People that are rich have time that is very valuable, so they can't afford to have many children, because they would waste too much of their own time.
You're thinking about it backwards. Has it occurred to you that rich and middle-class people are well off precisely because they don't have kids? Kids are expensive. They reduce the overall household income (by causing one or both parents to work less, or even quit their career altogether), in addition to raising household costs (increased food consumption, clothing, water use, education, sports, etc.). The net effect being that it holds families back financially.
People don't start out rich and then "decide" whether or not to have kids. Kids prevent people from getting rich (generally), whereas those of us who opt not to kids can put that money to other uses, like investments.
Probably in a similar fashion as gambling. The IRS requires you to pay taxes on gambling winnings, but you cannot claim a loss for gambling losses.
That's not entirely accurate. Regarding your example, you'd only owe tax on the amount that you "cashed out." If you won $600 in casino chips, then lost $500 of those chips, and cashed out $100, your "winnings" are just the $100. That's what you owe tax on.
Secondly, you actually can claim gambling losses, but only against winnings. See the IRS website.
Finally, I'll take this opportunity to plug Canada. In Canada, all gambling winnings are completely tax-free. Also, there's none of this crap about winning $100 million "paid out over 25 years, or you can have a $45 million lump sum." If you win $100 million, you get the whole $100 million, right now. And you don't owe any tax on it. Yay, Canada!
To be honest, although most MBAs might be successful at gaining money, they are often not particularly successful in terms of being contented. There's not much point in being rich if the result is stress and unhappiness.
The notion that rich people are unhappy is a myth. In reality, rich people are generally happier than middle- and low-income earners. The idea that money makes people miserable is a fairy tale perpetuated by poor people to try and console themselves regarding their own unhappiness.
Money can't buy happiness, but poverty guarantees misery.
I've never understood the "If you can't help everyone, why help anyone" arguement.
I didn't say that. I gave 2 specific examples of other people you could help.
Everyone is not equal, and should not be treated as such. I am far more likely to give money to a cultural icon whom I personally respect, than some guy I don't even know.
Why? Because he wrote some books? That makes him worthy of charity?
Let's keep things in perspective here. You're saying that since this guy wrote some books, and is famous, that he deserves your money. But the soldiers who lose limbs fighting for your right to read those books don't deserve your money, because "you don't even know them?"
In other news, another 300 cancer patients died today because they couldn't afford the examinations that would have detected their disease earlier, at a preventable stage. Nor could they have afforded the treatment that could have beaten their cancer, even if they'd known about it.
If you're looking for sob stories about nice people falling on hard times, there are for more worthy cases than Robert Anton. Why don't you stop by the local Veterans hospital, or contact the Children's Wish Foundation, if you really have money you feel should be used to help others.
Instead of vocalizing with mod-points, why not reply instead?
Because then the mod risks having their own post modded down, resulting in negative karma for themselves, and the "offending" post remains upmodded and seemingly unopposed. It's quite simple, really.
Is it just me, or are the quality of the comments on Slashdot dropping significantly lately? It seems that every time I click "Read More," the first couple dozen comments are lame, one or two line jokes. Do people not realize that "Funny" mods don't garner you any karma? Why even post such inane drivel? Is it asking to much to have an interesting, insightful conversation? This story has several potentially significant aspects. We could be discussing how this will benefit the handicapped, the elderly, maybe soldiers of shelf-stockers. Perhaps this has implications for the space program, moving large items on our manned mission to Mars.
But instead, we get throwback jokes about "Hans and Frans" pumping me up (ha ha, very funny, because they mentioned cuffs will inflate to boost strength, "pumping" up, how clever of you). It's almost to the point where I don't even bother reading the comments anymore.
I always wondered why they couldn't start and the shuttle with some cabling and dropped it down towards the earth. Put enough mass on the end so that it actually reaches the earth and enough thrust on the shuttle (or other vehicle) to keep it up until the rest of the support mechanism is worked out.
