What difference does it make how long the cartoon has been around. It's a portrayal of a 2-year-old. It is -- and should be IMO -- illegal to portray children having sex. If someone wants to argue that it's not a child, that it's a dwarf, fine. That is a question of fact. It is therefore up to a jury to decide whether it is a child or a dwarf being portrayed. If there is any reasonable doubt that it is a child being portrayed, then the accused must be found not guilty. Juries have to make much harder distinctions of fact than that on a daily basis. Convictions can only be obtained when the facts are fairly clear, which is how it should be.
It varies state to state, but in most rust-belt and north-east states, it is illegal to fire unionized workers on strike. One would have to look up what the state-by-state differences are, but Michigan is notorious for being one of the worst. No, it's not just the UAW, but they are one of the biggest beneficiaries of such laws, and historically one of the biggest sources of reelection funding for Democrats.
Yes, poor, poor GM. They have no power up against the big bad Union. Clearly, they were forced to sign the employment contracts. It's completely unfair to expect them to pay retirement benefits for their former employees.
Of course they were forced. The union pays for the laws. The laws force the companies to comply with the will of the union. The law prohibits them from finding alternate employees. If the will of the unions is to pay 3x the sustainable market value of labor, then the company must pay it or have no workforce. In that case the workers and the union sucks the company dry until it goes bankrupt... or get infused with more money from the legislators who are bought and paid for by the union dues.
The old rail traffic is irrelevant. America was sparsely populated then, and only along the old rail lines. Creating a network of rails that would connect on the population centers in modern America would not be feasible. Europeans and Americans who spend all their time in the big cities usually don't comprehend just how big America is. Try driving around in it some time.
If the big threes "management" offered to pay too much and offered to many benefits then it's "management" who fucked up, not the workers. It's funny that when it comes to the average man on the street, the mantra and "rules" of freemarket capitalism (greed is good!) are conveniently turned around and it becomes "oh those greedy workers! Looking out for themselves first?! Who would have thought they're so evil and bad!"
What the hell happened to the whole "personal responsibility" BS that gets thrown around here whenever it's the worker getting hamstrung by a company? If the big three don't like it then FIRE THEM AND HIRE NEW WORKERS, oh they can't survive without their labour? Well good thing we live in a freemarket system where workers are payed according to their value to the company (as we keep being told about 30 million dollar+ packages for management". Management signed contracts giving them pensions? Then TO BAD, personal responsibility BS goes both ways it doesn't just apply to the peasants. Though many around here seem to believe it does.
Maybe you're new to this country, so I'll explain it to you. The UAW controls all the workers of the big 3. The UAW determines whether or no the workers show up for work. The UAW extracts dues from the workers which are then passed on to the election funds of Democrats in the state and federal legislatures. Those legislators make it illegal for the big 3 to fire the UAW workers or to hire replacements. The big 3 has to do what the UAW demands or die. This has absolutely nothing in common with a free market. The big 3 acquiesces, so it can fail in the future rather than in the present. Like a mob shakedown, the pool of money eventually dries up, and the whole thing collapses. That would be now... or at least it should be now.
First, you chose not to comment on the lie about US autoworkers wages being "300% higher" than Honda/Toyota USA. I don't consider it a small point... especially when factcheck shows cases where Toyota USA employees WAGES are HIGHER than Detroits.
This is a total red herring. It is the TOTAL COMPENSATION that is 300% higher in Detroit, not the wages.
Some people so despise "unions" that they'll make shit up about their pay, and spread FUD to prevent solutions. Where's the anger at CEO pay of FINANCIAL companies getting tax money bailouts?
You complain about FUD and then you bring up CEO pay??? If I have to pay for a bailout, I sure as hell don't want the company run by some discount-rate CEO. They should pay for the best leadership available.
