Well, I hate to continue this offtopic discussion, but suffice to say that I do NOT hate Christians, Christianity, etc. I happen to be Christian, as I noted (though I understand the mocking quotes might have made it seem untrue). I just don't see how anyone can think the Moabites, just to pick a random name out of my head, are not treated in a racist way in the Bible. God's always telling the Israelites to go and kill the other races, talking about how unclean they are, etc. There's a reason the Old Testament God is thought of in terms of fire and brimstone.
I find your biblical interpretations completely unconvincing, and your pointless anti-Islam comment, well, pointless. Anyhow, that's all I have to say on the topic, time to go eat dinner
The parent is just your standard lecture on how the Bible isn't as stupid as is implied by some jokester (the gp), it has nothing to do with this article.
Besides saying crap like "Nothing in the Bible suggests racism," or "people used to live sometimes *much* more than the 30-40 years," the first of which is just blatantly false and the second of which is completely unsupported outside the oral traditions of the Jews, recorded later as the Bible, the whole post is rather pointless. If he were selling something besides Christianity everyone would assume he's getting paid.
I say all this 'as a Christian,' which apparently at least the PP should find conveys some validity.
Yes, yes, market economy is good, blah blah blah. Someone always comes along to preach it whenever it's pointed out that socialized medicine/whatever is better for most people.
Of course it's important to have incentives to keep people producing, it doesn't mean it's right to have fundamentally different internets.
BTW, lots of government money goes into research, though perhaps you haven't heard of the NIH, WHO, etc?
Anyway, your long rambling response about how useful laws and markets are is not particularly relevant to the issue. Then at the end, you say you basically agree with me.
Point taken. Which is only good news, but I still think research into high-gravity survival is as important as low-G for future space efforts, besides being potentially interesting in general.
Some sort of synthesis of both sides, while always useful in bullshitting high school and college papers, is not always the right way in the real world. Freedom is to be favored over commercial interests in an arena like the internet, which provides massive public good but not QUITE enough profit for the companies to be happy.
Communications over the internet work pretty well now, despite the drain that youtube &co have put on the system. Sure, there could always be better infrastructure, but letting the wealthy and businesses insulate themselves from internet-wide problems will only decrease the impetus to improve the infrastructure by letting the most powerful market forces sidestep all the problems. This is the same reason that health care for so many Americans sucks: the rich decision makers are not forced to use the same system. Don't let that happen to internet service.
Is it working? You really must be in a different universe from me, because, as far as I can tell, the only reason Republicans lost the last election is their massive mishandling of the economy and foreign policy, and had nothing to do with voting irregularities, voter intimidation, corruption, etc.
Pithy, but perhaps better is "Atheism is as much a religion as *avoiding* using stamps is a hobby," which it very well could be, or at least an irrational compulsion.
Humans growing up in 2.5 G would probably be significantly shorter, which would help a good bit. Though lifespans might decrease, I imagine the cardiovascular system could adapt just as the respiratory system responds to high altitude. However, before just throwing humans into this situation, we should (as I suggested) raise a generation or two of chimps in a large centrifuge, see what happens.
I would be willing to bet that humans could live in 2.5 G. The human body is incredibly resilient, especially when it has grown up in a new environment. There are people living everywhere from sea level to several miles up, and in environments ranging from yearly average temperatures of over 30C to under 0C.
This does raise an interesting point, however. A great deal of money and research time has been spent studying how human and animal physiology react to low- or micro-gravity, but I am not aware of any long-term studies of higher G's, such as raising monkeys in a giant centrifuge or somesuch. Sure, this would take a lot of money, but hopefully less than for sending things to space, and it is vital knowledge for space exploration (long-term acceleration or living on these planets are the two key reasons).
The discovery of this planet provides some hope for those of us who hope the human race will escape Earth before we destroy it, or those who hope for Earth-similar life. And we can only expect the discovery of these planets to accelerate in the future, as out technology makes it easier to find them.
Ahh, sumdumass, you are right! It WOULD make sense for the Democrats to deliberately disenfranchise their own voters in an extremely close election in the hopes that the media would trumpet their cause!
This is especially wily of them, considering that the Democrats were blatantly disenfranchised in the previous election as well, besides winning the popular vote, and the media gave it only a passing glance. Clearly they knew that in 2004 the media was bound to report in detail on the election, a judgment that was obviously validated by subsequent events.
HINT: there is sarcasm somewhere in this post, I won't say where.