Because the shuttle is only capable of Low-Earth-Orbit, which means that once it reaches orbit, it is tracing a track along the surface of the Earth at a speed of around 17,000 mph. It does this at an altitude of about 180 miles to 250 miles.
In order to accomplish what you describe, the shuttle would have to attain geosynchronous orbit, which would be an altitude of about 22,000 miles, or roughly 100 times higher than the space shuttle has ever flown before. The shuttle is not capable of this.
If the last time it got this warm was thousands of years ago, then doesn't that mean that after that, it cooled off for a very long time? Wasn't there even an ice age in there somewhere? Doesn't this contradict the scientists claiming that this warming trend is irreversible? Doesn't this data show that in fact, this exact same trend did reverse, thousands of years ago, before it started warming up again to get us to where we are today?
Everyone seems to be focusing on the "inconvenience" aspect of this, rather than the very real and much more important "safety" aspect of this. Civil aviation uses a band of frequencies just slightly above those used for commercial FM broadcasts. If a bunch of selfish, ignorant anarchists start broadcasting on the same frequency as the emergency locator beacon (121.5/243 MHz), or a local navigational beacon, or the ATIS information, or a nearby FSS... this would cause a great deal of problems for aircraft.
In this day and age, with the Internet and podcasts making it easier and cheaper than ever to reach the biggest audience ever, why is this movement surfacing with some seemingly pointless, rebellious desire to "reclaim" airwaves they never owned in the first place?
The reality for more of us is that we can only afford a 10 year old car...and guess what was most popular 10 years ago? Gas guzzling SUVs.
Are you seriously saying that the reason so many people are driving 10-year old SUVs is because they can't find any 10-year old cars for sale? Do you realize how stupid that sounds?
There are plenty of 10-year old cars and SUVs for sale. And the 10-year old cars are a lot cheaper than the 10-year old SUVs.
Maybe they dont want to drive cars that amount to being not much larger than coffins - before they're crushed by that semi they eventually run into on the crowded highway.
I guess the Europeans solve this problem by simply being better drivers and not "running into a semi on a crowded highway."
I'll take a 3.8l powered car from GM any day with some actual performance in it
GM makes cars with performance in them? OK, I'll give you this one, but the rest of their lineup is utter crap. Why would anyone buy a GM for any reason other than the fact that they can't afford a better car?
People justify driving huge SUVs because of "safety." By driving the bigger, heavier vehicle, then when they screw up and run a red light because they were on their cell phone and weren't paying attention, they ensure that the poor, innocent victims in the reasonably-sized, efficient vehicle they crushed will bear the lion's share of the energy of the ensuing collision. They get to walk away from their Ford Excursion and say, "Oops," while the family in the Toyota Yaris that had the green light is dead.
I resent SUVs because I find this line of thinking selfish and elitist.
WRONG! The reason we put in "rights" and other limitations on laws is so that mob rule does not ensue. No one has the right to beat Jews just because they are in the minority - and Sharia has far more severe rules included in it as well.
So, we should prevent Britain from becoming an Islamic society, even if that's what the majority want, because some aspects of Sharia law are violent and barbaric?
Uhm... have you read the Christian Bible lately? Ours too, is a vengeful God.
Americans are not afraid of terrorists - we the people took down a plane ourselves once we knew what was going on.
Actually, the terrorists crashed the plane, not the passengers. The passengers never even made it inside the cockpit. And I'm pretty sure that the passengers were trying to regain control of the plane so they could live. They didn't collectively form some spur-of-the-moment suicide pact and decide to martyr themselves in the name of the USA.
And evidently, USAmericans are afraid of terrorists, because they're putting up with all these ridiculously invasive new initiatives with nary a whimper. Sure, there are some isolated objectors (labeled by the media as "unpatriotic crackpots") who see what the administration is really doing, but on the whole, people are quite comfortable to let Bush and Cheney Inc. do what needs to be done, so they can feel safer.
