...which can be used to do work. Otherwise you better hurry up and let the people over at the hover dam know their master plan isn't working.
This scheme is obviously sapping energy from your car, but if it could be done in a place where you want to remove energy from your car (i.e. when you're braking) it could be a net positive. That said - I don't think this is ever going to pan out.
On a somewhat related note, a while ago there was some work being done on placing a piezo insert into soldiers boots, and having the impact of marching to charge their batteries. It turns out, that walking on a piezo is a lot like walking on sand, and the soldiers performance suffered, and the whole idea was scrapped.
Look at any debate surrounding consumer credit, mortgages, or bankruptcy protection itself, and you'll soon realize that a sizable percentage of the population is just fine and dandy with bankrupting people over any number of trivial infractions. They couch their arguments in "personal responsibility" and then back you into a corner so they can screw you (e.g. usurious payday loans - A-ok, but we sure can't have raise the minimum wage.)
The "problem" with civil disobedience is that it only works for really important things, and even then, only some of the time. I'm sorry, but IP law isn't considered by most people to be injurious enough that civil disobedience will work.
Having a government controlled monetary policy gives us a knob to turn to prevent market failures. Yes, governments can abuse that knob and screw up the economy.
Here's a car analogy, just because it's possible to drive off a cliff, doesn't mean we should take away the steering wheels - after all, everything will by just fine if you stay in a straight line...
And let's not pretend that putting us on the gold standard will prevent untoward government tampering, after all there were plenty of bubbles and recessions before the widespread adoption of fiat currency.
As far as I can tell, the difference between the 2004 US election and the Iranian election, is that in the US there was a lot of good, publicly available polling data. If outsiders had bothered to look at that data - it was clear that it was a close race, and it turned out that way.
Here, it might have looked like a close race, but no one is really sure because there isn't much good polling data, there aren't any exit polls, there isn't any precinct level data, and the results didn't turn out that close at all.
~20%, and if you look at demographics, people who self-identify as republicans are slightly less likely to have a college education, and much more likely to be rural, religious, conservative, and southern.
Besides, liberals (generally) don't mock the GOP - as distinct from conservatives - for having different views, we mock them for saying crazy things like "useless government spending on volcano monitoring," and "the solution to the financial crisis is less regulation of the financial markets." Reasonable people can disagree about the optimal size of government, but reasonable people don't shout that the solution to everything is tax cuts and less regulation.
Besides, your political party is redoubling efforts to woo the base, and that's how you guys lost the last election.
If you're a republican and more highly educated than me, that nearly guarantees you're a member of a shrinking demographic (white, male, and probably a boomer). It also means your concerns are not in line with the majority concerns, since, for example, you've probably had health insurance your entire life, and, what's more, you might even be about to enter the US's socialized medicine system (medicare). If I'm way off, you're an outlier, and outliers don't get anyone elected.
FWIW I'd love to see a competent opposition party, but as long as your party decides that purity is more important than dialogue, and making noise about how Snowe and Collins should join Specter, the closer they come to becoming merely a regional party. I'm not short sighted enough to declare a permanent majority, but the writing is on the wall, the GOP needs to (a) find an issue that resonates (hint: not immigration, not tax breaks for rich white men), (b) find a rational leader (Steele wouldn't even be that bad if he'd stop apologizing to the likes of Limbaugh), and (c) stop pretending the culture wars are going to get republicans elected nation-wide (you finally beat that horse to death in 2004). Unless that happens the new opposition party might end up being the blue dog party.
For my two cents, this, "onus of proof clearly lies with those alleging fraud anyway," is where we disagree.
IF there was reliable data widely available, we'd be on the same page, but when the incumbent's government is the only group with access to the full data set, they're the ones who should be demonstrating that the election was fair.
China's on the cusp of some very serious demographic problems, and the one child policy is part of the problem.
The social, economic, and foreign policy outcomes of these problems (up to full scale war) could very easily be more serious than had the policy never been implemented.
In other words, the law of unintended consequences may be poised to strike again.
I was learning about elementary evolution by 9th grade and basic psychology by 12th (including brainwashing). This was in a catholic school (actually as I recall psych was either immediately before or immediately after religion class...) I can't really speak for public schools, but I'm pretty sure that biology is a requirement some time in high school - and yeah its a tragedy that there are a handful of fundie HS science teachers who butcher their job as educators, and flat out don't teach evolution, but that's very much a minority.
The problem with streamlining education for the "gifted" is that people won't get a well-rounded liberal education. You admitted as much yourself, if you could have fudged your way through a single test to skip an entire "uninteresting" subject, you probably would have - and thus never have been exposed certain concepts that might have challenged your way of thinking.
