It does not matter that the USA produces 25% of the global output because it is them who consume this output...
Not at all - everybody consumes some of it. Everyone who sells things to the US consumes some part of that output by collecting some of the wealth produced by the US. Everyone who buys things from the US consumes some part of that output by receiving the goods and services produced here.
Imagine 20 people who share a common resource. One of them takes 1/4 of it. Don't you think the rest would think that this person is "unfair"?
The problem is, the consumption is part and parcel of production. John consumes 25% of the world's sauce, dough and cheese. He does not, however, roll it all into a big pile and destroy it - he uses 25% of the world's pizza supplies because he makes 25% of the world's pizzas. If that strikes you as unfair somehow, you are always free to buy pizzas elsewhere, or do without pizzas altogether.
I'm inclined to doubt it, but it doesn't really matter.
Does it give the goods and services away to the rest of the world? And by maintaining its lifestyle, produces 25% of CO2.
Considering that the US trade deficit was nearly $700 billion last year, a better question would be, does the rest of the world give away goods and services to us? Of course not. The US makes a lot, consumes a lot, and if the rest of the world objects, they can always stop buying and selling to us, and we'll all get poor together. After all, it's not just maintaining our lifestyle, it's about maintaining your lifestyle too. Even if you're not American.
No, it's wrong - the US outputs about twice as much greenhouse gases per unit of GDP as the EU, which has a larger GDP (and population) than the US.
Actually, you're wrong on several counts. The US total GDP is larger than that of the EU-15. Also, the output in Tg/$billion for the US is about.55 Tg/$billion versus the EU's.41 Tg/$billion, which is not really close to twice as much. And none if that contradicts my original post to begin with anyway, since I said "many countries", not "all countries".
...the US produces nearly a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions
Exactly what you'd expect, considering that the US makes about a quarter of the world's stuff. Measure pollution versus output, and I think you'll find that the US is quite a bit more efficient than many countries.
I have a customer with a PSC1210. I've been having an awful time trying to get the thing running. I'm going there tomorrow with a download of the latest driver...
There's something fucked up about the hardware on those goddamn things too. I have a 1210 also, and I could not get the Dell machine to recognize the damn thing. HP's "solutions" were:
1. don't use the front USB port, use the ports on the rear of the machine. Okay, whatever. That didn't work.
2). Use a powered USB hub. Okay, whatever. That didn't work either.
3). We don't know.
My solution was to drag out an old Pavilion I had lying around and plug it in. Son-of-a-bitch recognized the thing on the first try. So basically I have an HP all-in-one that works just fine - as long as it's hooked up to an HP computer. Wish they'd mention the bundling thing on the box.
Perhaps as an added bonus carnun could even be persuaded to participate heavily in the discussion.
Yeah, right. After that electric-universe clusterfuck yesterday, why would anyone remotely affiliated with legitimate, mainstream science want to come within a mile of this place? And even if someone did - I'm guessing this submission's been in the queue for a bit - do we have time to fit it in, in between our daily doses of kookery?
Hey, on the plus side, I now know for sure that not subscribing was absolutely, 100% the right decision, so it's not a total loss, I guess.
Some folks may decide this sort of thing is worth rewarding, some may decide it's worth avoiding, and some may decide it's not important either way. I merely report for the edification of potential purchasers.
Notice how you chopped off the second half of that quote and misrepresented what GP said?
GMAFB. Read for content, oh anonymous one - he's asserting that "Team B" and the CIA are different groups, and that the CIA had data showing that the USSR was crumbling. Well, if they did, they sure did a damn good job of hiding it at the time.
And yeah, it shouldn't have been modded "Troll", but that'll have to do until "-1, Woefully Misinformed" shows up as an option.
If you understand the philosphy of their mentor, Leo Strauss, their objective is to create myths of good and evil they can use to unite disaffected Westerners behind an easily understood cause of good versus evil.
