I believe at the turn of the 19th century, your sentiment was called "turn of the century ennui". So many new things, so many changes, and almost all of them with some negative downside. Electricity? The devil's magic that had none of the charm of real fire. Cars? Toys for the rich that just destroyed good jobs. Etc. To some extent, you're in good company: feeling overwhelmed by change is nothing new. The trick is to do change right. Here, let me help you:
Do you use reusable grocery bags? Then you better be sure that you clean them good enough, otherwise you could get sick from the germs.
Or as an alternative, don't use it to transport broken eggs, loose lettuce, freshly ground meat or fish in a newspaper. If you use reusable bags for dry or at least properly sealed goods (which is about 95% of anybody's groceries these days) and compostable plastic bags for every thing, you're golden without changing anything.
Do you use new plastic bag? Then here is this documentary about a sea torturous who dies from eating your plastic bag that you threw away.
Well, yes. It's fine if one person tosses a plastic bag once. If millions do it multiple times every day, you're going to affect your own environment. In short: don't shit where you live. Which is all of earth, now.
How about if you stick with good old paper? Your Cold/Frozen food creates condensation and break the bag and you waste all this food.
Not sure whether this is hyperbole or not, but.... if you leave your paper bag out long enough that your frozen food creates so much condensation it breaks the bag, you're either using paper bags designed for holding a lunch sandwich, or your frozen food melted and it needs to be tossed anyway. Not to mention that even if the bag breaks, the food isn't wasted. Unless, of course, you carry frozen fish straight in the bag, in which case... you're still doing it wrong.
A hybrid, which needs more green house gasses to build.
You're referring to a widely debunked study that assumed many wrong things, the most egregious though being that Prius owners replace their cars every 6 years or so, and Hummer drivers replace theirs every 20 years. Stay up to date with your research, or at least read the stuff you're quoting.
A small, car which cannot carry enough people and good thus needing an extra car. A medium sized car, which gives off more carbon, and yet still doesn't fit everything you need. A large car/Suv/Truck you can carry what you need however a lot of time you just polluting gas.
Your needs analysis needs updating. 95% of traffic is done with 1-4 people in the car and a few groceries in the back. Even a Yaris can comfortably fit 5 large people and groceries or small luggage. I can count on one hand the times where I needed more than that in the last 5 years. And then, there were plenty of alternatives (like renting a truck). The fact that I have a sedan has little to do with needs and much more with wants. Most people don't understand the difference, sadly.
We do want to do good, however there are so many tradeoffs we need to think about, and with science showing us more, it overwhelms us, and in essence paralyzes us. So we choose what science we choose to follow and what we choose to disregard as a coping mechanism. It is emotional, it isn't about being stupid, of ill informed, it is just about being emotional on your choice.
Well, I can't disagree with that. However, making an emotional choice doesn't excuse you from the consequences of that choice. Especially if you were told and taught about the other alternatives, and you still went with your emotional choice "just because it's too complicated". Not knowing about what you do is one thing. Willfully ignoring it is an entirely different matter.
I don't think I've ever read a more angst-ridden, afraid-of-the-future, and everyone-but-me-sucks post. And I've read Katz's posts.
There is a ton of engineering and cool stuff still happening. If you think that it's all just Google, Facebook and hipsters - you need to stop hanging out with hipsters and actually take a look at the companies that are there. Tesla alone makes the area cool again.
Ah yes, if we could just return to that blessed world before the government imposed all those restrictions on people who wanted to conduct business. I mean it's not like corporations have all kinds of benefits people don't have, but are getting all the rights of people....
Oh wait. They are. You're falling prey to a serious case of "but it's not true communism!"
This. I see too often people argue that something is not worthwhile discussing because it is so obviously idiotic, wrong, racist or god knows what else. They want to ignore it, make it illegal or somehow push it underground. That always makes things worse.
The only cure for stupidity is wisdom, knowledge or public mockery. Indeed, please continue.
I see more than a few F-250s that don't have a spec of dirt on them, no equipment near them, wheels and shocks in a configuration completely unsuitable for doing any work. As a matter of fact, most of the trucks that I see that aren't directly used to carry landscaping or construction equipment have never been near any work or towing.
And you're still conflating two things that are not the same: piracy (modern version) and theft. Merely putting an emphasis on your statement does not make it so. Piracy might now mean copyright infringement, but it is still not theft. You sound like a child if you can't differentiate between depriving someone of property and illicitly copying content.
Yes, there may be cases where leniency is considered (your example of a child doing it), but that doesn't change the fact that they did something against the law.