Here in the US, it's fairly common for particularly religious people to home-school their kids. Yeah, the state mandates a certain curriculum, but when your only teacher (parent) doesn't have any formal training and approaches every subject from a particular ideology, students naturally develop a rather stilted view of the world, and their critical thinking skills tend to suffer. Essentially, if the school system allowed you to skip classes you didn't like, but were smart enough to test out of, you'd be self-selecting your own version of home-schooling by reducing viewpoints that challenge your own, and focusing on advanced coursework that reinforces only your strengths, leaving your weaknesses to further atrophy.
High school is as much about exposing people to different views and social situations, as it is about building a foundation for college. (the success/failure rate of the former is similar to that of the latter.)
As someone who recently realised what a crock religion is
No Zealot Like a Convert, eh?
Evolution is a fairly advanced concept - it really doesn't make sense to teach it to 4th graders. Teach it too early, and they'll get Lamarkian ideas in their head, and it will color their future thinking, but we do teach taxonomy to grade schoolers, and we do tell them that humans are a member of the animal kingdom and closely related to primates. Same story on brainwashing. You can't understand brainwashing until you're old enough to study psychology - again a fairly advanced topic. Nevermind that the entire process of raising a child is essentially an exercise in brainwashing (or rather brain shaping since they start out as blank slates). But hey, both were taught in my catholic high school. Ok, so we do away with the idea that humans were created as special beings, but it'll be replaced by the idea that we evolved into special beings as soon as one studies philosophy. The idea of consciousness and free-will is pretty analogous to a soul.
And I say all this as someone who has serious problems with organized religion in general.
There's a pretty fair chance that there are some apocryphal scrolls and books whose only remaining copies are locked in a safe in Rome.
However, what we do know is that these scrolls aren't the secret foundation to the faith - seminary isn't particularly secretive, and there are plenty of retired priests who would have spilled the beans long ago if there was some great catholic version of OT7.
In a totalitarian state, it doesn't matter if you're the actual majority or not, because you can suppress dissent. Additionally, for what it's worth, the Bolsheviks, and every Marxist movement for that matter, were at least in theory populist uprisings - so it's at least logical to argue that in theory they were standing for the majority.
In a democracy, if you're only pretending to be a majority, you'll be voted out of office. That is essentially the great flaw in Rove's 50+1 electoral college politicking.
About political marketing: that is why having a free and independent press is so important.
Anyways, face value is pretty much what is needed except we need to understand the face value at the time it was written.
Well then it seems you are an originalist, not a "strict constructionist," nor a god-forsaken textualist - so don't take my little rant personally.
What sometimes becomes unclear is when a specific circumstance is involved
Which is sort of my point, judges don't rule on abstractions, they rule on actual fuzzy circumstances. If Federalist No. 59 provides insight into the matter at hand, by all means use it to illuminate your understanding. But if previously unforeseen circumstances arise, e.g. the EPA's regulation of air pollution, I feel it is impossible to avoid applying contemporary standards.
I think there are similarities to be drawn between "strict constructionists/textualists" and biblical literalists. I fundamentally take issue with the idea that it is even possible to read a text without interpreting it.
Specifically, the necessary and proper clause and the commerce clause are almost comically open-ended, and it's better to couch your interpretations in something (e.g. the intent of the founders or contemporary social understanding), rather than to just wash your hands and pretend that your interpretation is reflected, right there on the face of the document.
In cases where the law or the constitution are clear, social values don't trump the constitution. But clear cases aren't taken up by SCOTUS, so I'd prefer those justices don't tell me that their interpretation is clearly in the written document.
All party X has to do is adopt policy positions different from party Y that people actually support. If party X has all the good ideas, then yeah, there isn't much point to having party Y, but only the most rabid partisans argue that.
What party Y needs to do is get it's head out of it's ass and and stop bowing to AM radio commentator Z.
That's more or less the situation with ballot initiatives in California.
The problem is one of accountability, if lawmakers vote for a proposal that bankrupts the state you can change the lawmakers. When the state is bankrupted by ballot initiative, solutions are much harder to come by.
Slashdot Mirror
If you start with high purity gold, you could easily divide it with a balance, crucible, and propane torch.
The distribution model is a little tougher, but isn't that what the internet is for?
...which can be used to do work. Otherwise you better hurry up and let the people over at the hover dam know their master plan isn't working.
This scheme is obviously sapping energy from your car, but if it could be done in a place where you want to remove energy from your car (i.e. when you're braking) it could be a net positive. That said - I don't think this is ever going to pan out.