Thank you, Ms. Drury. This is, as is typical of most folks who set out to comment on Leo Strauss, indicative of someone who has either A) not read Strauss at all, and has instead substituted someone else's absurd caricature for actual reading and critical thought, or; B) has read Strauss, and yet purposefully misrepresents his writings because he makes a convenient boogeyman with which to tar people whose politics differ from your own. For those interested in the man and his actual writings, as opposed to the deep role he apparently plays in the fantasy lives of some, I commend unto you a relatively even-handed Wikipedia overview. For those who also don't follow the "Ms. Drury" crack, mash here for a somewhat less even-handed (but no less accurate) explanation.
The necons need Bin Laden, al-Zarqawi and al-Zawahri in the wild to demonize and terrify Americans to make Americans easier to control and manipulate....The neocons needed a new boogie man when the Soviet Union collapsed. Saddam filled the bill but badly and now he is in jail so is a write off.
And now we delve into the self-contradictory mess that is the typical crackpot spin on current events. We are presented with a conspiracy of sorts, one that is alternately composed of evil geniuses bent on some mad plan, yet who make stunningly bone-headed moves from time to time - depending, of course, on which is more convenient to the storyteller at the time. So how, pray tell, did Saddam wind up in jail? Did he miracle himself in there? If the plan was to use him as a demon to terrorize the sheep at home, doesn't actually capturing him sort of constitute blowing a big hole in your own foot? Why bother capturing him if he's so very valuable out there in the wild?
Team B took the same data the CIA had which said the Soviet Union wasn't that much of a threat, and was crumbling from within...
Jeezus fucking Christ. Who fed you this junk, the CIA? Back during the Reagan years, the CIA was most assuredly not saying any such thing about the Soviets - as late as 1985, the CIA was saying that per-capita income in the USSR was on a par with that of the United States. In fact, we now know that it was less than one-third that of the US at the time, but at the time, they sure didn't know it. It's actually hard to think of a less reliable source for info on the USSR during the Cold War than the CIA - they repeatedly and consistently gave out bad information regarding the threat capabilities of the Soviets, virtually uniformly over-estimating the long-term threat they posed. In hindsight, the collapse of the Soviet Union may well have been inevitable, but you sure wouldn't have gotten that impression if you'd been listening to the CIA during the early- to mid-1980's. I'm sure the staff revisionists at the CIA would like you to believe otherwise - and in the Reagan administration, but nevermind that - but it really just ain't so.
William Casey was a big subscriber of the Soviet Union leading a global terror network. People of the CIA tried to point out to him it was untrue, because in fact it was black propaganda the CIA itself had started.
Excuse me? The links between the Soviet Union and international terrorism are both extensive and well-documented - mash here and here for just a small taste, and please note that the author of those two pieces is a former head of Romanian Intelligence, so spare us "explanations" of how this is more evidence of CIA nefariousness.
...I can say confidently that public education in my country sucks.
Actually, this is not true often enough to be a general rule - the best American high schools are really quite good, comparatively speaking. What makes the difference between a good school and a bad school is mostly the level of parental involvement. If the local culture is such that most parents don't really give a crap whether their kids are in school or how they're doing, the school will likely be a poorly performing school, regularly turning out semi-literate burger-flippers. If that. If the local culture is such that most parents are involved in their children's education, monitoring their progress and showing a good deal of concern for their education, the school will likely tend to be a good school, turning out better qualified graduates. Of course, the real secret is that good parents can overcome bad schools - it's harder that way, but it's definitely doable.
Anyway, you can't fix the schools by changing the schools themselves - they're broken by design. But it doesn't really matter in the end - the real difference is made at home, not in the schools. If you want to fix the schools, fix the culture and the schools will follow.
Oh, about not paying for taxes. The government can not force you to. They can throw you in jail, that is true, but it will cost government $30,000 per year to house you and feed you and pay for the guards and electricity. So if you don't pay taxes, and government sends you to jail, you win. Not only did you not pay taxes, but you forced them to spend $30,000 a year on you.