That's your final argument? It's bad because it's against the law? Somehow I suspect that this is only your position because you think it doesn't affect you.
What a tasty and oh so flammable straw man. Care to link to those hordes of slashdotters who professed their love of Chavez? Or is this just the result of one of your fevered political nightmares?
You've discounted the most obvious option - an attention whore who isn't adverse to making shit up.
Says a random person on a random site. Let's see your fantastic work that makes Ruiu's body of work nothing more than that of a small-fry amateur who has to resort to lying to make a name for himself. Oh wait, Ruiu is actually a seasoned security researcher, running multiple well-known cons and contests? Who already gets more attention than anything but a handful of other security researchers?
I think the only thing your post does is demonstrate your own thinking: that the only way to make waves in the world is to be an attention whore.
That's becoming my #1 concern: if the end of civilization DOES happen, the preppers are ideally prepped to be looters and bandits. They have a well-fortified homebase in a far-off location, lots of guns, lots of ammo, lots of prepared food, and zero ability, tools and seeds to grow their own food. They will run out of food before they run out of ammo, and then they will most likely become what they feared the most themselves.
I actually do have friends who are preparing for the end of times. Storing guns and ammo for the looters, stashing gold and silver at home.... The wackos on TV are real, and they are among you.
Of course. The next, obvious question though is: what is going to bring about societal collapse? And the answers I get to that range from riots to super storms to earthquakes to hyperinflation to asteroid impact to brand new plague. Most of the answers also mysteriously assume that those events are likely enough to warrant shelling out multiple thousands of dollars immediately.
The reality is that we've been through everything short of an asteroid impact, and civilization has not collapsed. Especially not western civilization. Maybe that's why Europeans are non-plussed by all these possibilities, and look at the US like a family does at its crazy uncle who is raving about government brain scans: they've been through all of it, and they've come out alright. True, there were a few World Wars that came about from some of those events, but it wasn't a collapse of civilization. If anything, it proved that civilization was rebuilt pretty much instantly by citizens working together and sharing their meager means.
Full disclosure: my parents still tell me stories of The War. It's as close as Europe ever came to total collapse, and it didn't.
According to various shows and friends, being prepared for the next major storm/earthquake/tsunami/fire/drought/etc. is to have a large gun and ammo cache, an underground bunker, food and water for a year, off-grid energy generation and the willingness to shoot the roaming hoardes of looters, bandits and otherwise famished and unprepared bleeding-heart hippies that will try kill your dog, rape your mother and steal your food.
In the meantime, past experience indicates that 5 days of food and water is plenty of supplies to wait out the rebuilding effort, along with a house that matches the local building codes. Society is not going to collapse, Mad Max will not come to pass, and I'll be most worried about paranoid neighbors shooting me as I come to check in on them.
So my plan: backup important data across the network, have food and water for a few days and hunker down while the roads are cleared and energy access is restored. If I get bored, I can always hunt turkeys in the backyard.
And replace it with what? Universal health-care, funded by a general healthcare tax? Sign me up! Replace it with something you have to buy yourself on the open market, with funds that for profit companies will demand whether you have a job or not? That's the same thing as what is in place now. Lose your job, and you're looking at a significant amount of outgoing money that you cannot reduce.
Talk about feudalism then. Only it will be to the Healthcare providers.
This bill didn't need a filibuster proof majority because it was passed as a reconciliation bill, which only needs a majority.
Initially, the Democrats thought that if they included some Republican compromises, they could pass the bill with a filibuster-proof majority. That was a requirement, because there were enough people in the Senate who were dead-set against it that they could trivially filibuster it. Turns out that essentially presenting a healthcare bill that was part and parcel culled from a Heritage Foundation proposal in the 80s, modeled after Romneycare in Massachusetts and filled with Republican amendments wasn't enough to get it passed. So the Democrats instead decided to be cute with procedure. It came back to bite them.
Which, incidentally, may be it's downfall because Constitutionally speaking, all revenue Bills, which this is according to the Supreme Court, must originate i the House.
The Supreme Court already ruled the bill constitutional.
Finally, a clusterfuck was to be expected. The bill itself is over 1000 pages, it involves multiple organizations at the state and the federal level, involves 3rd party for-profit organizations and needed huge amounts of 3rd-party contractors to get done. I've seen projects like this at corporations, and most of them fail. It will be a minor miracle if they ever work out all the kinks in the system.
Umm, you do know Obamacare is a huge Medicare expansion (aside from its own expense?)
The jury is still out on whether it's going to cost more or less. Projections from various agencies put it at a net saving over time.