On a somewhat related note, a while ago there was some work being done on placing a piezo insert into soldiers boots, and having the impact of marching to charge their batteries. It turns out, that walking on a piezo is a lot like walking on sand, and the soldiers performance suffered, and the whole idea was scrapped.
either that, or you suspect you have a brain disease, so you seek out an expert, who might recommend surgery - or nothing at all.
Look at any debate surrounding consumer credit, mortgages, or bankruptcy protection itself, and you'll soon realize that a sizable percentage of the population is just fine and dandy with bankrupting people over any number of trivial infractions. They couch their arguments in "personal responsibility" and then back you into a corner so they can screw you (e.g. usurious payday loans - A-ok, but we sure can't have raise the minimum wage.)
On the other hand, after the handful of civilly minded lawyers lost their first case, there'd be no one left to defend the rights of the little guy.
psst: civil rights movement
The "problem" with civil disobedience is that it only works for really important things, and even then, only some of the time. I'm sorry, but IP law isn't considered by most people to be injurious enough that civil disobedience will work.
then they brought suit against the juror who started humming along.
Having a government controlled monetary policy gives us a knob to turn to prevent market failures. Yes, governments can abuse that knob and screw up the economy.
Here's a car analogy, just because it's possible to drive off a cliff, doesn't mean we should take away the steering wheels - after all, everything will by just fine if you stay in a straight line...
And let's not pretend that putting us on the gold standard will prevent untoward government tampering, after all there were plenty of bubbles and recessions before the widespread adoption of fiat currency.
So is real estate, or oil futures, or mortgage backed securities.
Problem is, you don't know if it's going to be worth 50% more, or 50% less tomorrow.
As far as I can tell, the difference between the 2004 US election and the Iranian election, is that in the US there was a lot of good, publicly available polling data. If outsiders had bothered to look at that data - it was clear that it was a close race, and it turned out that way.
Here, it might have looked like a close race, but no one is really sure because there isn't much good polling data, there aren't any exit polls, there isn't any precinct level data, and the results didn't turn out that close at all.
~20%, and if you look at demographics, people who self-identify as republicans are slightly less likely to have a college education, and much more likely to be rural, religious, conservative, and southern.
Besides, liberals (generally) don't mock the GOP - as distinct from conservatives - for having different views, we mock them for saying crazy things like "useless government spending on volcano monitoring," and "the solution to the financial crisis is less regulation of the financial markets." Reasonable people can disagree about the optimal size of government, but reasonable people don't shout that the solution to everything is tax cuts and less regulation.
Besides, your political party is redoubling efforts to woo the base, and that's how you guys lost the last election.
If you're a republican and more highly educated than me, that nearly guarantees you're a member of a shrinking demographic (white, male, and probably a boomer). It also means your concerns are not in line with the majority concerns, since, for example, you've probably had health insurance your entire life, and, what's more, you might even be about to enter the US's socialized medicine system (medicare). If I'm way off, you're an outlier, and outliers don't get anyone elected.
FWIW I'd love to see a competent opposition party, but as long as your party decides that purity is more important than dialogue, and making noise about how Snowe and Collins should join Specter, the closer they come to becoming merely a regional party. I'm not short sighted enough to declare a permanent majority, but the writing is on the wall, the GOP needs to (a) find an issue that resonates (hint: not immigration, not tax breaks for rich white men), (b) find a rational leader (Steele wouldn't even be that bad if he'd stop apologizing to the likes of Limbaugh), and (c) stop pretending the culture wars are going to get republicans elected nation-wide (you finally beat that horse to death in 2004). Unless that happens the new opposition party might end up being the blue dog party.
For my two cents, this, "onus of proof clearly lies with those alleging fraud anyway," is where we disagree.
IF there was reliable data widely available, we'd be on the same page, but when the incumbent's government is the only group with access to the full data set, they're the ones who should be demonstrating that the election was fair.
China's on the cusp of some very serious demographic problems, and the one child policy is part of the problem.
The social, economic, and foreign policy outcomes of these problems (up to full scale war) could very easily be more serious than had the policy never been implemented.
In other words, the law of unintended consequences may be poised to strike again.
1910 Alcohol
1900 Anarchists
1880 Chinese
1870 Irish
1850 Southerners
those are prime time numbers - not daytime.
Think again.
Lifetime gets better ratings than the Discovery channel and SciFi.
TruTV gets better ratings than CNN, the History channel or Comedy Central.
