' So where did you snag this gem from? First off, like NASA can't plan ahead for a freaking launch window. You act like hitting the launch window that would allow for travel to and from mars would be a miracle '
This is the post-ID4 world. Everyone now thinks that all you need to do to get into space is make sure the directions aren't upside down, point the joystick in the right direction, and pull.
After that, when you get into space (45 seconds later), you can destroy alien civilizations merely by connecting your Powerbook into their network.
'An analogy: European settlement destroyed much of the indigenous human heritage of South America. Catholic missionaries deliberately burned indigenous religious books, and pulled down indigenous temples '
It wasn't just here. Might as well point out that this happened in Mexico (which is in North America) in a very big way as well.
'If life is found on Mars, I wonder what implications it has for religion on Earth? '
The implications will be profound. The space program will be rejuvenated as Baptists, Muslims, and others clammor to be the first to "reach and teach" the heathen green infidel.
Watch it before someone mods you "-1 scurvy knave".
Re:How many times can you 'find' the same thing?!
on
Ice Lake on Mars
·
· Score: 0
' Correct me if I'm wrong, but every time I see news about Mars, it's always a 'discovery' of evidence that there is either water or some kind of extinct bacterial lifeform on mars. '
Well excuuuse us for the lack of stories such as "noseless pale freak charged with molesting children in Martian Neverland", "Alabama teen missing on Mars" and the ever-popular "3 troops died today on Martain desert". We will try to do better in the future to provide you news stories that present the vast panoply of human drama that takes place on the Martian surface.
' Yeah because ice is impossible to melt. But maybe one day we will develope some sort of heat technology. '
This would almost certainly involve infrared radiation. We certainly don't want to get involved with radiation: it is deadly and it will turn us into mutants! Besides, I don't think you will want to transform this frozen lake with heat. This process typically produces a lethal substance known as dihydrogen monoxide
'Well, once the sun has warmed sufficiently to turn the earth into a dinosaur age steaming hell, life on Mars may be preferable. Give it abother 10,000 years or so '
We can do it a lot sooner than that! Dick Cheney 2008.
Sustainable colonies are now possible, now that you won't have to deal with the expense of the colonists returning to Earth every winter to get in some ice fishing.
'Hm. Iron mine plus a steel plant versus a tree farm. Which does less environmental damage? '
The iron mine, for sure. It ends up taking a lot less room. The tree farm ends up being sterile "plantation", not friendly to wildlife, covering a very large area of land.
'Ask yourself, however, with electric cars: where will the electricity come from?'
It comes from very few points, which are stringently controlled for emissions: much more stringent than the thousands of tailpipes all over the place. It is a clear improvement.
'Perhaps, but certianly not all of it, and being able to bargain collectively with the company IMHO more than compensates for the union dues through improved benefits, progressive discipline, and improved working conditions'
I have no problem with workers choosing to collectively bargain. I do have a problem when workers are forced to. As long as much of the country is "closed shop", Walmart's anti-unionization efforts protect workers from such forced associations and stolen dues money. Despite this, all Walmart employees have unfettered freedom to give money to unions if they wish.
As for "improved working conditions", unions declare war against the company, and the company ends up fighting back. The casualties are the jobs themselves: someone has to be fired to make up for boosting wages above their actual value.
Sometimes, the casualties of the union war include entire factories and stores: union pressure encourages closing or moving them elsewhere.
Unions improve working conditions? It is not an "improved working condition" to be forced to contribute your money to politics. It is not an "improved working condition" when unions fight to keep workers who fight with other workers on the job. It is not an "improved working condition" when strikers taunt, harass, and assault you for daring to work.
All of these situations are better without the union. They will continue to be a problem until we get union reform that encourages respect for ALL working people (even if they cross picket lines), discourage union protection for violent felons in the workplace, and leave all contribution choices up to the workers.
'And you can't buy *everything* at Wal-Mart, eventually you're going to need a car or a refrigerator.) '
You can get both at Sam's Club, which for all intents and purposes is a branch of Walmart.
The parent poster you responded to did not espouse any sort of liberalism, neo or otherwise.
'In the EU, some countries may have gone a bit too much one side (hence the reforms), but the USA certainly has gone way too much the other side'
You are referring to a balance between tyranny and freedom. It is hard to argue against the idea of too much economic liberty for individuals.
' Oblige every company to provide healthcare for their workers, for instance, and you level the playing field for all companies. '
The same would be true of you mandated all companies to provide food, housing, vacation airplane tickets, and Chia Pets. Where does it stop? Why not instead mandate nothing. Just pay the workers for the value of their work, and let them spend what they want on health care, food, and other things as they need.
