This is exactly the scenario for which I'm paying taxes. I'm already gainfully employed, and there are a good chunk of people who are a lot better than me at creating vaccines. Taxes are supposed to be transferred from me (who is offering a service that is in immediate demand) to someone who is offering a service with delayed demand. Instead, what are we paying taxes for? Some dumb ass bridge to nowhere. Statues of politicians who ought to be in prison. Pork that reaches hundreds of billions of dollars in total.
Here's my idea: make every politician pay for pork out of his own pocket. I'm sure that suddenly there'll be a couple of billion dollars left over from my (and yours and everybody elses) taxes to fund some serious research into a bird-flu vaccine. I'm also not opposed to shooting politicians who dole out pork, but some might consider that animal-cruelty.
See, the free-market has known limitations, and we have solutions to the problems that a free-market economy has. The problem is neither the free market (nor your implied accusation that people want to have their cake and eat it too), but the fact that our current political system is unable to deal with any crisis, due to the corruption of its actors (politicians) and the overall greed, lazyness and stupidity of its stakeholders (the voters). I fully expect that if a crisis hits, we'll be run by a dictator in a heartbeat. Sort of like now, except all out and fully accepted by everyone.
I like your sig. It sums you up perfectly. And sums up quite nicely why some Americans are embarrassed to be called Americans, and why the rest of the world just shakes their head at them (or worse).
I live the Daily News. But if you think the world isn't already smacking you upside the head with what is happening... you're just ignoring it. And no, the people around you are not the world. Quite honestly, I don't care that you don't care. But the instant you come crying to me that the Iraq war is going badly, that globalization took your job away, that China is whipping the US at basketball or that the US is not the global superpower anymore, I'll smack you upside the head myself.
Thanks for highlighting the portions that made no sense to me.:) The first highlight is still common in every single game I've played so far, even in those that tout special AI. To single out Lost Planet is rather silly. The second one... well, I don't get it. Is the problem that he's stepping on his own troops who don't get out of the way? That opposing troops don't evade his mech? Personally, I find that great fun.:) Finally, cheap-shots... what, so the caco-demon's use of rocket launchers is cheap? Or that gatling gun on the attack helicopter in Agent under Fire is cheap? So you don't have all the abilities of your enemies. It's not Halo. Deal.
And as I pointed out, I do understand that it is a demo, and that there is no accounting for taste.:)
I just don't understand his beef with the game - quite literally, I couldn't understand the reasons he gave for it. They made no sense. I still don't understand why he thinks the AI is cheap. And unfortunately, Zonk told me quite explicitly that I wouldn't like the game. That's the drawback of using second person in sentence structure.
... but I have no idea where Zonk is getting the idea that the game is not engaging. On the contrary, I feel the game is very engaging - tons of stuff to do, battles that are always slightly different, good weapons, an intriguing story, great atmosphere, great graphical effects. I understand that these are all things that are in the eye of the beholder, and accept that people might not like the same things I do.
So Zonk, please don't tell me what my reaction will be to certain things. What's more, I have no clue what your beef is with the multiplayer or mech battles. I understand that there is some issue with fun, but really, what is it? It's not fair that other mechs have rocket launchers? That they are too powerful? Quite honestly, it sounds like you're whining that NPCs get to do stuff you can't. Wow. It's a game with different characters, who are different because... wait for it... they do different things.
It's reviews like this that make me understand why people block all your submissions. I want the ten minutes of my life back that I spent trying to understand this review.
I've seen that sort of reaction elsewhere as well. People are ok getting a sucky job with a sucky pay, because they signed up for it. But don't fuck with that money, even if it's not a lot of money. At my company, an entire department is pretty much in mutiny mode because in an email, the director essentially stated "Good news! Your bonus has been cut." The cut was a total of about $500 net. But that little cut (which actually was explained in a later email) caused pretty much everyone to send out their resumes. And that department is pretty much responsible for installing what sales sold.
It always boggles me how management fails to understand that people care about the little stupid things, that they can be very petty, and that ultimately, it is the little people who bring in the cash. Yes, they are replaceable, but that doesn't mean you can treat them as such.
I suspect that there are some anti-dumping laws here that are being circumvented. It's the only thing I can think of that makes it illegal to lower prices below a certain level (which is what the end-result of that transaction is).