Soap, Oxygen, and the golf channel all get better ratings than G4, the military channel, biography, or BBC America.
source
I was learning about elementary evolution by 9th grade and basic psychology by 12th (including brainwashing). This was in a catholic school (actually as I recall psych was either immediately before or immediately after religion class...) I can't really speak for public schools, but I'm pretty sure that biology is a requirement some time in high school - and yeah its a tragedy that there are a handful of fundie HS science teachers who butcher their job as educators, and flat out don't teach evolution, but that's very much a minority.
The problem with streamlining education for the "gifted" is that people won't get a well-rounded liberal education. You admitted as much yourself, if you could have fudged your way through a single test to skip an entire "uninteresting" subject, you probably would have - and thus never have been exposed certain concepts that might have challenged your way of thinking.
Here in the US, it's fairly common for particularly religious people to home-school their kids. Yeah, the state mandates a certain curriculum, but when your only teacher (parent) doesn't have any formal training and approaches every subject from a particular ideology, students naturally develop a rather stilted view of the world, and their critical thinking skills tend to suffer. Essentially, if the school system allowed you to skip classes you didn't like, but were smart enough to test out of, you'd be self-selecting your own version of home-schooling by reducing viewpoints that challenge your own, and focusing on advanced coursework that reinforces only your strengths, leaving your weaknesses to further atrophy.
High school is as much about exposing people to different views and social situations, as it is about building a foundation for college. (the success/failure rate of the former is similar to that of the latter.)
No Zealot Like a Convert, eh?
Evolution is a fairly advanced concept - it really doesn't make sense to teach it to 4th graders. Teach it too early, and they'll get Lamarkian ideas in their head, and it will color their future thinking, but we do teach taxonomy to grade schoolers, and we do tell them that humans are a member of the animal kingdom and closely related to primates. Same story on brainwashing. You can't understand brainwashing until you're old enough to study psychology - again a fairly advanced topic. Nevermind that the entire process of raising a child is essentially an exercise in brainwashing (or rather brain shaping since they start out as blank slates). But hey, both were taught in my catholic high school. Ok, so we do away with the idea that humans were created as special beings, but it'll be replaced by the idea that we evolved into special beings as soon as one studies philosophy. The idea of consciousness and free-will is pretty analogous to a soul.
And I say all this as someone who has serious problems with organized religion in general.
There's a pretty fair chance that there are some apocryphal scrolls and books whose only remaining copies are locked in a safe in Rome.
However, what we do know is that these scrolls aren't the secret foundation to the faith - seminary isn't particularly secretive, and there are plenty of retired priests who would have spilled the beans long ago if there was some great catholic version of OT7.
Yes, I'm an Ohio State alumnus. Go Bucks!
In a totalitarian state, it doesn't matter if you're the actual majority or not, because you can suppress dissent. Additionally, for what it's worth, the Bolsheviks, and every Marxist movement for that matter, were at least in theory populist uprisings - so it's at least logical to argue that in theory they were standing for the majority.
In a democracy, if you're only pretending to be a majority, you'll be voted out of office. That is essentially the great flaw in Rove's 50+1 electoral college politicking.
About political marketing: that is why having a free and independent press is so important.
Well then it seems you are an originalist, not a "strict constructionist," nor a god-forsaken textualist - so don't take my little rant personally.
Which is sort of my point, judges don't rule on abstractions, they rule on actual fuzzy circumstances. If Federalist No. 59 provides insight into the matter at hand, by all means use it to illuminate your understanding. But if previously unforeseen circumstances arise, e.g. the EPA's regulation of air pollution, I feel it is impossible to avoid applying contemporary standards.
I think there are similarities to be drawn between "strict constructionists/textualists" and biblical literalists. I fundamentally take issue with the idea that it is even possible to read a text without interpreting it.
Specifically, the necessary and proper clause and the commerce clause are almost comically open-ended, and it's better to couch your interpretations in something (e.g. the intent of the founders or contemporary social understanding), rather than to just wash your hands and pretend that your interpretation is reflected, right there on the face of the document.
In cases where the law or the constitution are clear, social values don't trump the constitution. But clear cases aren't taken up by SCOTUS, so I'd prefer those justices don't tell me that their interpretation is clearly in the written document.
All party X has to do is adopt policy positions different from party Y that people actually support. If party X has all the good ideas, then yeah, there isn't much point to having party Y, but only the most rabid partisans argue that.
What party Y needs to do is get it's head out of it's ass and and stop bowing to AM radio commentator Z.
That's more or less the situation with ballot initiatives in California.
The problem is one of accountability, if lawmakers vote for a proposal that bankrupts the state you can change the lawmakers. When the state is bankrupted by ballot initiative, solutions are much harder to come by.