I beg to differ. What percentage of the population actually does construction? 1%? Probably less. I live in farm country and most people I know drive a truck that gets 12 mpg all the time so they can haul stuff maybe once or twice a month. And that justification gets weaker and weaker as you get closer to town. My former stock broker insisted his wife needed a giant SUV so she didn't have to bend over to lift stuff out of a trunk. Lot of people drive a 12 mpg vehicle all the time so they tow a boat to the lake five or six times over the summer, haul their 4 wheeler out in the woods so they can go hunting. I'm not saying those are bad things, but multiply those flimsy justifications across the nation and it adds up to 25% of the world's gasoline being used by 3% of the world's population. Our economy being dependent on a string of oil tankers stretching around the world and something on the order of $700 billion a year going to countries that don't like us.
So, yeah, there's a lot wrong with that.
There is nothing wrong with those justifications. Gas is cheap enough that it's worth (to those people) driving a 12 mpg vehicle year-round for the conveniences that those vehicles offer when you really need their capabilities. If oil were to become scarce, then many such people would no longer be incented to own such vehicles. Unless you belong to the "carbon dioxide is a pollutant" belief system, or unless you seriously think that us changing our driving habits is going to make any kind of difference in Iran's balance sheet, it is purely a matter of personal finance.
I'm not primarily blaming the unions, though they do shoulder some of the blame. I mostly blame GM, Ford and Chrysler who orchestrated this scheme way back when in their glory days. Their pension and benefits plan is similar to the U.S. Social Security model, where current employees pay for retiree benefits. That crap only works if "current employees > retirees". Once there are more people drawing benefits than paying into the pot, you start rapidly going into the hole. GM and Chrysler are now very deep in that hole. This is really nothing more than a legalized Ponzi Scheme. That scam only works if you have an ever increasing number of new investors (employees), which is eventually impossible. It is what gutted the U.S. steel industry and is now going to do the same to the U.S. auto industry.
I'm not targeting unions. The Big 3 made their bed and should be required to lie in it, even if it kills them.
But the big 3 did NOT orchestrate this. The UAW, with the backing of the US Congress orchestrated this. It's no coincidence that it works the same way as Social Security. That's the way the Congress thinks! Make something that gives people lots of goodies today, and screw the future! The big 3 were extorted into going along with it (and going out of business some time in the future) or going out of business then. So, yes, the big 3 must die... because, especially with a Democratic government, it is the only way to kill the UAW.
Health care costs are certainly hurting Detroit, but that's because they're competing against nations which benefit from "socialized medicine".
No, it's because they're competing against automakers in Tennessee and the Carolinas, who don't have the UAW to extort from them wages and benefits that are well above any sustainable market value.
SUVs, pickups, and jeeps are the ONLY future for the big 3. It is the one area where they exceed the competition. Many sectors of people around the world love American hummers, F-150s, jeeps, and SUVs. What the big 3 need to do is scale down, stop trying to compete with Honda, Toyota, etc, on small fuel-efficient cars, stop trying to compete with BMW, etc., on luxury cars, and focus on the one thing they're good at. It may not be sloppy feel-good "green" thinking, but it is the truth.
Does anyone believe Karl Rove would not stoop to murder?
Yes. I believe Rove is a great guy.
I now believe Scooter Libby was persuaded to "take the fall" by threats of being ruined and by promises of a pardon if he bit the bullet.
Come on! He panicked and lied. If he had told the truth, there would have been no problem. He got smacked for lying. The person who outed Plame (Armitage) didn't even get in trouble for it.
"Balanced" means that the weights you assign to the various arguments are determined by some standard other than your personal opinion. Some standard that can be uniformly applied. Examples of balanced criteria could be for example weighting according to the percentage of the general population believe the various things; or it could be weighted according to its representation in peer-reviewed journals.
The most obvious thing that points to it being a "convenient accident" is that the guy himself was afraid for his life and his lawyer was trying to get him into witness protection at the time.
According to WHO (and people selling conspiracy theory books don't count)? If you're going to off a guy who knows to much about some case, don't you think you'd maybe do it BEFORE his deposition??