And you may recall that the US election was widely regarded as a catastrophe.
Of course, part of that was due to the clearly rigged nature of the voting machine shortages (Democratic neighborhoods in Ohio, etc.), rather than just the fact of (unconscionably) long waits.
Being a smug chocolate lover doesn't endear you to me, but I offer this explanation of how I came to like darker beers, which perhaps you could offer in the future as a more sympathetic and less-assholey-sounding reason that you started trying bitterer and bitterer chocolates.
When I first had beer, I tried both Guinness stout and some crappy American mainstream beers, neither of which did anything for me. Then I found beers I liked, like Kirin, and in the course of events, tried out some other beers. I noticed that as I expanded my palate, my tastes changed. I got more accustomed to the bitter flavor, and came to like it. Thus, naturally, I began to avoid the lighter beers in favor of bitterer ones, until I finally realized that I liked Guinness. Tastes change naturally, people don't necessarily just drink dark, bitter beers as a means of expressing their elitism (as you may have meant to imply).
If the majority of Americans value higher class chocolate you will find it to get cheaper and more accessible. That is one of the things I love about America.
Captain Subtext says: OH MY GOD! America is the only place with producers and consumers in a 'market' economy, and it's the greatest thing ever! I love America! This part of my comment is especially irrelevant!
Though I am not a chocolate freak, I have to assume that there are American chocolatiers who make fine products. Just because most people in America are satistfied with non-gourmet products doesn't mean that those products aren't out there.
I am someone who like pizza and beer, and I know there are lots of good pizzas and beers to be found out there. Of course, everyone's definition of a good beer is different, but I've come across a lot of really good stuff in America, from John Harvard's house brews in Boston to Sierra Nevada and Anchor Steam in Frisco.
And apparently there are some good American wines out there, though I don't really give a shit about wine. I believe something called Screaming Eagle has quite a good reputation and is from California.
As for the FDA decision, well, I'm all for stricter standards in food naming, generally speaking, even when it's a luxury food.
The belief that money == speech is equivalent to the belief that the socially powerful (which is what money means) deserve the special right to be the politically powerful.
Unsurprisingly, the (overwhelmingly wealthy) members of our government and the people who have paid for them all tend to believe something along these lines, even if they would never formulate it so explicitly. The same way that people who obviously feel morally superior to those poorer than them would never state it, but instead just like to make jokes about people on welfare.
Fortunately, like france 200 years ago, the middle class in America is reasonably powerful. There's a (very small) chance that this system wil be reformed in my lifetime, and if it is going to be, things like microsoft's lobbying need to be brought to the public's attention.
"Personally, I believe in freedom. People ought to be able to sell their wares in any way they want. If you don't like how they're offering it, don't buy it. If you don't like the license, don't buy it. If you don't like DRM, don't buy it. If you want the right to redistribute it any way you wish, only buy products with those rights."
Personally, I believe in freedom. People ought to be able to use their wares in any way they want. If you don't like how they're using it, don't sell it. If you don't like the law, ignore it. If you don't like your fans, don't try to sell them things. If you want the right to prevent redistribution of something, only sell it to people you know and trust.
Your definition of freedom doesn't match mine, I think. And while I respect the rights of people who create things, it doesn't mean that fair use shouldn't be expanded or that letting copyrights expire a little faster wouldn't be best for society.
"a while ago somebody proposed floating off-shore wind turbines, now flying wind turbines. who knows, maybe in a couple of years there will be underground wind turbines, that will harness the strong winds in caves
what's wrong with keeping them on the ground?"
If there's economic incentive to build the other kinds of wind farms, then what's wrong is the efficiency level.
I know everything is better in Japan blah blah blah, but I do have a cell phone (the V603SH by Sharp) that I got from Vodaphone here in Japan, and it looks great in any light.
This might be what the writer is looking for, in general. The screen's great, anyhow, and small.
You are right that Clinton, politically, got a lot less scrutiny. He got character-assassinated for years, and no one paid any attention to his policies because the Clinton years were generally pretty good.
Now the hard news sources (increasingly rare) are indeed jumping all over the hundreds of illegal activities, moronic decisions, and inappropriate relationships in the Bush Administration, but somehow he got re-elected because the media decided that he deserved a free pass during the election season, and besides, the whole election is about who you'd rather have a beer with or some shit.