Except that yout friendly neighborhood IRS agent is just as aware of that calculation as you are. So most likely, they won't toss you in prison - they'll simply calculate your taxes and file for you, and then if you owe, they'll place a lien against your property, garnish your wages, or freeze your bank accounts in order to satisfy the debt. Or some combination of the three.
Of course, maybe you don't have any property to seize, bank accounts to raid, or wages to garnish, but in that case, you probably don't really owe much in the way of taxes to begin with, which would make your gesture essentially meaningless - it's posturing without really risking anything.
When your long-term goal is to turn the clock back to about 1350, and your preferred means of achieving that goal is blowing up restaurants, you're not a freedom fighter - you're a fucking terrorist.
The concept does very much exist in most (all?) US courts, though, but the bar is typically set quite high. Having one's day in court is generally seen as a fundamental right, so judges are usually loathe to pull that trigger - you have to work at it pretty hard to get yourself declared a vexatious litigant in most places.
You can trademark the word itself, as applied to a particular product or products. I can trademark "Apple" (well, not any more) as a mark for my brand of computers, and that protects me against some wise guy who starts selling computers as "Apple Machines" or some such. What I can't do is trademark "Apple" as it applies to computers, and then use that trademark to prevent anyone from ever using the word "Apple" again, regardless of context.
At least, that's the way it's supposed to work - this dildo is apparently attempting to prove me wrong, and show that he can prevent anyone from ever using the word "stealth".
Probably because whatever argument you're trying to make is hopelessly muddled. Neither the ICC nor Kyoto were UN resolutions, nor did the US "veto" either. Both were multilateral treaties which the US has declined to be a part of. Everyone else is still free to abide by either or both of those treaties if they wish, but the US will not - this is not a "veto" of ICC or Kyoto any more than declining to field a team for the 1980 Olympics was a "veto" of the Olympic games.
Good analysis. Al Gonzalez is the safe choice, without a doubt. The fun choice would be someone like Janice Rogers Brown. Depending on one's definition of "fun", I guess, but then political food fights are always fun, aren't they?:)
That's not exactly true - not often enough to be a general rule, anyway. The general rule is that if you can show that you were fired without just cause, you can still receive unemployment benefits in most states. If you're fired because you don't do your work, or you're late all the time, or you're generally incompetent, you likely won't be eligible to receive unemployment. If you can show that you got fired without such just cause - for example, you get fired because you refused to break the law when directed to - you will almost surely be eligible for unemployment benefits. The catch is that it's usually up to the fired worker to show that the termination was unjust.
So any nuances added to writing through selective phrasing or structuring is lost to most readers.
Your subject and verb do not agree in number. Cut out the extraneous material in between, and what you're left with is "So any nuances...is lost to most readers, when it should, of course, be "any nuances...are lost." It's a common enough mistake, losing track of number and tense, particularly when you've got verbiage in between the two. An even better formulation might have been to keep it singular, as "nuance" tends to be, and written "So any nuance...is lost."
But as you said, the message was clear enough. Everyone surely understood the point you were making, so who cares, right? How many people even noticed that? A handful, probably, but what if one of the handful of people spotted that in, say, your resume?
In the end, why take the chance that it'll be noticed in some important situation? Not that a/. post is particularly important, but still, it's just as easy to get such seeming trivia right with a bit of practice. Good grammar is almost never noticed, but the absence of same is almost inevitably going to be noticed sooner or later, and probably at the worst possible time for its author;)
Maybe he's trying to kill two birds with one stone. You know - "I see that the IP address you had all last weekend belongs to the netblock assigned to the men's dorm. Is there something we should talk about?"
More seriously, there's not much you can do about your concerns, other than hope that you've given them the tools to make good decisions on their own. Of course, that's easy for me to say - my daughter is only six;)
When I worked at Earthlink, everyone's goal was to not be on the phones and to be transferred to a position not on the phones.