Yes, according the anonymous "tipsters" claimed by a guy selling books called "Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000-2008" and "Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They'll Steal the Next One Too".
It's pretty silly to expect that everyone is going to change their behavior immediately due to increased availability of a larger variety of goods. When cable came along and people were given a larger amount of choice of television programming viewing habits didn't change overnight, they changed over decades.
But TFA shows research that indicates that increased variety and increased connectedness causes MORE uniformity in consumption. When we have more choices than we could possibly process on our own, our dependence on the community to tell us what is good increases, and a smaller number of popular choices become more and more popular.
I, for one, am part of this (thin as it may be) long tail. The last two books I bought from Amazon were "Astronomical Algorithms" by Jean Meeus and "Theogony" by Hesiod. These were not fad-driven purchases. I'm willing to believe that the market as a whole is becoming more markedly fad-driven; but I also must believe that there are many others like me who, pre-Internet, would have gone to a local bookstore to find the books such as the above examples, and, not finding them, would have ended up going without.
Not that I'm any different from the fad-driven masses. If I were simply looking for a book to amuse me, or to pass the time, I would probably look at Amazon's best selling list as a way of maximizing my chances of getting something good. In the old days, I'd probably have been more likely to go to the local bookstore and look for something that jumped out at me. Hence I would be manifesting this fad-driven as well. Combining both behaviors, I'd say that the shape of the curve is indeed steeper, with bigger blockbusters and with a thinner tail, but still with a much, much longer tail.
That's where this whole business of "programmed death after reproduction" sucks. Not because 4-5 years is short, but because they are genetically programmed to self-destruct (or starve to death if the self-destruction glands are removed) not long after laying eggs (about the time the eggs hatch according to wikipedia). There's no nurturing of the kids. Whatever cool and neat trick the parent octopi may have learnt dies with them. They don't get a chance to transmit it to their children.
Because of this no culture can be carried on, and with this : no civilisation.
Culture among species such as chimps and orangutans seems to be perpetuated more between peers than from parents to offspring. Technological culture even more so -- as simian technology pertains to acquiring food, it's not learned until one is old enough to acquire it for himself, and then it is learned from one's food-gathering peers. Even among humans technological culture is passed down mostly by non=parents, but rather upon entering into adulthood by the hunting party/craftsman to whom one is apprenticed/trade school/university/on-the-job training. Moral culture is a different story, but moral culture seems more unique to humans.
And teh best way for us to not tolerate it, is to exploit it to laughable extremes. Have everyone copy the license plate of Governor Martin O'Malley and let him get multiple speeding tickets in different parts of his state at the same time, the law will change much faster that way as compared to waiting for the legislature to actually give a shit about bad law.
That's the best way, huh? If you do that, I can't even count the number of criminal violations they'll tag you with once they track you down. If you do that and don't go to prison for it, it's only because the DA doesn't feel like pursuing it.
Not really. Our understanding of life is grounded firmly in chemistry and physics, which are literally universal.
That statement suggests an ignorance of the fundamentals of science. Our understanding of chemistry and physics is indeed used to describe the life we observe on Earth. There is nothing in that understanding that suggests what properties of chemistry or physics might be employed by life off the earth, or how similar or dissimilar it might be to life on the earth.
We look for water-based life, because we have an idea what it might look like. We expect we would recognize it if we see it. But it is irrational to assume that all or most life must be water-based. There is no factual evidence to make such conclusions from. In the observation of life, we thus far have one single planetary data point.
Not only slavery, but capital punishment for most crimes. The trouble people have is that we really only have the notes made by the visionaries of that time, and they're trying to compare that to the teeming masses of Oprah viewers now. They had their teeming masses of slackjaws then too, they just didn't bother to write down what they said.
We would have a far superior society with capital punishment for most crimes. But you make a good point -- the records we have are from the people who bothered to write. It's hard to know about the masses. And the advent of Christianity did bring some definite moral advances to the world, such as the abolition of infanticide.