' Therefor, a balance has to be made, between the greed (which it basically is) of companies, and the wellfare and health of the populace seen in the long term, which is where the government comes in (at least here).'
You are overlooking the obvious. There is a major player here that you are giving a minor role. It is the government itself. The companies in fact do not engage in "greed": it is not greed to work to create wealth. The "greed" realm is dominated by the government. The important balance is between the greed of the government, and the freedom of the governed.
Also from the article, Serge Findmore of Google responded to questions. "At this time, we do not know why the Microsoft HQ in Redmond appears as a vast Borg cube embedded in the earth. We are looking into this."
The ability to run a huge variety of hardware due to a large driver base is a strength for Microsoft. It is not a weakness, and it has nothing to do with real weaknesses like gaping security holes.
' The reason that Microsoft losing share to these other OS's is because unlike the #1 fastest growing company(Apple) they don't manufacture hardware '
It is likely the other way around. Apple's "hardware company" nature has actually significantly hindered its OS share. Imagine if Apple were to make its OS compatible with a wide variety of hardware platforms, including the x86/Pentium/PC. If they did this, and promoted it as aggressively as they do the iPod, their OS "share" would jump.
You do not have to look much further than Apple's iTMS to see how this works. It really took off when they decided to make it work on 90% + of desktops instead of just 10%.
' NRA/sexual harrasment analogy doesn't make any sense '
The analogies are relevant because they involve being forced to do something (as a condition of employment) that has nothing to do with the job at all. If you like the Catholic Church or the union, it makes sense to join it as part of employment. However, a lot of workers will disagree, and in the end it is not related to the job.
"Democracy" is not relevant here. It does not matter if the organization is democratic or not. There is really no justificiation for workers being forced to pay it any sort of dues.
' You missunderstand the term "free rider." In this case, the free rider is the person who gets the benefit from a union contract, but refuses to pay the union dues that support that contract. '
Why is the union dumb enough to give these benefits to non-members?
' Finally, in the US, DUES MONEY CAN'T GO TO POLITICAL CANDIDATES '
Yet, in practice, it does.
' When you see union political ads, they are funded by the union's PAC, which is funded through volentary contributions. '
The contributions are not voluntary. They fall into two categories:
1) special "emergency assessments" which are taken from workers' paychecks. These are typically all political, and workers cannot opt out. Read further for a link to an example of one.
2) standard political "donations", which are automatically deducted. Supposedly you have the right to NOT give these, but the union stewards intentionally make it difficult to opt out. I've witnessed this at an NEA meeting. The steward told everyone that they supposedly had a right NOT to give money to the PAC, and they had to confront the steward personally about it. The steward then said that he "did not want to see your face" if you did this, and use threatening language which wiped away any concept of voluntary PAC donations. The link to the special assessment describes the situation in Oregon in which you automatically give these "voluntary" assessments unless you make a lot of effort to "opt out".
All that "paycheck protection" does is make sure that donations are voluntary. It does not make voluntary donation any harder for workers. The AFL-CIO (or what is left of it) strongly opposes paycheck protection. Why would they oppose it unless they realized that the political donations right now really are not voluntary, and if they were made to be voluntary, they would lose a lot of political slush money?
When you see union political ads, rest assured that they are largely funded from money stolen and extorted from the workers. Here is a link to one instance of a state union making a special order to force workers to pay money to a political cause. In this instance, as with others, the money is to be used in a lobbying/advertising effort against reforms which protect workers from similar misappropriation of dues for political purposes. The union is essentially saying "We're stealing political money from you in order to make it easier for us to keep stealing political money".
This special assessment directly contradicts your claim "When you see union political ads, they are funded by the union's PAC, which is funded through volentary contributions."
"Unions vs workers" is a common situation, due to two factors:
1) forced political donations (including verbal threats made by the union steward against those who choose to "opt out")
2) in a closed shop situation, as many as half of the union members are members against their will (the union does not represent their interests, but they are forced to pay it money anyway).
3) A strike situation: union strikers commonly taunt, insult, harass, and assault the workers. When the union orders someone to smash a worker's car window, there is definitely a "union vs worker" situation, right?
The contributions are not voluntary. This is why there has been a push for "paycheck protection" plans. If the contributions were really voluntary, there would be no demand for paycheck protection.
Teacher Quality: NC is #5 out of 50 Education Input: NC is #27 out of 50 Education Output: NC is #25 out of 50 Social Impact: NC is #41 out of 50 Educational Efficiency: NC is #9 out of 50
The Nevada Journal reports that NC is #48 in its level of teacher pay.