Well, it seems to have worked, given that EL has now outsourced all their first-tier support staff;)
It's not so bad, really - my only (minor) complaint is that their staff feel compelled to make up Americanized names when you call. I don't know if it's policy or what, but I'm really not going to flip out if you tell me your name is Bina or Niraj or whatever - just don't bullshit me and tell me your name is Betty or Steve, 'cause I don't buy it, sorry...
Slashdot Mirror
Not at all - everybody consumes some of it. Everyone who sells things to the US consumes some part of that output by collecting some of the wealth produced by the US. Everyone who buys things from the US consumes some part of that output by receiving the goods and services produced here.
Imagine 20 people who share a common resource. One of them takes 1/4 of it. Don't you think the rest would think that this person is "unfair"?
The problem is, the consumption is part and parcel of production. John consumes 25% of the world's sauce, dough and cheese. He does not, however, roll it all into a big pile and destroy it - he uses 25% of the world's pizza supplies because he makes 25% of the world's pizzas. If that strikes you as unfair somehow, you are always free to buy pizzas elsewhere, or do without pizzas altogether.
I'm inclined to doubt it, but it doesn't really matter.
Does it give the goods and services away to the rest of the world? And by maintaining its lifestyle, produces 25% of CO2.
Considering that the US trade deficit was nearly $700 billion last year, a better question would be, does the rest of the world give away goods and services to us? Of course not. The US makes a lot, consumes a lot, and if the rest of the world objects, they can always stop buying and selling to us, and we'll all get poor together. After all, it's not just maintaining our lifestyle, it's about maintaining your lifestyle too. Even if you're not American.
Actually, you're wrong on several counts. The US total GDP is larger than that of the EU-15. Also, the output in Tg/$billion for the US is about .55 Tg/$billion versus the EU's .41 Tg/$billion, which is not really close to twice as much. And none if that contradicts my original post to begin with anyway, since I said "many countries", not "all countries".
A gracious response, to be sure. Cheers!
No, it's quite right - I'm talking about pollution per unit of GDP, not per person.
Exactly what you'd expect, considering that the US makes about a quarter of the world's stuff. Measure pollution versus output, and I think you'll find that the US is quite a bit more efficient than many countries.
There's something fucked up about the hardware on those goddamn things too. I have a 1210 also, and I could not get the Dell machine to recognize the damn thing. HP's "solutions" were:
1. don't use the front USB port, use the ports on the rear of the machine. Okay, whatever. That didn't work.
2). Use a powered USB hub. Okay, whatever. That didn't work either.
3). We don't know.
My solution was to drag out an old Pavilion I had lying around and plug it in. Son-of-a-bitch recognized the thing on the first try. So basically I have an HP all-in-one that works just fine - as long as it's hooked up to an HP computer. Wish they'd mention the bundling thing on the box.
Yeah, right. After that electric-universe clusterfuck yesterday, why would anyone remotely affiliated with legitimate, mainstream science want to come within a mile of this place? And even if someone did - I'm guessing this submission's been in the queue for a bit - do we have time to fit it in, in between our daily doses of kookery?
Hey, on the plus side, I now know for sure that not subscribing was absolutely, 100% the right decision, so it's not a total loss, I guess.
Teleport ... +bushsux-oluaowr ... +iraqsux-eszaryz
Silver ring
Some folks may decide this sort of thing is worth rewarding, some may decide it's worth avoiding, and some may decide it's not important either way. I merely report for the edification of potential purchasers.
GMAFB. Read for content, oh anonymous one - he's asserting that "Team B" and the CIA are different groups, and that the CIA had data showing that the USSR was crumbling. Well, if they did, they sure did a damn good job of hiding it at the time.
And yeah, it shouldn't have been modded "Troll", but that'll have to do until "-1, Woefully Misinformed" shows up as an option.