Obama also set up huge budget busting tax-cuts as well?
Which ones? The ones the Republican House demanded to get anything done?
Also, Obama's record on stopping torture isn't exactly much better, and don't get me started on the lies...civil liberties, transparency, hello?
Don't know about torture, though at least officially it has stopped. As for civil liberties and transparency; well, there's a reason I said he's not perfect.
Apparently only because you're viewing this through partisan blinders. I see them both as ridiculous spenders, the main difference is that the bulk of Obama's spending is permanent, whereas Bush's was temporary .
Holy crap that's some spin. The taxes you're talking about have been made permanent by a republican House that decided to shut down the government because it didn't get the entire budget it wanted, just a part of it. Furthermore, to expect that temporary taxes are ever rolled back under a republican Congress or president.... well, there's Reagan, but he'd be run out of his own party today.
(the wars have spun down and his tax cuts have expired, so going forward he is a zero-cost contributor)
The taxes still go on, and Obama finally managed to spin down the wars that Bush started and couldn't. Even though he had more time than the US for WW2. So how does that exactly make him a zero-cost contributor? His tax cuts lived on, and he still never paid for any of his wars.
Merely saying "they're both bad" doesn't mean you're not partisan. It just means you're incapable of doing an actual analysis of the facts.
Iran doesn't use those drugs in capital punishment. As a result, selling those drugs to Iran doesn't help with their capital punishment regime. If anything, it diverts funds to the EU that could otherwise be used for capital punishment.
Our army is constantly killing people. After all, we are at WAR with TERRORISM. That's what you get in a war. Bring it back to a police action against murderous thugs, and we can talk about executions. Otherwise, you're just unhappy that the wrong color team is doing the shooting.
The mainstream media had (IMHO thankfully) a bit of a hate-on for Bush, so every little thing his administration did wrong was broadcast loud and clear.
Not during the crucial parts of the Bush administration, where things were radically fucked up the most: the first 3 years or so of his administration, where he lied to the world about the Iraq invasion, let Osama escape in Tora Bora, legitimized torture and set up huge budget-busting tax-cuts and Medicare expansions. It took multiple, world-history-course-changing mistakes for the media to finally start questioning him.
They don't seem to have the same diligence towards the current administration, which means we the public doesn't get to see anything ugly until it becomes too big of a story to ignore, and even then it's usually quieted down or distracted from awfully quick.
Simply put, the mistakes haven't been as numerous or as significant, and the accomplishments have actually been more significant. We've got a long way to go before we ever get a president as bad as Bush Jr.
Set aside any partisan feelings you may have and let me put it this way: If the Bush administration handled, say, the whole Benghazi incident exactly the same way our current administration had, would there or would there not be calls for impeachment from the likes of CNBC (as there were very loudly during much of Bush's latter years in office)?
Uh, no, there wouldn't have. How do I know? The massive bungling of the Tora Bora offensive was never questioned while he was in office. By anybody. Contrast letting the entire reason we were in Afghanistan get away due to poor decisions by Bush himself with not optimally responding to an attack on an isolated consulate in what was still basically a war zone. Which one had more long-term ramifications? Which one could have been improved, by how much, and at what cost? That's why your comparison needs to be answered with a massive "No."
The mainstream media (yes, including FOX) tends to be a bit kinder to our current president than the media really should be.
You can't be serious when you include FOX News. They're basically calling him Hitler, Mao and Stalin on a daily basis, call him a Muslim, and do everything just shy of calling for someone to shoot him. Even if you just average FOX News in, it skews the average so far out that the only way to even it out is if MSNBC sends out journalists to literate fellate him under the podium.
And that's even disregarding just the qualititative differences between the two presidencies. Obama is far from perfect - I'm actually starting to think that Clinton was the better politician and president - but he is still miles above what is the worst president in at least the last 70 years. Comparing the two should lead to a difference in treatment.
Motorcycle helmets actually offer good protection, while bicycle helmets don't. For any impact over about 10 mph, they are not going to signifcantly reduce the peak accelerations your brain experiences (it's your brain sloshing that does the damage).
Ugh. No. Complete nonsense. See the studies cited here: http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1139.html regarding impacts. Quality helmets that are fully intact offer awesome protection against impacts; both from the perspective of brain deceleration and pure blunt trauma prevention. The biggest mistakes that people make is that they look at a bicycle helmet, don't see any crushed polystyrene, and assume that it is safe to wear the helmet. Instead, the polystyrene is about 10 years old, is starting to lose structural integrity, and has had a few bumps that have further weakened it.