Tell you what. Since you are a scientist and engineeer, you have access to and can read the source papers. Go do that. Go jump into the discussion head first (warning - you might need a year or two to catch up). Understand solar forcing, albedo, refraction, absorption, satellite vs ocean temperature measurements, PCA, etc. etc. etc. etc.
The beauty of GCC is that you don't have to believe anyone - just do your own research. Then come back.
You missed the problem that this isn't a discussion about logic, it is a discussion about scientific phenomena. Did you miss the part in Logic 101 where they talked about a priori and a posteriori knowledge? And you also didn't read the entire subsection in the wiki article titled "Conditions for a legitimate argument from authority". Can I write your logic and debate professors and ask them to change your grade to an F for failure to obey proper debate rules and not knowing basic tenets of logics?
By the way, I see a great future for you as a lawyer (injury tort, most likely on late night TV ads), used car salesman or politician (of the Randall Cunningham variety).
Great write-up of the current state of the scientific debate that is occuring outside of the realm of climatologists. If I hadn't blown my chance to mod on entering a flame war, I'd mod you up.:)
Ah - I haven't seen this approach in a while. It's been happening before, so it's ok! What you missed is that the rate of change is beyond what can be explained by natural cycles. Slow change would be ok - but that's not what we're seeing. The human component in GCC is the most significant component of the current warming trend.
As for the wiki comment that anthropogenic forcing does not outweigh orbital forcing, that's plain wrong - and why citing wikipedia as support for anything is dodgy at best. Check out the IPCC report instead. It's linked several times in other comments already.
Finally, you're setting up a straw man with your global government. That is indeed the worst way to go about improving the situation. Think instead carbon trading on a global scale. The goal is not staticism, but to minimize human impact on the weather. Until we have an idea on how control all results of our activities and what those results are, we ought to not fuck with the weather. Because so far, things aren't looking good.
Good point. Quite frankly, the only thing I want the government to do is to institute carbon trading. It's the only thing that allows anybody to put a direct cost on CO2 while not specifying anything on how to minimize it.
Thanks for the summary of links. One reason that I'm starting to believe that the discussion over Global Climate Change is truly over is that the only counter points that get trotted out these days are based on a trivial understanding of science and statistics and been extensively debunked by people who specialize in these areas, or are based on attacks on the messengers. I haven't seen anything new being brought up in science discussions in over a year, and I'm tired of people just shouting that every scientist is just dishonest and lying about everything.
I'm glad that my field of work is not tied directly to weather. Otherwise I'd be in trouble. Farmers though might want to get ready for major issues.
The important measure here is per capita CO2 emissions. Or do you really want to argue that countries with over twice the population should somehow reach the same total amount of CO2 output? Actually, scratch that thought. You probably do.
Latent communists. Backstabbing China. Punishing US. Bwahahaha! The only thing that annoys me is that I can't figure out how to separate fools like you from your money.
"Where I learned the information is irrelevant to the content of the argument."
True. And since your argument is empty, devoid of rationality, counter current science, unsupported, and done in the spirit of riling people up, it is irrelevant. Go drown in a flooding.
I see you haven't learned history's lesson on takeovers yet: it's all about small steps. Because everyone notices destruction, but few notice erosion (or care).
Unfortunately, this is much ado about a lot - namely whether the constitution grants something or whether it restricts something, and therefore what the Executive can decide on. Gonzalez' analysis has far-reaching consequences whose end station is pure and unalduterated fascism. The worst part - I think they know that.
Got sources for that? I remember that during the height of the current oil crisis, Chavez was offering oil assistance to several US cities. Don't have a link, sorry. I'm sure Google would surely pull something up (hint: Citgo is a branch of the Venezuelan Petroleum Company - it was going to go through them).
As for only the small rich minority and the media elite opposing him... I missed that during the mass demonstrations by the middle class. And bringing up the referendum with the implication that he is supported by the majority of the population is dishonest. The monitors for that referendum generally agree that there were lots of shenanigans around (though nothing that could be outright construed as fraud), and Chavez paid out billions in aid to the poorest of the poor in the months before the referendum.
All in all, Chavez is a populist thug who thinks he is the next.. ummm... Marx? Stalin? Castro? In any case, he loves being a hero for the poor, and doesn't care about the good of his people. Otherwise he wouldn't do shit that lowers the overall GDP of his country.