Ancient rape was punished with death. Modern rape is punished with maybe a few months in prison. In modern times, not even murder is punished with death. In my view, this makes the ancient system morally superior.
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What difference does it make how long the cartoon has been around. It's a portrayal of a 2-year-old. It is -- and should be IMO -- illegal to portray children having sex. If someone wants to argue that it's not a child, that it's a dwarf, fine. That is a question of fact. It is therefore up to a jury to decide whether it is a child or a dwarf being portrayed. If there is any reasonable doubt that it is a child being portrayed, then the accused must be found not guilty. Juries have to make much harder distinctions of fact than that on a daily basis. Convictions can only be obtained when the facts are fairly clear, which is how it should be.
It varies state to state, but in most rust-belt and north-east states, it is illegal to fire unionized workers on strike. One would have to look up what the state-by-state differences are, but Michigan is notorious for being one of the worst. No, it's not just the UAW, but they are one of the biggest beneficiaries of such laws, and historically one of the biggest sources of reelection funding for Democrats.
Of course they were forced. The union pays for the laws. The laws force the companies to comply with the will of the union. The law prohibits them from finding alternate employees. If the will of the unions is to pay 3x the sustainable market value of labor, then the company must pay it or have no workforce. In that case the workers and the union sucks the company dry until it goes bankrupt... or get infused with more money from the legislators who are bought and paid for by the union dues.
The old rail traffic is irrelevant. America was sparsely populated then, and only along the old rail lines. Creating a network of rails that would connect on the population centers in modern America would not be feasible. Europeans and Americans who spend all their time in the big cities usually don't comprehend just how big America is. Try driving around in it some time.
Maybe you're new to this country, so I'll explain it to you. The UAW controls all the workers of the big 3. The UAW determines whether or no the workers show up for work. The UAW extracts dues from the workers which are then passed on to the election funds of Democrats in the state and federal legislatures. Those legislators make it illegal for the big 3 to fire the UAW workers or to hire replacements. The big 3 has to do what the UAW demands or die. This has absolutely nothing in common with a free market. The big 3 acquiesces, so it can fail in the future rather than in the present. Like a mob shakedown, the pool of money eventually dries up, and the whole thing collapses. That would be now... or at least it should be now.
This is a total red herring. It is the TOTAL COMPENSATION that is 300% higher in Detroit, not the wages.
You complain about FUD and then you bring up CEO pay??? If I have to pay for a bailout, I sure as hell don't want the company run by some discount-rate CEO. They should pay for the best leadership available.
There is nothing wrong with those justifications. Gas is cheap enough that it's worth (to those people) driving a 12 mpg vehicle year-round for the conveniences that those vehicles offer when you really need their capabilities. If oil were to become scarce, then many such people would no longer be incented to own such vehicles. Unless you belong to the "carbon dioxide is a pollutant" belief system, or unless you seriously think that us changing our driving habits is going to make any kind of difference in Iran's balance sheet, it is purely a matter of personal finance.
But the big 3 did NOT orchestrate this. The UAW, with the backing of the US Congress orchestrated this. It's no coincidence that it works the same way as Social Security. That's the way the Congress thinks! Make something that gives people lots of goodies today, and screw the future! The big 3 were extorted into going along with it (and going out of business some time in the future) or going out of business then. So, yes, the big 3 must die... because, especially with a Democratic government, it is the only way to kill the UAW.
No, it's because they're competing against automakers in Tennessee and the Carolinas, who don't have the UAW to extort from them wages and benefits that are well above any sustainable market value.
SUVs, pickups, and jeeps are the ONLY future for the big 3. It is the one area where they exceed the competition. Many sectors of people around the world love American hummers, F-150s, jeeps, and SUVs. What the big 3 need to do is scale down, stop trying to compete with Honda, Toyota, etc, on small fuel-efficient cars, stop trying to compete with BMW, etc., on luxury cars, and focus on the one thing they're good at. It may not be sloppy feel-good "green" thinking, but it is the truth.