The other problem I see with most epidemiological studies is that they mix a lot of different factors (population growth, vastly different riders, changing usage patterns of bicyclists, etc.) and assume that the only thing that changed was whether people wore helmets or not.
Wearing a helmet is applying a different standard to risk than we do in many other situations. Cycling is actually slightly safer per mile than walking, yet we don't make peds wear helmets.
You're making the same exact mistake a lot of the researchers made: you assume that all cyclists behave the same and are exposed to the same risks. Basic cycling, on empty roads and at low speeds with regular pedals, is very safe. High-speed biking on twisty mountain roads with feet securely attached to the bike is significantly more dangerous. The vast majority of cyclists are of the former variety, and will drown out any impacts on people who engage in the more risky version of biking.
So why are cyclists singled out to wear the safety yarmulkes?
Because people are stupid, and most have trouble with the concept of "this type of biking is safe without a helmet, that type of biking is not." As a result, people just said "screw it, everyone has to wear a helmet."
As an additional point, helment laws are actually terrible for cycling safety. After Australia made helmets mandatory, cycling went down 1/3 overnight.
Familiarity an also breed contempt. You're inferring conclusions your data does not support. Furthermore, if people are so concerned about looks that they'd rather drive than bike because they think they look stupid in a helmet.... well, that's a problem with people, not helmets.
Finally, my head survived a fairly significant impact with the ground with no injuries (the rest of the body, not so much), thanks to the rapid compression and fracture of the helmet. I know helmets save lives. Do you?
Depends. Cycling can be very safe: get a big, comfortable city bike, stick to bicycle lanes, ride at about 15 mph or less, wear a helmet, stop at all intersections and generally coast with the hand on the brake. I can pretty much guarantee no accidents - at least, no accidents that you could have avoided. You still run the risk of getting run over by an idiot who isn't paying attention, but the risk at that point is similar to being a pedestrian.
On the other hand, do some serious mountain biking, hit 35 mph on twisty one-lane mountain roads, and any small issue (debris on the road, pothole, car overtaking you too closely) can very quickly escalate into an ER trip.
It's all about your own choices. Just like driving.
True - but it's your best shot at getting good seats. Subbing out planes is fortunately pretty rare, as it means that there was a major issue with the planned plane. So far, I'd put the subbing out rate at under 10%.
Seatguru.com. Shows you the seat configuration for each airplane type on each airline.
Here's how my flight selection works: figure out who flies to where I want to go and get into a ball-park area for price. Identify the planes they use, and look up their general seat configuration on seat-guru. Identify who has the most legroom (generally economy+ class or some similar thing), check if the price is still affordable, and take that.
Fun fact: the economy+ class seats on an Air France Airbus A380 have more legroom and incline more than the business class seats on a Boeing 777 from one of the American airlines.
The seats don't recline to make much of a difference for sleep. If you can sleep reclined, you can sleep upright. I would also argue that at your height, you have no idea what it means to have a seat reclined into your lap. Once you hit the critical limit of 190 and over, your knees physically touch the seat in front of you, even if both are upright. Someone reclining their seat can result in a very sudden impact on your kneecaps. So I do appreciate it when people at least carefully recline their seat and don't kneecap me.
People like you, on the other hand.... a pox on you for not thinking about the ramifications of your actions.
1) The fight was over a law that had been passed according to the regular process and passed the Supreme Court. 2) The debt ceiling was an automatic event based on a budget that these same people had approved earlier. 3) The people holding up a basic vote of various budgets and debt-ceiling agreements were a small fraction of the Republican caucus, but which managed to convince the leader of the Republican House to not even put anything to a vote that they didn't approve of.
So we have: 1) People trying to do an end-run around the legislative process. 2) People trying to score points by arguing over something that was a direct outcome of their earlier approval. 3) A minority in the House of Representatives trying to impose its will on the majority, not by rational argument, but by procedural shenanigans.
All three points were instigated by Republicans. Specifically, Tea-party republicans. As a result, it was indeed republicans trying to sabotage the legislative process laid down by the founding fathers to advance their pet cause.
Finally, yes, there was money to service the debt. But no one is fooled by shell games on the global market. And no one was fooled by rhetoric that "it's not a default", because everyone knew what not raising the debt limit meant to the functioning of the US government.
But that's what you get when you elect people to government who promise to show how bad government is and to destroy it.
