with BS engineering degrees will be making about the same as I am, without having to have slaved away for peanuts for a decade as a grad student and post-doc. They will have cars, homes, savings, and a family. I will be a ground zero. Go figure.
I am 99.8 percentile smart and about 40% percentile pretty. I'd swap in a heartbeat. Isn't that sad?
I'd be interested in knowing your theory for how you decide which roads are for 'private' and 'public' benefit. Clearly, the road outside your apartment or house benefits your private self. Is this government support of your private life an unfair subsidy? Remember, your house was also in the middle of nowhere once.
sticking your head in the sand. We had several choices. All of them were bad. We used the correct logic and chose the course of action that appeared least-bad. It is impossible to know without any doubt if we were right, because one cannot replay history in order to test alternate events. However, even with the benefit of hindsight it appears likely that what we did WAS the best course of action. All others lead logically to a prolonged war in which almost assuredly more people died, as well as political disasters such as a hostile Japan or a Japan split like Korea. Either way, Truman used the correct, moral reasoning, whether or not his choice turned out to be right.
concerning the obvious that you are willing to let MILLIONS die because of them. The projects were made by some pretty crude comparisons with various other islands we had to kick the Japanese from followed by extrapolation. Of course, you wind up with a pretty wide range but by any count the numbers were in the hundreds of thousands to millions - not counting deaths by famine and disease. It is extremely unlikely that conventional bombs plus invasions of kyuushuu and kanto (the alternative plan) would have killed fewer people. There was no serious peace offer anywhere in sight, despite the claims of modern peaceniks. Yes, a few Japanese were whispering about it by they did not have power. Saying they offered a viable surrender option before the bombs is therefore meaningless.
The numbers given to Truman ranged from around 20 thousand to 500 thousand dead Americans (depending on the length, nature, and location of the invasasion and bombing campaigns) and dead Japanese numbering in the hundreds of thousands up to the millions. These did not include Japanese that would have been killed by famine or lack of health infrastructure, which was becoming a massive concern at the time.
It is obviously impossible to prove that the course of action Truman chose save human life. But is obvious from the records that this was Truman's ultimate calculation. Given what we know now, he was probably right - more people would have died in any alternative course of action.
Even after the two bombs, the Japanese military did not want to surrender. They adamantly supported a plan to defend the island of Kyuushuu (closest to Korea and easiest to invade) to the man, and force such a high price upon us that we would let them keep their sovereignty. Fortunately, the emperor over-ruled them and avoided the attempted coup.
The Japanese have gotten over this. Perhaps we should, too
I live in Japan, too. While I am definitely not fluent, I always text in Japanese, because it is much, much faster - even when the recipient speaks much better English than I do Japanese. Essentially, you get the two-for-one character bonus in addition to excellent guessing on word/sentence completion. Despite being easier to type, I wouldn't recommend this system for any new language. It is far too difficult to learn to read and write.
Why the hell do you NEED to pirate software, music, and movies? I have precisely zero copies of pirated files of any type. Yet I have access to tons of music (300 CDs I have gathered over the years, internet and broadcast radio, borrowed material from friends), movies (about a 100 DVDs of my own, plus renting and borrowing), and all the software I need and more, both freeware and paid. Honestly, I have far more media lying around than I could possibly consume - all for a minute fraction of my income (less than 2% in the last five years). And that is even before I waste tons of time in places on the internet like slashdot or (heaven forbid) the local library. Come on, folks. Quit whining and pay for your goodies - and learn to appreciate what you already have.
Humans are not you. Therefore, you are are not human. X is not theft because theft does not include X (well, at least in my opinion, not the law!). Trying to define your problems away is not an argument. Please try again.
First, our bombing wasn't that accurate in WWII. Japanese civilian and military facilities were intertwined. Heck, it still hard now with GPS guided missiles. Second, your plan would not have ended the war. It was the utter shock of the bombs that caused the Japanese to quit. Yet another round of conventional bombs would have killed just as many people, but the war would have dragged on for months, killing far more.
Yes, we are sending two bombers, one of which will care a nuclear weapon. They will be arriving in the Nagasaki area around 7am on August the 9th. Please evacuate the area before we attack. ...
Whether you like it or not, surprise is an element of any military attack, let alone one as precarious as the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were. Remember, we didn't even HAVE another nuke at that point. Fortunately, the Japanese didn't know this.
I fail to see how a non-profit has much of an 'interest' in this context. Lots of organizations have more than one meeting per year. For example, the Materials Research Society also meets twice a year, and it is a fraction of the size of ACS. ACS national meetings are very large and well-attended. As for someones's pay, it is pretty simple - that is what the market pays for such positions. Getting to the top ain't easy, especially when the bulk of your 'base' members are PhDs to begin with. I don't begrudge him a penny. Why do you insist on using forcibly taken money to do something that private money is already doing perfectly well, at cost?