If you understand the philosphy of their mentor, Leo Strauss, their objective is to create myths of good and evil they can use to unite disaffected Westerners behind an easily understood cause of good versus evil.
Thank you, Ms. Drury. This is, as is typical of most folks who set out to comment on Leo Strauss, indicative of someone who has either A) not read Strauss at all, and has instead substituted someone else's absurd caricature for actual reading and critical thought, or; B) has read Strauss, and yet purposefully misrepresents his writings because he makes a convenient boogeyman with which to tar people whose politics differ from your own. For those interested in the man and his actual writings, as opposed to the deep role he apparently plays in the fantasy lives of some, I commend unto you a relatively even-handed Wikipedia overview. For those who also don't follow the "Ms. Drury" crack, mash here for a somewhat less even-handed (but no less accurate) explanation.
The necons need Bin Laden, al-Zarqawi and al-Zawahri in the wild to demonize and terrify Americans to make Americans easier to control and manipulate....The neocons needed a new boogie man when the Soviet Union collapsed. Saddam filled the bill but badly and now he is in jail so is a write off.
And now we delve into the self-contradictory mess that is the typical crackpot spin on current events. We are presented with a conspiracy of sorts, one that is alternately composed of evil geniuses bent on some mad plan, yet who make stunningly bone-headed moves from time to time - depending, of course, on which is more convenient to the storyteller at the time. So how, pray tell, did Saddam wind up in jail? Did he miracle himself in there? If the plan was to use him as a demon to terrorize the sheep at home, doesn't actually capturing him sort of constitute blowing a big hole in your own foot? Why bother capturing him if he's so very valuable out there in the wild?
Team B took the same data the CIA had which said the Soviet Union wasn't that much of a threat, and was crumbling from within...
Jeezus fucking Christ. Who fed you this junk, the CIA? Back during the Reagan years, the CIA was most assuredly not saying any such thing about the Soviets - as late as 1985, the CIA was saying that per-capita income in the USSR was on a par with that of the United States. In fact, we now know that it was less than one-third that of the US at the time, but at the time, they sure didn't know it. It's actually hard to think of a less reliable source for info on the USSR during the Cold War than the CIA - they repeatedly and consistently gave out bad information regarding the threat capabilities of the Soviets, virtually uniformly over-estimating the long-term threat they posed. In hindsight, the collapse of the Soviet Union may well have been inevitable, but you sure wouldn't have gotten that impression if you'd been listening to the CIA during the early- to mid-1980's. I'm sure the staff revisionists at the CIA would like you to believe otherwise - and in the Reagan administration, but nevermind that - but it really just ain't so.
William Casey was a big subscriber of the Soviet Union leading a global terror network. People of the CIA tried to point out to him it was untrue, because in fact it was black propaganda the CIA itself had started.
Excuse me? The links between the Soviet Union and international terrorism are both extensive and well-documented - mash here and here for just a small taste, and please note that the author of those two pieces is a former head of Romanian Intelligence, so spare us "explanations" of how this is more evidence of CIA nefariousness.
This
What?
No probs with the rest of your post, just wanted to point out that "pain" is relative, and relatively speaking, prices today really aren't so bad ;)
Actually, this is not true often enough to be a general rule - the best American high schools are really quite good, comparatively speaking. What makes the difference between a good school and a bad school is mostly the level of parental involvement. If the local culture is such that most parents don't really give a crap whether their kids are in school or how they're doing, the school will likely be a poorly performing school, regularly turning out semi-literate burger-flippers. If that. If the local culture is such that most parents are involved in their children's education, monitoring their progress and showing a good deal of concern for their education, the school will likely tend to be a good school, turning out better qualified graduates. Of course, the real secret is that good parents can overcome bad schools - it's harder that way, but it's definitely doable.