I highly doubt that Gonzalez didn't understand where his fine point is leading the US. Once it's not derived from the constitution, the US Supreme Court can't make a ruling on it. Since there are no other laws about it, the executive gets to make up its own rules - which has been Bush's wet dream since 2000, when he suddenly found out that being president doesn't mean you're all powerful.
Make no mistake - arguing that anything that isn't explicitly stated in the US constitution does not derive from it is a huge, huge step towards completely destroying the balance of power in the US governmental system.
Yes, but if there is a really, really good guy, don't you want to keep him in place for at least some time? I agree that career politicians are bad all around, but I don't think that term limits is the way to go. One thing that'd be nice would be if there is a body that actually controls things like congressional pay, ethics violations (with REAL teeth) and similar things like that. I think that'd fix a lot of the problems.
ClapClapClap. Thanks for that great summary of what's wrong with the current administration, and the current mindset in the US public. It's as if no one paid attention in civics or philosophy class - oh, that's right, we don't have those anymore. They were replaced by home ec classes and by VB script classes. Yay.
Bush is the perfect example of what happens when people are not taught the fundamentals of democracy, free speech, and the principles that are the foundation of this country. We get a great decideder who would have been perfectly at home in an absolut monarchy. And who is doing everything he can to move towards it. All in the name of freedom, safety and pursuit of happiness (as long as happiness is defined by protestant values).
Uh? All they did was take the Warcraft setting, slap on Diablo 2 mechanics, put up a persistent world, and presto - Wow! There was zero innovation in Wow. Though that was rarely Blizzard's claim to fame. Their strength is in very polished, very well thought out game mechanics with oodles of built-in variety.
False dichotomy. You're assuming that the only full-quality experience is provide by RIAA/MPAA-owned content. There's plenty of stuff out there that isn't: my holiday pictures, the end of the world flash movie, indy games, the Gutenberg bible, CC licensed stuff, and more. What the RIAA and MPAA is most afraid of is not pirated movies and songs - it's that there might be legal entertainment out there that doesn't pay their tax. They WANT you to think that the only options you have have are piracy, approved viewing or a blank screen. For them, that's almost as good as having won the war outright. Realize your options, and the RIAA/MPAA is dead in the water.
Slashdot Mirror
This is exactly the scenario for which I'm paying taxes. I'm already gainfully employed, and there are a good chunk of people who are a lot better than me at creating vaccines. Taxes are supposed to be transferred from me (who is offering a service that is in immediate demand) to someone who is offering a service with delayed demand. Instead, what are we paying taxes for? Some dumb ass bridge to nowhere. Statues of politicians who ought to be in prison. Pork that reaches hundreds of billions of dollars in total.
Here's my idea: make every politician pay for pork out of his own pocket. I'm sure that suddenly there'll be a couple of billion dollars left over from my (and yours and everybody elses) taxes to fund some serious research into a bird-flu vaccine. I'm also not opposed to shooting politicians who dole out pork, but some might consider that animal-cruelty.
See, the free-market has known limitations, and we have solutions to the problems that a free-market economy has. The problem is neither the free market (nor your implied accusation that people want to have their cake and eat it too), but the fact that our current political system is unable to deal with any crisis, due to the corruption of its actors (politicians) and the overall greed, lazyness and stupidity of its stakeholders (the voters). I fully expect that if a crisis hits, we'll be run by a dictator in a heartbeat. Sort of like now, except all out and fully accepted by everyone.
I like your sig. It sums you up perfectly. And sums up quite nicely why some Americans are embarrassed to be called Americans, and why the rest of the world just shakes their head at them (or worse). I live the Daily News. But if you think the world isn't already smacking you upside the head with what is happening... you're just ignoring it. And no, the people around you are not the world. Quite honestly, I don't care that you don't care. But the instant you come crying to me that the Iraq war is going badly, that globalization took your job away, that China is whipping the US at basketball or that the US is not the global superpower anymore, I'll smack you upside the head myself.