Frowning causes wrinkles.
Sentences are terminated with a period.
Yes. I believe Rove is a great guy.
Come on! He panicked and lied. If he had told the truth, there would have been no problem. He got smacked for lying. The person who outed Plame (Armitage) didn't even get in trouble for it.
"Balanced" means that the weights you assign to the various arguments are determined by some standard other than your personal opinion. Some standard that can be uniformly applied. Examples of balanced criteria could be for example weighting according to the percentage of the general population believe the various things; or it could be weighted according to its representation in peer-reviewed journals.
According to WHO (and people selling conspiracy theory books don't count)? If you're going to off a guy who knows to much about some case, don't you think you'd maybe do it BEFORE his deposition??
Er... how about "The Ohio State Department uses SMARTTech web services to provide secure and efficient voter statistics."
Yes, according the anonymous "tipsters" claimed by a guy selling books called "Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000-2008" and "Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They'll Steal the Next One Too".
But TFA shows research that indicates that increased variety and increased connectedness causes MORE uniformity in consumption. When we have more choices than we could possibly process on our own, our dependence on the community to tell us what is good increases, and a smaller number of popular choices become more and more popular.
I, for one, am part of this (thin as it may be) long tail. The last two books I bought from Amazon were "Astronomical Algorithms" by Jean Meeus and "Theogony" by Hesiod. These were not fad-driven purchases. I'm willing to believe that the market as a whole is becoming more markedly fad-driven; but I also must believe that there are many others like me who, pre-Internet, would have gone to a local bookstore to find the books such as the above examples, and, not finding them, would have ended up going without.
Not that I'm any different from the fad-driven masses. If I were simply looking for a book to amuse me, or to pass the time, I would probably look at Amazon's best selling list as a way of maximizing my chances of getting something good. In the old days, I'd probably have been more likely to go to the local bookstore and look for something that jumped out at me. Hence I would be manifesting this fad-driven as well. Combining both behaviors, I'd say that the shape of the curve is indeed steeper, with bigger blockbusters and with a thinner tail, but still with a much, much longer tail.
Culture among species such as chimps and orangutans seems to be perpetuated more between peers than from parents to offspring. Technological culture even more so -- as simian technology pertains to acquiring food, it's not learned until one is old enough to acquire it for himself, and then it is learned from one's food-gathering peers. Even among humans technological culture is passed down mostly by non=parents, but rather upon entering into adulthood by the hunting party/craftsman to whom one is apprenticed/trade school/university/on-the-job training. Moral culture is a different story, but moral culture seems more unique to humans.
That's the best way, huh? If you do that, I can't even count the number of criminal violations they'll tag you with once they track you down. If you do that and don't go to prison for it, it's only because the DA doesn't feel like pursuing it.
Well, if it's iodized table salt, that would be something.
That statement suggests an ignorance of the fundamentals of science. Our understanding of chemistry and physics is indeed used to describe the life we observe on Earth. There is nothing in that understanding that suggests what properties of chemistry or physics might be employed by life off the earth, or how similar or dissimilar it might be to life on the earth.
We look for water-based life, because we have an idea what it might look like. We expect we would recognize it if we see it. But it is irrational to assume that all or most life must be water-based. There is no factual evidence to make such conclusions from. In the observation of life, we thus far have one single planetary data point.
We would have a far superior society with capital punishment for most crimes. But you make a good point -- the records we have are from the people who bothered to write. It's hard to know about the masses. And the advent of Christianity did bring some definite moral advances to the world, such as the abolition of infanticide.
Ancient rape was punished with death. Modern rape is punished with maybe a few months in prison. In modern times, not even murder is punished with death. In my view, this makes the ancient system morally superior.
Ancient Greek slavery was not the moral equivalent of 19th century American slavery.