It is interesting to see how, with such low pay and financial investment ("Education Input"), and low union presence or power, North Carolina ends up doing quite well. It's teacher quality is, in fact, in the top few. They come out average or better in the other categories, except for "social impact", which involves how many are checking out library books.
It looks like they are doing something right here, even in comparison to the many schools in states with strong unions which are beaten in North Carolina in these lists. The most notable situation is the very high teacher quality coupled with very low teacher pay.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you sure that is not a General Products hull, type 1? A salvage mission might be in order!
This is the post-ID4 world. Everyone now thinks that all you need to do to get into space is make sure the directions aren't upside down, point the joystick in the right direction, and pull.
After that, when you get into space (45 seconds later), you can destroy alien civilizations merely by connecting your Powerbook into their network.
Dude, you've got to stop watching so much hentai.
I know of just such a planet. Do some research here
It wasn't just here. Might as well point out that this happened in Mexico (which is in North America) in a very big way as well.
The implications will be profound. The space program will be rejuvenated as Baptists, Muslims, and others clammor to be the first to "reach and teach" the heathen green infidel.
Watch it before someone mods you "-1 scurvy knave".
Well excuuuse us for the lack of stories such as "noseless pale freak charged with molesting children in Martian Neverland", "Alabama teen missing on Mars" and the ever-popular "3 troops died today on Martain desert". We will try to do better in the future to provide you news stories that present the vast panoply of human drama that takes place on the Martian surface.
This would almost certainly involve infrared radiation. We certainly don't want to get involved with radiation: it is deadly and it will turn us into mutants! Besides, I don't think you will want to transform this frozen lake with heat. This process typically produces a lethal substance known as dihydrogen monoxide
We can do it a lot sooner than that! Dick Cheney 2008.
For that matter, is Canada actually a sustainable colony?
The National Aeronautics United Space European Agency?
Sustainable colonies are now possible, now that you won't have to deal with the expense of the colonists returning to Earth every winter to get in some ice fishing.
The iron mine, for sure. It ends up taking a lot less room. The tree farm ends up being sterile "plantation", not friendly to wildlife, covering a very large area of land.
'Ask yourself, however, with electric cars: where will the electricity come from?'
It comes from very few points, which are stringently controlled for emissions: much more stringent than the thousands of tailpipes all over the place. It is a clear improvement.
I have no problem with workers choosing to collectively bargain. I do have a problem when workers are forced to. As long as much of the country is "closed shop", Walmart's anti-unionization efforts protect workers from such forced associations and stolen dues money. Despite this, all Walmart employees have unfettered freedom to give money to unions if they wish.
As for "improved working conditions", unions declare war against the company, and the company ends up fighting back. The casualties are the jobs themselves: someone has to be fired to make up for boosting wages above their actual value.
Sometimes, the casualties of the union war include entire factories and stores: union pressure encourages closing or moving them elsewhere.
Unions improve working conditions? It is not an "improved working condition" to be forced to contribute your money to politics. It is not an "improved working condition" when unions fight to keep workers who fight with other workers on the job. It is not an "improved working condition" when strikers taunt, harass, and assault you for daring to work.
All of these situations are better without the union. They will continue to be a problem until we get union reform that encourages respect for ALL working people (even if they cross picket lines), discourage union protection for violent felons in the workplace, and leave all contribution choices up to the workers.
'And you can't buy *everything* at Wal-Mart, eventually you're going to need a car or a refrigerator.) '
You can get both at Sam's Club, which for all intents and purposes is a branch of Walmart.
'In the EU, some countries may have gone a bit too much one side (hence the reforms), but the USA certainly has gone way too much the other side'
You are referring to a balance between tyranny and freedom. It is hard to argue against the idea of too much economic liberty for individuals.
' Oblige every company to provide healthcare for their workers, for instance, and you level the playing field for all companies. '
The same would be true of you mandated all companies to provide food, housing, vacation airplane tickets, and Chia Pets. Where does it stop? Why not instead mandate nothing. Just pay the workers for the value of their work, and let them spend what they want on health care, food, and other things as they need.
' Therefor, a balance has to be made, between the greed (which it basically is) of companies, and the wellfare and health of the populace seen in the long term, which is where the government comes in (at least here).'
You are overlooking the obvious. There is a major player here that you are giving a minor role. It is the government itself. The companies in fact do not engage in "greed": it is not greed to work to create wealth. The "greed" realm is dominated by the government. The important balance is between the greed of the government, and the freedom of the governed.
When the postman knocks on your door the next day, holding the blank page and demanding "postage due", you know it your printer is evil and nasty.
Netcraft now confirms. The X-Box is dying.