Where are my mod points! My kingdom for mod points! There are historical reasons for why French has such a heavy influence on English, but it is still amazing to see how heavy it really is.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe at the turn of the 19th century, your sentiment was called "turn of the century ennui". So many new things, so many changes, and almost all of them with some negative downside. Electricity? The devil's magic that had none of the charm of real fire. Cars? Toys for the rich that just destroyed good jobs. Etc. To some extent, you're in good company: feeling overwhelmed by change is nothing new. The trick is to do change right. Here, let me help you:
Do you use reusable grocery bags? Then you better be sure that you clean them good enough, otherwise you could get sick from the germs.
Or as an alternative, don't use it to transport broken eggs, loose lettuce, freshly ground meat or fish in a newspaper. If you use reusable bags for dry or at least properly sealed goods (which is about 95% of anybody's groceries these days) and compostable plastic bags for every thing, you're golden without changing anything.
Do you use new plastic bag? Then here is this documentary about a sea torturous who dies from eating your plastic bag that you threw away.
Well, yes. It's fine if one person tosses a plastic bag once. If millions do it multiple times every day, you're going to affect your own environment. In short: don't shit where you live. Which is all of earth, now.
How about if you stick with good old paper? Your Cold/Frozen food creates condensation and break the bag and you waste all this food.
Not sure whether this is hyperbole or not, but.... if you leave your paper bag out long enough that your frozen food creates so much condensation it breaks the bag, you're either using paper bags designed for holding a lunch sandwich, or your frozen food melted and it needs to be tossed anyway. Not to mention that even if the bag breaks, the food isn't wasted. Unless, of course, you carry frozen fish straight in the bag, in which case... you're still doing it wrong.
A hybrid, which needs more green house gasses to build.
You're referring to a widely debunked study that assumed many wrong things, the most egregious though being that Prius owners replace their cars every 6 years or so, and Hummer drivers replace theirs every 20 years. Stay up to date with your research, or at least read the stuff you're quoting.
A small, car which cannot carry enough people and good thus needing an extra car.
A medium sized car, which gives off more carbon, and yet still doesn't fit everything you need.
A large car/Suv/Truck you can carry what you need however a lot of time you just polluting gas.
Your needs analysis needs updating. 95% of traffic is done with 1-4 people in the car and a few groceries in the back. Even a Yaris can comfortably fit 5 large people and groceries or small luggage. I can count on one hand the times where I needed more than that in the last 5 years. And then, there were plenty of alternatives (like renting a truck). The fact that I have a sedan has little to do with needs and much more with wants. Most people don't understand the difference, sadly.
We do want to do good, however there are so many tradeoffs we need to think about, and with science showing us more, it overwhelms us, and in essence paralyzes us. So we choose what science we choose to follow and what we choose to disregard as a coping mechanism.
It is emotional, it isn't about being stupid, of ill informed, it is just about being emotional on your choice.
Well, I can't disagree with that. However, making an emotional choice doesn't excuse you from the consequences of that choice. Especially if you were told and taught about the other alternatives, and you still went with your emotional choice "just because it's too complicated". Not knowing about what you do is one thing. Willfully ignoring it is an entirely different matter.
I don't think I've ever read a more angst-ridden, afraid-of-the-future, and everyone-but-me-sucks post. And I've read Katz's posts.
There is a ton of engineering and cool stuff still happening. If you think that it's all just Google, Facebook and hipsters - you need to stop hanging out with hipsters and actually take a look at the companies that are there. Tesla alone makes the area cool again.
Ah yes, if we could just return to that blessed world before the government imposed all those restrictions on people who wanted to conduct business. I mean it's not like corporations have all kinds of benefits people don't have, but are getting all the rights of people....
Oh wait. They are. You're falling prey to a serious case of "but it's not true communism!"
This. I see too often people argue that something is not worthwhile discussing because it is so obviously idiotic, wrong, racist or god knows what else. They want to ignore it, make it illegal or somehow push it underground. That always makes things worse.
The only cure for stupidity is wisdom, knowledge or public mockery. Indeed, please continue.
I see more than a few F-250s that don't have a spec of dirt on them, no equipment near them, wheels and shocks in a configuration completely unsuitable for doing any work. As a matter of fact, most of the trucks that I see that aren't directly used to carry landscaping or construction equipment have never been near any work or towing.
And you're still conflating two things that are not the same: piracy (modern version) and theft. Merely putting an emphasis on your statement does not make it so. Piracy might now mean copyright infringement, but it is still not theft. You sound like a child if you can't differentiate between depriving someone of property and illicitly copying content.
Yes, there may be cases where leniency is considered (your example of a child doing it), but that doesn't change the fact that they did something against the law.