If crime has increased. If there are more desperate people on the streets and if drugs and poverty are everywhere. Then stop and think about the contributing factors. One of theme is this 'credit check before higher procedure'. It is not the main reason but it is a majority reason. And is further proof that bigotry is not dead!!!.
It is so much bigger than that. Class stratification in our society cannot be attributed to one or two isolated and easily-correctible factors. You have to look at the whole picture. You have to look at common traits among people in certain situations, both those they have control over (credit history, geographic location, education level) and those they don't have control over (age, sex, race, upbringing, health). They all contribute to our individual situations.
Our society likes to pretend that everybody is equal in every way. Even you yourself referred to Dr. King in your post, evoking memories of his "dream" of total equality. It makes a nice, warm, fuzzy, idealistic fantasy, but in reality, people are different. Here's the bottom line: Everyone is not equally intelligent. Some people have higher than average intelligence, and some people have below-average intelligence. No amount of Ritalin or "No Child Left Behind" programs or after-school programs can take a person with an IQ of 80 and turn them into a person with an IQ of 120.
And people with IQ's of 80 will never be successful business owners. It's sad, but it's true.
When we're children, our parents and teachers like to feed us the line, "You can do anything you want to do, if you just set your mind to it and work hard at it." At some point in life, we eventually realize that that's not true. No matter how hard I work at it, even if I devote every waking hour to working for it, there are several things I can never be. I can never be an NBA star (I'm not tall enough, and I lack natural athletic aptitude of those rare "short" players who've succeeded in the NBA). I can never be a jet fighter pilot (I'm colour blind). I can never be an Astronaut (I have a mild heart murmur). These are obstacles that life has placed in front of me, and are utterly insurmountable. These are limitations I must accept. It's part of life.
These are examples of physiological limitations (height, vision, heart) that even the most naive idealist will acknowledge cannot be overcome. However, there is another physiological limitation that people, through their rose-coloured glasses, insist on ignoring: intelligence. People are born with a certain capability for intelligence. We can optimize the intelligence we have, but we cannot exceed whatever natural limitation is wired into our brains. Some people are just plain smarter than other people. Some people will understand things faster, just as some people will pick up a new sport or a new instrument and be better at them faster than others. There's nothing wrong with that, but people don't like to acknowledge that there is a mental limitation they cannot overcome.
What does any of this have to do with class structure? A great deal. Poor people, on average, have below average intelligence. Don't attack me; as I said at the beginning, the "rich/poor" issue is not one with a single, simple, straightforward cause. I am not saying that poor people are poor because they are stupid. There are a great many other factors at play.
Poor people with below-average intelligence (which is to say, most of them, but not all of them) make poor decisions. They don't understand the consequences of long-term, compound interest debt as readily as people with above-average intelligence. They are more likely to make the poor decisions that lead to teen pregnancies, which is another crucial factor in keeping them from breaking the cycle of poverty. Poor people can't afford the education that would help them maximize their intelligence. So they make bad decisions and have poor children, which themselves are destined to be poor. Poor peop
Bad credit can also indicate bad luck. Maybe you suddenly need to have expensive surgery or medical treatments, or what if your house and everything you have is destroyed in a flood or fire?
There's this thing called "insurance." Responsible people buy it so their families aren't irreversibly ruined by the exact situations you've described.
A lot of people claim they pay off their credit cards in full every month. That's fine -- but I do wonder, then, why they don't just pay cash?
Reward points and credit rating.
My credit card gives me 1% cash-back on all my purchases. If I pay it off every month and pay $0 in interest, then I'm effectively getting a 1% discount on everything I buy.
My wife's credit card gives her air miles. Again, we pay it off every month, so we never pay any interest, making the air miles effectively free. (OK, it's not that simple: her card has an annual fee, but by using her card frequently, we obtain enough air miles to outweigh the annual fee).