The media in America has stopped doing its job. Furthermore, hardly anyone cares. So, yeah, the bad things Clinton's team did got less press back then, but at least back then you could maintain the illusion that if people heard about this bad stuff, something would happen. Now it's been public knowledge for years that our executive branch is regularly breaking the law, and nobody gives a shit! It's enough to make you believe Vonnegut (RIP).
"In a free market, monopolies do die on their own."
Usually, this is true. For instance, if I have made agreements with every country to gain the rights to their oil, and thus have a monopoly, one of these things will happen, all of which EVENTUALLY result in the death of my oil monopoly:
1) I am an idiot, and let those rights slip away. Not bloody likely. 2) They break the agreements and screw me, letting another player in the market. Within the rights of a government dealing with a corporation in my opinion, but not an aspect of an ideal free market. 3) After years/decades/centuries of my price gouging, during which period I become the dominant economic player on the planet, someone devises a good alternate fuel and expands the marketplace, forcing me to lower my prices in order to compete. 4) After years/decades/centuries of my price gouging, during which period I become the dominant economic player on the planet, I use my massive wealth to buy the rights to all alternative energy technologies, and either withhold them or let them out at equally monopoly-leveraged prices. 5)After years/decades/centuries of my price gouging, during which period I become the dominant economic player on the planet, there are no alternative energy sources developed and we run out of oil. I am still the richest person on Earth, but that's useless (we've already passed this possibility, technologically).
As you can tell, only number 3 is realistic and good for consumers, but even that would take an extremely long time. And, as the economist says, "In the long run, we're all dead."
A true monopoly on something important to the economy (or even more minor components, really) could be massively disruptive to society. If you gave me a global oil monopoly in 1900 and I didn't have the most powerful organization in history by 1970, then I would be either a philanthropist or an idiot. And modern economic ideas say companies shouldn't be philanthropists.
All of this ignores the disproportionate power of wealthier interests on the governments of many countries, which also plays in the favor of monopolies.
All in all, a world without anti-monopoly legislation is a world that would suck for more people. Which is the opposite of good, in my moral framework
Slashdot Mirror
Basketball has goals too . . . .
Well, I hate to continue this offtopic discussion, but suffice to say that I do NOT hate Christians, Christianity, etc. I happen to be Christian, as I noted (though I understand the mocking quotes might have made it seem untrue). I just don't see how anyone can think the Moabites, just to pick a random name out of my head, are not treated in a racist way in the Bible. God's always telling the Israelites to go and kill the other races, talking about how unclean they are, etc. There's a reason the Old Testament God is thought of in terms of fire and brimstone.
I find your biblical interpretations completely unconvincing, and your pointless anti-Islam comment, well, pointless. Anyhow, that's all I have to say on the topic, time to go eat dinner
The parent is just your standard lecture on how the Bible isn't as stupid as is implied by some jokester (the gp), it has nothing to do with this article.
Besides saying crap like "Nothing in the Bible suggests racism," or "people used to live sometimes *much* more than the 30-40 years," the first of which is just blatantly false and the second of which is completely unsupported outside the oral traditions of the Jews, recorded later as the Bible, the whole post is rather pointless. If he were selling something besides Christianity everyone would assume he's getting paid.
I say all this 'as a Christian,' which apparently at least the PP should find conveys some validity.
Yes, yes, market economy is good, blah blah blah. Someone always comes along to preach it whenever it's pointed out that socialized medicine/whatever is better for most people.
Of course it's important to have incentives to keep people producing, it doesn't mean it's right to have fundamentally different internets.
BTW, lots of government money goes into research, though perhaps you haven't heard of the NIH, WHO, etc?
Anyway, your long rambling response about how useful laws and markets are is not particularly relevant to the issue. Then at the end, you say you basically agree with me.
Thanks for that, it was interesting. Good to know we maybe possibly won't experience higher G's as stressful, psychologically.
Point taken. Which is only good news, but I still think research into high-gravity survival is as important as low-G for future space efforts, besides being potentially interesting in general.
Some sort of synthesis of both sides, while always useful in bullshitting high school and college papers, is not always the right way in the real world. Freedom is to be favored over commercial interests in an arena like the internet, which provides massive public good but not QUITE enough profit for the companies to be happy.
Communications over the internet work pretty well now, despite the drain that youtube &co have put on the system. Sure, there could always be better infrastructure, but letting the wealthy and businesses insulate themselves from internet-wide problems will only decrease the impetus to improve the infrastructure by letting the most powerful market forces sidestep all the problems. This is the same reason that health care for so many Americans sucks: the rich decision makers are not forced to use the same system. Don't let that happen to internet service.