Thanks for highlighting the portions that made no sense to me. :) The first highlight is still common in every single game I've played so far, even in those that tout special AI. To single out Lost Planet is rather silly. The second one... well, I don't get it. Is the problem that he's stepping on his own troops who don't get out of the way? That opposing troops don't evade his mech? Personally, I find that great fun. :) Finally, cheap-shots... what, so the caco-demon's use of rocket launchers is cheap? Or that gatling gun on the attack helicopter in Agent under Fire is cheap? So you don't have all the abilities of your enemies. It's not Halo. Deal.
And as I pointed out, I do understand that it is a demo, and that there is no accounting for taste. :)
I just don't understand his beef with the game - quite literally, I couldn't understand the reasons he gave for it. They made no sense. I still don't understand why he thinks the AI is cheap. And unfortunately, Zonk told me quite explicitly that I wouldn't like the game. That's the drawback of using second person in sentence structure.
... but I have no idea where Zonk is getting the idea that the game is not engaging. On the contrary, I feel the game is very engaging - tons of stuff to do, battles that are always slightly different, good weapons, an intriguing story, great atmosphere, great graphical effects. I understand that these are all things that are in the eye of the beholder, and accept that people might not like the same things I do.
So Zonk, please don't tell me what my reaction will be to certain things. What's more, I have no clue what your beef is with the multiplayer or mech battles. I understand that there is some issue with fun, but really, what is it? It's not fair that other mechs have rocket launchers? That they are too powerful? Quite honestly, it sounds like you're whining that NPCs get to do stuff you can't. Wow. It's a game with different characters, who are different because... wait for it... they do different things.
It's reviews like this that make me understand why people block all your submissions. I want the ten minutes of my life back that I spent trying to understand this review.
I've seen that sort of reaction elsewhere as well. People are ok getting a sucky job with a sucky pay, because they signed up for it. But don't fuck with that money, even if it's not a lot of money. At my company, an entire department is pretty much in mutiny mode because in an email, the director essentially stated "Good news! Your bonus has been cut." The cut was a total of about $500 net. But that little cut (which actually was explained in a later email) caused pretty much everyone to send out their resumes. And that department is pretty much responsible for installing what sales sold.
It always boggles me how management fails to understand that people care about the little stupid things, that they can be very petty, and that ultimately, it is the little people who bring in the cash. Yes, they are replaceable, but that doesn't mean you can treat them as such.
Wrong. The Sierra Club had a total budget of nearly 100 million dollars to work with. See http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-03-07-sie rra-club_x.htm
I suspect that there are some anti-dumping laws here that are being circumvented. It's the only thing I can think of that makes it illegal to lower prices below a certain level (which is what the end-result of that transaction is).
Tell you what. Since you are a scientist and engineeer, you have access to and can read the source papers. Go do that. Go jump into the discussion head first (warning - you might need a year or two to catch up). Understand solar forcing, albedo, refraction, absorption, satellite vs ocean temperature measurements, PCA, etc. etc. etc. etc.
The beauty of GCC is that you don't have to believe anyone - just do your own research. Then come back.
You missed the problem that this isn't a discussion about logic, it is a discussion about scientific phenomena. Did you miss the part in Logic 101 where they talked about a priori and a posteriori knowledge? And you also didn't read the entire subsection in the wiki article titled "Conditions for a legitimate argument from authority". Can I write your logic and debate professors and ask them to change your grade to an F for failure to obey proper debate rules and not knowing basic tenets of logics?
By the way, I see a great future for you as a lawyer (injury tort, most likely on late night TV ads), used car salesman or politician (of the Randall Cunningham variety).
Great write-up of the current state of the scientific debate that is occuring outside of the realm of climatologists. If I hadn't blown my chance to mod on entering a flame war, I'd mod you up. :)
Ah - I haven't seen this approach in a while. It's been happening before, so it's ok! What you missed is that the rate of change is beyond what can be explained by natural cycles. Slow change would be ok - but that's not what we're seeing. The human component in GCC is the most significant component of the current warming trend.
As for the wiki comment that anthropogenic forcing does not outweigh orbital forcing, that's plain wrong - and why citing wikipedia as support for anything is dodgy at best. Check out the IPCC report instead. It's linked several times in other comments already.
Finally, you're setting up a straw man with your global government. That is indeed the worst way to go about improving the situation. Think instead carbon trading on a global scale. The goal is not staticism, but to minimize human impact on the weather. Until we have an idea on how control all results of our activities and what those results are, we ought to not fuck with the weather. Because so far, things aren't looking good.