And by having and using credit cards, you build up a credit rating. This can be useful when you, say, buy a car or a apply for a mortgage.
You don't have the foggiest notion what you're talking about
Bzzt! Nice try. I'm a licensed private pilot.
Why don't you post details about the "very specific protocols" you're so knowledgable about for these situations?
Although it is pretty hard to argue with the "facts" you dredged from a fanatical conspiracy book entitled "The War on Freedom," the "very specific protocols" you asked for are readily available on the FAA's website. There's nothing at all in there about "scrambling fighter planes."
The complete lack of standard military interception on 9/11 is most reasonably explained as being by design.
I think maybe you've read that conspiracy book a few too many times. Reality doesn't jibe with the myriad holes in your crazy theories.
Very strange, I'm not sure either. You'd think that even BEFORE 9/11 happened, NORAD would have known about the planes' diverted flight path (and if not the first plane, the second one at least..??)...but for some reason they had no idea.
Of course, the controllers did notice the plane's diverted flight path. While this is unusual, it is by no means a cause for alarm. Put yourself in the controller's shoes. It's another normal day on the job. You notice one of your planes changing heading without clearance. You call him/her on the radio, they don't answer. Then their transponder goes offline. A terrorist hijacking? Probably not. More likely, they've had a radio failure, and are diverting to a nearby airport.
Unfortunately, it turns out it was a terrorist hijacking. And when a second plane started behaving erratically, the panic button was pushed, and intercepter jets were dispatched from Massachusetts. They flew out over the Atlantic ocean and went supersonic trying to catch up to the wayward airplane, but they were too late.
There was nothing unusual about the way the controllers did their jobs. They did everything by the book, and followed their training to the letter. There are very specific protocols in place for aircraft who experience radio failures, and it's not entirely unheard of for it to happen. An aircraft that isn't responding to controllers, and who is changing course, is not cause for immediate panic.
Three names: Timothy McVeigh, Theodore Kaczynski, and Richard Reed. Three terrorists who would not set off your criteria.
Actually, Richard Reid would have (he used aliases like Tariq Raja and Abdel Rahim and had a criminal record), and the other two didn't use airplanes. But that's not the point. No individual component is expected to achieve a 100% detection rate. But the combination of all the factors should accomplish an "acceptably high" prevention rate, without causing an "unacceptably high" inconvenience for the passengers.
The difference is that the police have a KNOWN bad guy, a specific individual which they have already identified as having committed a crime and all the ancilliary evidence that goes with it. By "profiling" him they are matching known facts about him with a list of likely characteristics. The terrorists are UNKNOWN, all you have is a list of characteristics and by "profiling" you are trying to associate those characteristics with somebody you have no other knowledge of, who may not even exist.
You misunderstand. We're not talking about the police hunting for a particular suspect. We're talking about the police applying "profiling" in exactly the same way as the airport screeners. We're talking about the police spending more time in neighborhoods with statistically higher crime rates than those with lower rates (profiling), paying closer attention to the 4 young minority males in a beat-up old car than the middle-aged family in the minivan. This is called "profiling," and the police do it.
You've said so many incredibly stupid things that I can't possibly address them all, but the one point I'd like to make to you is that it is not nearly as "easy" to disguise a middle eastern man as a convincing Swedish woman as you appear to believe it is. Security screeners are not idiots. They are trained to detect liars and disguises and accents and hidden items. That you seem to think it is "easy" (I still can't believe you used that word) to fool them into thinking a middle eastern man is a white woman is positively idiotic.
So what is your solution? To scrutinize absolutely everyone, ignoring that such a system would be insanely costly and cause huge delays? To use a completely random system that may allow obviously sketchy people to pass through with minimal examination, because the computer didn't happen to randomly select them?