That's your final argument? It's bad because it's against the law? Somehow I suspect that this is only your position because you think it doesn't affect you.
What a tasty and oh so flammable straw man. Care to link to those hordes of slashdotters who professed their love of Chavez? Or is this just the result of one of your fevered political nightmares?
You've discounted the most obvious option - an attention whore who isn't adverse to making shit up.
Says a random person on a random site. Let's see your fantastic work that makes Ruiu's body of work nothing more than that of a small-fry amateur who has to resort to lying to make a name for himself. Oh wait, Ruiu is actually a seasoned security researcher, running multiple well-known cons and contests? Who already gets more attention than anything but a handful of other security researchers?
I think the only thing your post does is demonstrate your own thinking: that the only way to make waves in the world is to be an attention whore.
That's becoming my #1 concern: if the end of civilization DOES happen, the preppers are ideally prepped to be looters and bandits. They have a well-fortified homebase in a far-off location, lots of guns, lots of ammo, lots of prepared food, and zero ability, tools and seeds to grow their own food. They will run out of food before they run out of ammo, and then they will most likely become what they feared the most themselves.
I actually do have friends who are preparing for the end of times. Storing guns and ammo for the looters, stashing gold and silver at home.... The wackos on TV are real, and they are among you.
Of course. The next, obvious question though is: what is going to bring about societal collapse? And the answers I get to that range from riots to super storms to earthquakes to hyperinflation to asteroid impact to brand new plague. Most of the answers also mysteriously assume that those events are likely enough to warrant shelling out multiple thousands of dollars immediately.
The reality is that we've been through everything short of an asteroid impact, and civilization has not collapsed. Especially not western civilization. Maybe that's why Europeans are non-plussed by all these possibilities, and look at the US like a family does at its crazy uncle who is raving about government brain scans: they've been through all of it, and they've come out alright. True, there were a few World Wars that came about from some of those events, but it wasn't a collapse of civilization. If anything, it proved that civilization was rebuilt pretty much instantly by citizens working together and sharing their meager means.
Full disclosure: my parents still tell me stories of The War. It's as close as Europe ever came to total collapse, and it didn't.
According to various shows and friends, being prepared for the next major storm/earthquake/tsunami/fire/drought/etc. is to have a large gun and ammo cache, an underground bunker, food and water for a year, off-grid energy generation and the willingness to shoot the roaming hoardes of looters, bandits and otherwise famished and unprepared bleeding-heart hippies that will try kill your dog, rape your mother and steal your food.
In the meantime, past experience indicates that 5 days of food and water is plenty of supplies to wait out the rebuilding effort, along with a house that matches the local building codes. Society is not going to collapse, Mad Max will not come to pass, and I'll be most worried about paranoid neighbors shooting me as I come to check in on them.
So my plan: backup important data across the network, have food and water for a few days and hunker down while the roads are cleared and energy access is restored. If I get bored, I can always hunt turkeys in the backyard.
And replace it with what? Universal health-care, funded by a general healthcare tax? Sign me up! Replace it with something you have to buy yourself on the open market, with funds that for profit companies will demand whether you have a job or not? That's the same thing as what is in place now. Lose your job, and you're looking at a significant amount of outgoing money that you cannot reduce.
Talk about feudalism then. Only it will be to the Healthcare providers.
This bill didn't need a filibuster proof majority because it was passed as a reconciliation bill, which only needs a majority.
Initially, the Democrats thought that if they included some Republican compromises, they could pass the bill with a filibuster-proof majority. That was a requirement, because there were enough people in the Senate who were dead-set against it that they could trivially filibuster it. Turns out that essentially presenting a healthcare bill that was part and parcel culled from a Heritage Foundation proposal in the 80s, modeled after Romneycare in Massachusetts and filled with Republican amendments wasn't enough to get it passed. So the Democrats instead decided to be cute with procedure. It came back to bite them.
Which, incidentally, may be it's downfall because Constitutionally speaking, all revenue Bills, which this is according to the Supreme Court, must originate i the House.
The Supreme Court already ruled the bill constitutional.
Finally, a clusterfuck was to be expected. The bill itself is over 1000 pages, it involves multiple organizations at the state and the federal level, involves 3rd party for-profit organizations and needed huge amounts of 3rd-party contractors to get done. I've seen projects like this at corporations, and most of them fail. It will be a minor miracle if they ever work out all the kinks in the system.
Umm, you do know Obamacare is a huge Medicare expansion (aside from its own expense?)
The jury is still out on whether it's going to cost more or less. Projections from various agencies put it at a net saving over time.