I have always thought that choosing the lesser evil is a moral obligation, and those that stick their head in the sands while ignoring the greater evil are cowards who bear the full responsibility of their inaction. Was dropping the bombs evil? Yep. Were the viable alternatives worse? Yep. It was an easy decision that even with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight was almost assuredly correct. Of course, no one can ever know for sure, as we are dealing with counter-factuals. But there is little indication that Japan was close to surrender and that the war could have been ended in a manner that better saved both the Japanese and Americans. The Japanese have gotten over this issue. You should, too.
Any profits made from its databases are used to further science, as ACS is a not-profit.
There is no need for the government to make a redundant database, when someone else is already doing it and selling access at-cost. Even if ACS was trying to make a buck, the argument wouldn't change.
How about a clock based on LED's that GLOWS in the DARK so you can see it at night? I seem to remember this technology in America, but apparently it has not made it across the pond. I have been looking since I moved here three months ago and have found nothing but battery-operated LCD and simple mechanical-arm clocks. Japan has this unnatural fixation with saving electricity, but this one particular issue drives me the battiest. Yes, an LCD clock uses less eletricity than an LED clock, though it is not obvious whether the use of batteries, which are very environmentally unfriendly, offsets the energy savings. Either way, in my case, they lose. I have set up a electric night-light to shine directly on my battery-powered mechanical clock so I can see what time it is when I wake up at three AM. I am sure this wastes a hundred times the electricity they have tried to force me to save. And don't get me started on the elevators in my building, which in their quixotic quest to save electricity, waste workers' time that I have calculated is roughly one hundred times as valuable, at minimum.
as human muscle at the moment. Even the best ones get absolutely wasted by little girls in arm-wrestling competitions.
I will boycott any that do. Why can't people in the states learn to text message. Here in Japan, I have a 20:1 text/call ratio at least, as does everyone else. It is far less intrusive for everyone around you and the recipient, who can answer the call at their leisure. Talking on cells is forbidden anywhere to do with public transporation. Think about it - the vast majority of your calls are nothing more than 'hey, I'm gonna be ten minutes late' or something else you can type quickly.
Japan really doesn't have it, or rather, it is so fundamentally different here in nature that it really doesn't feel like swearing. My personal favorite: Goddamnmotherfuckingsonofabitch!
I live in Japan, and probably send twenty text messages for each call that I make. Though I must admit, the Japanese software seems better than what I remember in the states. The word-completion is usally really clever if I am typing in Japanese. Also, typing in Japanese is intrinsically easier because in general, each kana corresponds to two English letters. I wish people would use this service more in the states, for all of the reasons people have been mentioning. Despite the enormous number of cell phones in Japan relative to the US, you are forced to listen to people yapping away on them far, far less often. This might be my favorite element of Japanese society, I swear.
The appeared to be the least-bad option at the time, and in hindsight, Truman was probably right. Of course, one can never be sure concerning counter-factuals. I live in Japan and have talked about this topic with plenty of Japanese. They have gotten over this. Perhaps you should, too?
that thousands of people around here keep claiming that the music and movie industries should 'get a new business model', yet precisely zero of these people ever note what exactly this mystical business model should be? It is hard to build a business model that can beat free, now isn't it. Naruto or any other anime worth a dime will do perfectly fine abroad without fan-subbing. In the meantime, the majority of those who downloaded and liked it will not purchase it, from my experience. Fortunately, this is only around 70k people, which is much smaller than the anime base. For those of you who download, ask yourself the honest question - what fraction of series that you downloaded more than one episode of did you actually purchase?
This article made me laugh. Yes, Japanese kids aren't given a lot of 'homework', because they are expected to study outside of school on their own - and they do. Most Japanese students have a two hour club of some sort after school, followed by a trip to 'Juku', or cram school, where they prepare for upcoming placement tests for a few hours. Many college-bound seniors drop their club activities so they can spend even more hours in Juku. They also spending about 60 days more per year in school than American kids (240 to 180). My Japanese coworkers about blew a fuse when I told them that I did homework exactly twice in my four years of high school, and did no serious studying outside of the limited time I spent in class. (Yes, my teachers assigned trivial homework, which I could always finish in class, between classes, or before school).
It seems as pointless as Babelfish to me. Here is the Japanese I dumped in, from an email I received yesterday. This is really simple stuff. UOEZX"úi-ØjSwZÀOE±Ì½ßAOEïiî-ØA"Ñ"cA'AZODjðXZzRO©çZ nßÜB "sÌlÍ\oÄB
Here is Google's translation:
June 9th (the wood) for student experiment, workshop (the rice plant wood, Ida, the medium bridge, Miyoshi) o'clock of 9 it begins from 30 minutes. The person whose are inconvenient please requests.
Here is my translation:
In order to accomodate student experiments, the journal seminar (Inagi, Iida, Nakahashi, Miyoshi) will be moved to Thursday, June 6th at 9:30am. If this is inconvenient please let me know.
It didn't even get the abbreviated 'Thursday' right, even though it is written this way all the time. It also missed half the names, even though these are common ones.
is not a legitimate excuse to steal. I cannot comment on dubbing, as I always use subtitles. They are much, much better, as Japanese really doesn't translate into English worth a dime, which is the core reason for silly translations. Reading something that is not-quite-right is much less disconcerting than hearing it, for some reason. Anyhow, you might learn some nihongo.