Also from the article, Serge Findmore of Google responded to questions. "At this time, we do not know why the Microsoft HQ in Redmond appears as a vast Borg cube embedded in the earth. We are looking into this."
When looking at DC, I noticed that Congress looked scrambled, jumbled, and crude.
The ability to run a huge variety of hardware due to a large driver base is a strength for Microsoft. It is not a weakness, and it has nothing to do with real weaknesses like gaping security holes.
It is likely the other way around. Apple's "hardware company" nature has actually significantly hindered its OS share. Imagine if Apple were to make its OS compatible with a wide variety of hardware platforms, including the x86/Pentium/PC. If they did this, and promoted it as aggressively as they do the iPod, their OS "share" would jump.
You do not have to look much further than Apple's iTMS to see how this works. It really took off when they decided to make it work on 90% + of desktops instead of just 10%.
The analogies are relevant because they involve being forced to do something (as a condition of employment) that has nothing to do with the job at all. If you like the Catholic Church or the union, it makes sense to join it as part of employment. However, a lot of workers will disagree, and in the end it is not related to the job.
"Democracy" is not relevant here. It does not matter if the organization is democratic or not. There is really no justificiation for workers being forced to pay it any sort of dues.
' You missunderstand the term "free rider." In this case, the free rider is the person who gets the benefit from a union contract, but refuses to pay the union dues that support that contract. '
Why is the union dumb enough to give these benefits to non-members?
' Finally, in the US, DUES MONEY CAN'T GO TO POLITICAL CANDIDATES '
Yet, in practice, it does.
' When you see union political ads, they are funded by the union's PAC, which is funded through volentary contributions. '
The contributions are not voluntary. They fall into two categories:
1) special "emergency assessments" which are taken from workers' paychecks. These are typically all political, and workers cannot opt out. Read further for a link to an example of one.
2) standard political "donations", which are automatically deducted. Supposedly you have the right to NOT give these, but the union stewards intentionally make it difficult to opt out. I've witnessed this at an NEA meeting. The steward told everyone that they supposedly had a right NOT to give money to the PAC, and they had to confront the steward personally about it. The steward then said that he "did not want to see your face" if you did this, and use threatening language which wiped away any concept of voluntary PAC donations. The link to the special assessment describes the situation in Oregon in which you automatically give these "voluntary" assessments unless you make a lot of effort to "opt out".
All that "paycheck protection" does is make sure that donations are voluntary. It does not make voluntary donation any harder for workers. The AFL-CIO (or what is left of it) strongly opposes paycheck protection. Why would they oppose it unless they realized that the political donations right now really are not voluntary, and if they were made to be voluntary, they would lose a lot of political slush money?
When you see union political ads, rest assured that they are largely funded from money stolen and extorted from the workers. Here is a link to one instance of a state union making a special order to force workers to pay money to a political cause. In this instance, as with others, the money is to be used in a lobbying/advertising effort against reforms which protect workers from similar misappropriation of dues for political purposes. The union is essentially saying "We're stealing political money from you in order to make it easier for us to keep stealing political money".
This special assessment directly contradicts your claim "When you see union political ads, they are funded by the union's PAC, which is funded through volentary contributions."
"Unions vs workers" is a common situation, due to two factors:
1) forced political donations (including verbal threats made by the union steward against those who choose to "opt out")
2) in a closed shop situation, as many as half of the union members are members against their will (the union does not represent their interests, but they are forced to pay it money anyway).
3) A strike situation: union strikers commonly taunt, insult, harass, and assault the workers. When the union orders someone to smash a worker's car window, there is definitely a "union vs worker" situation, right?
The contributions are not voluntary. This is why there has been a push for "paycheck protection" plans. If the contributions were really voluntary, there would be no demand for paycheck protection.
"North Carolina teachers are employees of the state and there is no union"
_ of_education_in.htm):
I wonder how their education stats work out?
Let's look at the Center for Applied Economic Research (http://www.msubillings.edu/caer/quality_rankings
Teacher Quality: NC is #5 out of 50
Education Input: NC is #27 out of 50
Education Output: NC is #25 out of 50
Social Impact: NC is #41 out of 50
Educational Efficiency: NC is #9 out of 50
The Nevada Journal reports that NC is #48 in its level of teacher pay.
It is interesting to see how, with such low pay and financial investment ("Education Input"), and low union presence or power, North Carolina ends up doing quite well. It's teacher quality is, in fact, in the top few. They come out average or better in the other categories, except for "social impact", which involves how many are checking out library books.
It looks like they are doing something right here, even in comparison to the many schools in states with strong unions which are beaten in North Carolina in these lists. The most notable situation is the very high teacher quality coupled with very low teacher pay.