Obama also set up huge budget busting tax-cuts as well?
Which ones? The ones the Republican House demanded to get anything done?
Also, Obama's record on stopping torture isn't exactly much better, and don't get me started on the lies...civil liberties, transparency, hello?
Don't know about torture, though at least officially it has stopped. As for civil liberties and transparency; well, there's a reason I said he's not perfect.
Apparently only because you're viewing this through partisan blinders. I see them both as ridiculous spenders, the main difference is that the bulk of Obama's spending is permanent, whereas Bush's was temporary .
Holy crap that's some spin.
The taxes you're talking about have been made permanent by a republican House that decided to shut down the government because it didn't get the entire budget it wanted, just a part of it. Furthermore, to expect that temporary taxes are ever rolled back under a republican Congress or president.... well, there's Reagan, but he'd be run out of his own party today.
(the wars have spun down and his tax cuts have expired, so going forward he is a zero-cost contributor)
The taxes still go on, and Obama finally managed to spin down the wars that Bush started and couldn't. Even though he had more time than the US for WW2. So how does that exactly make him a zero-cost contributor? His tax cuts lived on, and he still never paid for any of his wars.
Merely saying "they're both bad" doesn't mean you're not partisan. It just means you're incapable of doing an actual analysis of the facts.
Iran doesn't use those drugs in capital punishment. As a result, selling those drugs to Iran doesn't help with their capital punishment regime. If anything, it diverts funds to the EU that could otherwise be used for capital punishment.
Our army is constantly killing people. After all, we are at WAR with TERRORISM. That's what you get in a war. Bring it back to a police action against murderous thugs, and we can talk about executions. Otherwise, you're just unhappy that the wrong color team is doing the shooting.
The mainstream media had (IMHO thankfully) a bit of a hate-on for Bush, so every little thing his administration did wrong was broadcast loud and clear.
Not during the crucial parts of the Bush administration, where things were radically fucked up the most: the first 3 years or so of his administration, where he lied to the world about the Iraq invasion, let Osama escape in Tora Bora, legitimized torture and set up huge budget-busting tax-cuts and Medicare expansions. It took multiple, world-history-course-changing mistakes for the media to finally start questioning him.
They don't seem to have the same diligence towards the current administration, which means we the public doesn't get to see anything ugly until it becomes too big of a story to ignore, and even then it's usually quieted down or distracted from awfully quick.
Simply put, the mistakes haven't been as numerous or as significant, and the accomplishments have actually been more significant. We've got a long way to go before we ever get a president as bad as Bush Jr.
Set aside any partisan feelings you may have and let me put it this way: If the Bush administration handled, say, the whole Benghazi incident exactly the same way our current administration had, would there or would there not be calls for impeachment from the likes of CNBC (as there were very loudly during much of Bush's latter years in office)?
Uh, no, there wouldn't have. How do I know? The massive bungling of the Tora Bora offensive was never questioned while he was in office. By anybody. Contrast letting the entire reason we were in Afghanistan get away due to poor decisions by Bush himself with not optimally responding to an attack on an isolated consulate in what was still basically a war zone. Which one had more long-term ramifications? Which one could have been improved, by how much, and at what cost? That's why your comparison needs to be answered with a massive "No."
The mainstream media (yes, including FOX) tends to be a bit kinder to our current president than the media really should be.
You can't be serious when you include FOX News. They're basically calling him Hitler, Mao and Stalin on a daily basis, call him a Muslim, and do everything just shy of calling for someone to shoot him. Even if you just average FOX News in, it skews the average so far out that the only way to even it out is if MSNBC sends out journalists to literate fellate him under the podium.
And that's even disregarding just the qualititative differences between the two presidencies. Obama is far from perfect - I'm actually starting to think that Clinton was the better politician and president - but he is still miles above what is the worst president in at least the last 70 years. Comparing the two should lead to a difference in treatment.
Motorcycle helmets actually offer good protection, while bicycle helmets don't. For any impact over about 10 mph, they are not going to signifcantly reduce the peak accelerations your brain experiences (it's your brain sloshing that does the damage).
Ugh. No. Complete nonsense. See the studies cited here: http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1139.html regarding impacts. Quality helmets that are fully intact offer awesome protection against impacts; both from the perspective of brain deceleration and pure blunt trauma prevention. The biggest mistakes that people make is that they look at a bicycle helmet, don't see any crushed polystyrene, and assume that it is safe to wear the helmet. Instead, the polystyrene is about 10 years old, is starting to lose structural integrity, and has had a few bumps that have further weakened it.