Is it working? You really must be in a different universe from me, because, as far as I can tell, the only reason Republicans lost the last election is their massive mishandling of the economy and foreign policy, and had nothing to do with voting irregularities, voter intimidation, corruption, etc.
Pithy, but perhaps better is "Atheism is as much a religion as *avoiding* using stamps is a hobby," which it very well could be, or at least an irrational compulsion.
Humans growing up in 2.5 G would probably be significantly shorter, which would help a good bit. Though lifespans might decrease, I imagine the cardiovascular system could adapt just as the respiratory system responds to high altitude. However, before just throwing humans into this situation, we should (as I suggested) raise a generation or two of chimps in a large centrifuge, see what happens.
I would be willing to bet that humans could live in 2.5 G. The human body is incredibly resilient, especially when it has grown up in a new environment. There are people living everywhere from sea level to several miles up, and in environments ranging from yearly average temperatures of over 30C to under 0C.
This does raise an interesting point, however. A great deal of money and research time has been spent studying how human and animal physiology react to low- or micro-gravity, but I am not aware of any long-term studies of higher G's, such as raising monkeys in a giant centrifuge or somesuch. Sure, this would take a lot of money, but hopefully less than for sending things to space, and it is vital knowledge for space exploration (long-term acceleration or living on these planets are the two key reasons).
The discovery of this planet provides some hope for those of us who hope the human race will escape Earth before we destroy it, or those who hope for Earth-similar life. And we can only expect the discovery of these planets to accelerate in the future, as out technology makes it easier to find them.
Ahh, sumdumass, you are right! It WOULD make sense for the Democrats to deliberately disenfranchise their own voters in an extremely close election in the hopes that the media would trumpet their cause! This is especially wily of them, considering that the Democrats were blatantly disenfranchised in the previous election as well, besides winning the popular vote, and the media gave it only a passing glance. Clearly they knew that in 2004 the media was bound to report in detail on the election, a judgment that was obviously validated by subsequent events. HINT: there is sarcasm somewhere in this post, I won't say where.
I only expanded my palate horizontally, so it actually increased my mouthspace and gave me some attractive high cheekbones.
And you may recall that the US election was widely regarded as a catastrophe.
Of course, part of that was due to the clearly rigged nature of the voting machine shortages (Democratic neighborhoods in Ohio, etc.), rather than just the fact of (unconscionably) long waits.
Being a smug chocolate lover doesn't endear you to me, but I offer this explanation of how I came to like darker beers, which perhaps you could offer in the future as a more sympathetic and less-assholey-sounding reason that you started trying bitterer and bitterer chocolates.
When I first had beer, I tried both Guinness stout and some crappy American mainstream beers, neither of which did anything for me. Then I found beers I liked, like Kirin, and in the course of events, tried out some other beers. I noticed that as I expanded my palate, my tastes changed. I got more accustomed to the bitter flavor, and came to like it. Thus, naturally, I began to avoid the lighter beers in favor of bitterer ones, until I finally realized that I liked Guinness. Tastes change naturally, people don't necessarily just drink dark, bitter beers as a means of expressing their elitism (as you may have meant to imply).
If the majority of Americans value higher class chocolate you will find it to get cheaper and more accessible. That is one of the things I love about America.
Captain Subtext says:
OH MY GOD! America is the only place with producers and consumers in a 'market' economy, and it's the greatest thing ever! I love America! This part of my comment is especially irrelevant!
Though I am not a chocolate freak, I have to assume that there are American chocolatiers who make fine products. Just because most people in America are satistfied with non-gourmet products doesn't mean that those products aren't out there.
I am someone who like pizza and beer, and I know there are lots of good pizzas and beers to be found out there. Of course, everyone's definition of a good beer is different, but I've come across a lot of really good stuff in America, from John Harvard's house brews in Boston to Sierra Nevada and Anchor Steam in Frisco.
And apparently there are some good American wines out there, though I don't really give a shit about wine. I believe something called Screaming Eagle has quite a good reputation and is from California.
As for the FDA decision, well, I'm all for stricter standards in food naming, generally speaking, even when it's a luxury food.
The belief that money == speech is equivalent to the belief that the socially powerful (which is what money means) deserve the special right to be the politically powerful.