Anyway, you can't fix the schools by changing the schools themselves - they're broken by design. But it doesn't really matter in the end - the real difference is made at home, not in the schools. If you want to fix the schools, fix the culture and the schools will follow.
Except that yout friendly neighborhood IRS agent is just as aware of that calculation as you are. So most likely, they won't toss you in prison - they'll simply calculate your taxes and file for you, and then if you owe, they'll place a lien against your property, garnish your wages, or freeze your bank accounts in order to satisfy the debt. Or some combination of the three.
Of course, maybe you don't have any property to seize, bank accounts to raid, or wages to garnish, but in that case, you probably don't really owe much in the way of taxes to begin with, which would make your gesture essentially meaningless - it's posturing without really risking anything.
When your long-term goal is to turn the clock back to about 1350, and your preferred means of achieving that goal is blowing up restaurants, you're not a freedom fighter - you're a fucking terrorist.
The concept does very much exist in most (all?) US courts, though, but the bar is typically set quite high. Having one's day in court is generally seen as a fundamental right, so judges are usually loathe to pull that trigger - you have to work at it pretty hard to get yourself declared a vexatious litigant in most places.
At least, that's the way it's supposed to work - this dildo is apparently attempting to prove me wrong, and show that he can prevent anyone from ever using the word "stealth".
Probably because whatever argument you're trying to make is hopelessly muddled. Neither the ICC nor Kyoto were UN resolutions, nor did the US "veto" either. Both were multilateral treaties which the US has declined to be a part of. Everyone else is still free to abide by either or both of those treaties if they wish, but the US will not - this is not a "veto" of ICC or Kyoto any more than declining to field a team for the 1980 Olympics was a "veto" of the Olympic games.
Good analysis. Al Gonzalez is the safe choice, without a doubt. The fun choice would be someone like Janice Rogers Brown. Depending on one's definition of "fun", I guess, but then political food fights are always fun, aren't they? :)
That's not exactly true - not often enough to be a general rule, anyway. The general rule is that if you can show that you were fired without just cause, you can still receive unemployment benefits in most states. If you're fired because you don't do your work, or you're late all the time, or you're generally incompetent, you likely won't be eligible to receive unemployment. If you can show that you got fired without such just cause - for example, you get fired because you refused to break the law when directed to - you will almost surely be eligible for unemployment benefits. The catch is that it's usually up to the fired worker to show that the termination was unjust.
Not true. If you're fired for cause, or you quit without cause, you're ineligible to receive unemployment compensation. Even in Ohio ;)
Meh, dropped the close-quote. Oh, well. ;)
Your subject and verb do not agree in number. Cut out the extraneous material in between, and what you're left with is "So any nuances...is lost to most readers, when it should, of course, be "any nuances...are lost." It's a common enough mistake, losing track of number and tense, particularly when you've got verbiage in between the two. An even better formulation might have been to keep it singular, as "nuance" tends to be, and written "So any nuance...is lost."
But as you said, the message was clear enough. Everyone surely understood the point you were making, so who cares, right? How many people even noticed that? A handful, probably, but what if one of the handful of people spotted that in, say, your resume?
In the end, why take the chance that it'll be noticed in some important situation? Not that a /. post is particularly important, but still, it's just as easy to get such seeming trivia right with a bit of practice. Good grammar is almost never noticed, but the absence of same is almost inevitably going to be noticed sooner or later, and probably at the worst possible time for its author ;)
More seriously, there's not much you can do about your concerns, other than hope that you've given them the tools to make good decisions on their own. Of course, that's easy for me to say - my daughter is only six ;)
Well, it seems to have worked, given that EL has now outsourced all their first-tier support staff ;)
It's not so bad, really - my only (minor) complaint is that their staff feel compelled to make up Americanized names when you call. I don't know if it's policy or what, but I'm really not going to flip out if you tell me your name is Bina or Niraj or whatever - just don't bullshit me and tell me your name is Betty or Steve, 'cause I don't buy it, sorry...