The other problem I see with most epidemiological studies is that they mix a lot of different factors (population growth, vastly different riders, changing usage patterns of bicyclists, etc.) and assume that the only thing that changed was whether people wore helmets or not.
Wearing a helmet is applying a different standard to risk than we do in many other situations. Cycling is actually slightly safer per mile than walking, yet we don't make peds wear helmets.
You're making the same exact mistake a lot of the researchers made: you assume that all cyclists behave the same and are exposed to the same risks. Basic cycling, on empty roads and at low speeds with regular pedals, is very safe. High-speed biking on twisty mountain roads with feet securely attached to the bike is significantly more dangerous. The vast majority of cyclists are of the former variety, and will drown out any impacts on people who engage in the more risky version of biking.
So why are cyclists singled out to wear the safety yarmulkes?
Because people are stupid, and most have trouble with the concept of "this type of biking is safe without a helmet, that type of biking is not." As a result, people just said "screw it, everyone has to wear a helmet."
As an additional point, helment laws are actually terrible for cycling safety. After Australia made helmets mandatory, cycling went down 1/3 overnight.
Familiarity an also breed contempt. You're inferring conclusions your data does not support. Furthermore, if people are so concerned about looks that they'd rather drive than bike because they think they look stupid in a helmet.... well, that's a problem with people, not helmets.
Finally, my head survived a fairly significant impact with the ground with no injuries (the rest of the body, not so much), thanks to the rapid compression and fracture of the helmet. I know helmets save lives. Do you?
Depends. Cycling can be very safe: get a big, comfortable city bike, stick to bicycle lanes, ride at about 15 mph or less, wear a helmet, stop at all intersections and generally coast with the hand on the brake. I can pretty much guarantee no accidents - at least, no accidents that you could have avoided. You still run the risk of getting run over by an idiot who isn't paying attention, but the risk at that point is similar to being a pedestrian.
On the other hand, do some serious mountain biking, hit 35 mph on twisty one-lane mountain roads, and any small issue (debris on the road, pothole, car overtaking you too closely) can very quickly escalate into an ER trip.
It's all about your own choices. Just like driving.
True - but it's your best shot at getting good seats. Subbing out planes is fortunately pretty rare, as it means that there was a major issue with the planned plane. So far, I'd put the subbing out rate at under 10%.
Seatguru.com. Shows you the seat configuration for each airplane type on each airline.
Here's how my flight selection works: figure out who flies to where I want to go and get into a ball-park area for price. Identify the planes they use, and look up their general seat configuration on seat-guru. Identify who has the most legroom (generally economy+ class or some similar thing), check if the price is still affordable, and take that.
Fun fact: the economy+ class seats on an Air France Airbus A380 have more legroom and incline more than the business class seats on a Boeing 777 from one of the American airlines.
The seats don't recline to make much of a difference for sleep. If you can sleep reclined, you can sleep upright. I would also argue that at your height, you have no idea what it means to have a seat reclined into your lap. Once you hit the critical limit of 190 and over, your knees physically touch the seat in front of you, even if both are upright. Someone reclining their seat can result in a very sudden impact on your kneecaps. So I do appreciate it when people at least carefully recline their seat and don't kneecap me.
People like you, on the other hand.... a pox on you for not thinking about the ramifications of your actions.
Splendid display of ignorance.
1) The fight was over a law that had been passed according to the regular process and passed the Supreme Court.
2) The debt ceiling was an automatic event based on a budget that these same people had approved earlier.
3) The people holding up a basic vote of various budgets and debt-ceiling agreements were a small fraction of the Republican caucus, but which managed to convince the leader of the Republican House to not even put anything to a vote that they didn't approve of.
So we have:
1) People trying to do an end-run around the legislative process.
2) People trying to score points by arguing over something that was a direct outcome of their earlier approval.
3) A minority in the House of Representatives trying to impose its will on the majority, not by rational argument, but by procedural shenanigans.
All three points were instigated by Republicans. Specifically, Tea-party republicans. As a result, it was indeed republicans trying to sabotage the legislative process laid down by the founding fathers to advance their pet cause.
Finally, yes, there was money to service the debt. But no one is fooled by shell games on the global market. And no one was fooled by rhetoric that "it's not a default", because everyone knew what not raising the debt limit meant to the functioning of the US government.
But that's what you get when you elect people to government who promise to show how bad government is and to destroy it.
Where are my mod points! My kingdom for mod points! There are historical reasons for why French has such a heavy influence on English, but it is still amazing to see how heavy it really is.