Unsurprisingly, the (overwhelmingly wealthy) members of our government and the people who have paid for them all tend to believe something along these lines, even if they would never formulate it so explicitly. The same way that people who obviously feel morally superior to those poorer than them would never state it, but instead just like to make jokes about people on welfare.
Fortunately, like france 200 years ago, the middle class in America is reasonably powerful. There's a (very small) chance that this system wil be reformed in my lifetime, and if it is going to be, things like microsoft's lobbying need to be brought to the public's attention.
"Personally, I believe in freedom. People ought to be able to sell their wares in any way they want. If you don't like how they're offering it, don't buy it. If you don't like the license, don't buy it. If you don't like DRM, don't buy it. If you want the right to redistribute it any way you wish, only buy products with those rights."
Personally, I believe in freedom. People ought to be able to use their wares in any way they want. If you don't like how they're using it, don't sell it. If you don't like the law, ignore it. If you don't like your fans, don't try to sell them things. If you want the right to prevent redistribution of something, only sell it to people you know and trust.
Your definition of freedom doesn't match mine, I think. And while I respect the rights of people who create things, it doesn't mean that fair use shouldn't be expanded or that letting copyrights expire a little faster wouldn't be best for society.
"a while ago somebody proposed floating off-shore wind turbines, now flying wind turbines.
who knows, maybe in a couple of years there will be underground wind turbines, that will harness the strong winds in caves
what's wrong with keeping them on the ground?"
If there's economic incentive to build the other kinds of wind farms, then what's wrong is the efficiency level.
I know everything is better in Japan blah blah blah, but I do have a cell phone (the V603SH by Sharp) that I got from Vodaphone here in Japan, and it looks great in any light.
This might be what the writer is looking for, in general. The screen's great, anyhow, and small.
You are right that Clinton, politically, got a lot less scrutiny. He got character-assassinated for years, and no one paid any attention to his policies because the Clinton years were generally pretty good.
Now the hard news sources (increasingly rare) are indeed jumping all over the hundreds of illegal activities, moronic decisions, and inappropriate relationships in the Bush Administration, but somehow he got re-elected because the media decided that he deserved a free pass during the election season, and besides, the whole election is about who you'd rather have a beer with or some shit.
The media in America has stopped doing its job. Furthermore, hardly anyone cares. So, yeah, the bad things Clinton's team did got less press back then, but at least back then you could maintain the illusion that if people heard about this bad stuff, something would happen. Now it's been public knowledge for years that our executive branch is regularly breaking the law, and nobody gives a shit! It's enough to make you believe Vonnegut (RIP).
I couldn't help but notice that you've mistyped the number. I think you meant 3.1415926535897932384626433 . . . . .
you typed 6 when you meant nine, and you aren't jimi hendrix
"In a free market, monopolies do die on their own."
Usually, this is true. For instance, if I have made agreements with every country to gain the rights to their oil, and thus have a monopoly, one of these things will happen, all of which EVENTUALLY result in the death of my oil monopoly:
1) I am an idiot, and let those rights slip away. Not bloody likely.
2) They break the agreements and screw me, letting another player in the market. Within the rights of a government dealing with a corporation in my opinion, but not an aspect of an ideal free market.
3) After years/decades/centuries of my price gouging, during which period I become the dominant economic player on the planet, someone devises a good alternate fuel and expands the marketplace, forcing me to lower my prices in order to compete.
4) After years/decades/centuries of my price gouging, during which period I become the dominant economic player on the planet, I use my massive wealth to buy the rights to all alternative energy technologies, and either withhold them or let them out at equally monopoly-leveraged prices.
5)After years/decades/centuries of my price gouging, during which period I become the dominant economic player on the planet, there are no alternative energy sources developed and we run out of oil. I am still the richest person on Earth, but that's useless (we've already passed this possibility, technologically).
As you can tell, only number 3 is realistic and good for consumers, but even that would take an extremely long time. And, as the economist says, "In the long run, we're all dead."
A true monopoly on something important to the economy (or even more minor components, really) could be massively disruptive to society. If you gave me a global oil monopoly in 1900 and I didn't have the most powerful organization in history by 1970, then I would be either a philanthropist or an idiot. And modern economic ideas say companies shouldn't be philanthropists.
All of this ignores the disproportionate power of wealthier interests on the governments of many countries, which also plays in the favor of monopolies.
All in all, a world without anti-monopoly legislation is a world that would suck for more people. Which is the opposite of good, in my moral framework
You are wrong. There's nothing 'natural' nor 'remindery' about calendars.