Good point. Quite frankly, the only thing I want the government to do is to institute carbon trading. It's the only thing that allows anybody to put a direct cost on CO2 while not specifying anything on how to minimize it.
Thanks for the summary of links. One reason that I'm starting to believe that the discussion over Global Climate Change is truly over is that the only counter points that get trotted out these days are based on a trivial understanding of science and statistics and been extensively debunked by people who specialize in these areas, or are based on attacks on the messengers. I haven't seen anything new being brought up in science discussions in over a year, and I'm tired of people just shouting that every scientist is just dishonest and lying about everything.
I'm glad that my field of work is not tied directly to weather. Otherwise I'd be in trouble. Farmers though might want to get ready for major issues.
The important measure here is per capita CO2 emissions. Or do you really want to argue that countries with over twice the population should somehow reach the same total amount of CO2 output? Actually, scratch that thought. You probably do.
Latent communists. Backstabbing China. Punishing US. Bwahahaha! The only thing that annoys me is that I can't figure out how to separate fools like you from your money.
Ah, to hell with mod points. Flame wars are fun.
"Where I learned the information is irrelevant to the content of the argument."
True. And since your argument is empty, devoid of rationality, counter current science, unsupported, and done in the spirit of riling people up, it is irrelevant. Go drown in a flooding.
To clarify then: you consider the move towards a unitary executive (google the term) something unimportant?
I see you haven't learned history's lesson on takeovers yet: it's all about small steps. Because everyone notices destruction, but few notice erosion (or care).
Unfortunately, this is much ado about a lot - namely whether the constitution grants something or whether it restricts something, and therefore what the Executive can decide on. Gonzalez' analysis has far-reaching consequences whose end station is pure and unalduterated fascism. The worst part - I think they know that.
Got sources for that? I remember that during the height of the current oil crisis, Chavez was offering oil assistance to several US cities. Don't have a link, sorry. I'm sure Google would surely pull something up (hint: Citgo is a branch of the Venezuelan Petroleum Company - it was going to go through them).
As for only the small rich minority and the media elite opposing him... I missed that during the mass demonstrations by the middle class. And bringing up the referendum with the implication that he is supported by the majority of the population is dishonest. The monitors for that referendum generally agree that there were lots of shenanigans around (though nothing that could be outright construed as fraud), and Chavez paid out billions in aid to the poorest of the poor in the months before the referendum.
All in all, Chavez is a populist thug who thinks he is the next.. ummm... Marx? Stalin? Castro? In any case, he loves being a hero for the poor, and doesn't care about the good of his people. Otherwise he wouldn't do shit that lowers the overall GDP of his country.
I highly doubt that Gonzalez didn't understand where his fine point is leading the US. Once it's not derived from the constitution, the US Supreme Court can't make a ruling on it. Since there are no other laws about it, the executive gets to make up its own rules - which has been Bush's wet dream since 2000, when he suddenly found out that being president doesn't mean you're all powerful.
Make no mistake - arguing that anything that isn't explicitly stated in the US constitution does not derive from it is a huge, huge step towards completely destroying the balance of power in the US governmental system.
Yes, but if there is a really, really good guy, don't you want to keep him in place for at least some time? I agree that career politicians are bad all around, but I don't think that term limits is the way to go. One thing that'd be nice would be if there is a body that actually controls things like congressional pay, ethics violations (with REAL teeth) and similar things like that. I think that'd fix a lot of the problems.
ClapClapClap. Thanks for that great summary of what's wrong with the current administration, and the current mindset in the US public. It's as if no one paid attention in civics or philosophy class - oh, that's right, we don't have those anymore. They were replaced by home ec classes and by VB script classes. Yay.
Bush is the perfect example of what happens when people are not taught the fundamentals of democracy, free speech, and the principles that are the foundation of this country. We get a great decideder who would have been perfectly at home in an absolut monarchy. And who is doing everything he can to move towards it. All in the name of freedom, safety and pursuit of happiness (as long as happiness is defined by protestant values).
Uh? All they did was take the Warcraft setting, slap on Diablo 2 mechanics, put up a persistent world, and presto - Wow! There was zero innovation in Wow. Though that was rarely Blizzard's claim to fame. Their strength is in very polished, very well thought out game mechanics with oodles of built-in variety.