NOW, on top of this, any contract you sign can modify your legal right to act in certain ways. If you sign a valid contract saying 'I will not say 'thud' in your presence', and then say 'thud' in his presence, you may be contractually bound by any penalties stipulated in the contract, free speech be damned. Why? BECAUSE YOU LEGALLY AGREED TO LIMIT YOUR OWN RIGHTS.
I'm not certain that's correct. From my (admittedly limited) understanding of US constitutional law, you cannot sign away fundamentally protected rights. For example, you cannot sign a contract agreeing to be a slave, or agreeing to let someone murder you. Correction, you can sign such a contract, but it would have absolutely no validity in court.
You can't sign away guaranteed civil rights. The constitution trumps any and all other agreements.
Actually, they were, at best, red herrings. Don't use big words if you don't know what they mean. Logical fallacies are pretty basic material. The fundamentals are available on Wikipedia.
The poster was claiming no one can "own" art because it's just numbers, and you can't own a number. I responded by illustrating some widely-accepted examples of where "numbers" can indeed be treated very seriously, given particular numbers' unique meaning and traits (such as, happening to be the exact value that matches a Metallica MP3, or a Word document containing state secrets).
Only someone who invested some serious research time and effort could gain access to my valuables and get away with it. And for what? My passport, some petty cash, and copies of my legal documents?
Burglars don't want your passport and legal documents. They're not going to deftly pick your lock and carefully disable your security alarm, so they can work on your fireproof safe for 2 hours.
They're going to jump your fence, throw your garden gnome through your patio window, go upstairs and take all the drugs in your medicine cabinet. If they happen to see any guns, jewelry, or cash along the way, they'll take that, too. They'll be in and out in less than a minute.
People give burglars too much credit. We're not talking about Thomas Crown here, folks. We're talking about homeless heroin addicts.
The bytes on a CD are, guess what, information. If you call someone on the phone and read them off the list of digits, eventually they'll be able to put together their own copy of the song. The desire to prevent someone from sharing those digits is no more justified than the desire to stop them from sharing the digits of pi.
What if those digits, when fed into a JPG renderer, form a picture of child porn? Is that OK in your mind, since it's really just a number? In fact, an entire child porn movie could be represented as a single (albeit, very large) number. So that makes it exempt from regulation, in your eyes?
An email sent from Osama bin Laden to Ramzi Yousef, telling him where to find the bomb supplies, and which flights to bomb, could be represented as a single number. Are you arguing that such an email should be inadmissible as evidence of charges of terrorism, because it can be depicted as a number?
Don't be ridiculous.
Correct - it's nobody's right to own it. You can't own a number.
Uhm, can you be charged with distributing child porn if that "number" happens to form a JPG image of underage sex acts? If that "number" happens to be the binary representation of a Word document containing classified government tactics for fighting the war on terror, you don't think you should be charged with treason for giving it to Osama bin Laden? After all, "it's just a number," right?
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People that are rich have time that is very valuable, so they can't afford to have many children, because they would waste too much of their own time.
You're thinking about it backwards. Has it occurred to you that rich and middle-class people are well off precisely because they don't have kids? Kids are expensive. They reduce the overall household income (by causing one or both parents to work less, or even quit their career altogether), in addition to raising household costs (increased food consumption, clothing, water use, education, sports, etc.). The net effect being that it holds families back financially.
People don't start out rich and then "decide" whether or not to have kids. Kids prevent people from getting rich (generally), whereas those of us who opt not to kids can put that money to other uses, like investments.
Probably in a similar fashion as gambling. The IRS requires you to pay taxes on gambling winnings, but you cannot claim a loss for gambling losses.
That's not entirely accurate. Regarding your example, you'd only owe tax on the amount that you "cashed out." If you won $600 in casino chips, then lost $500 of those chips, and cashed out $100, your "winnings" are just the $100. That's what you owe tax on.
Secondly, you actually can claim gambling losses, but only against winnings. See the IRS website.
Finally, I'll take this opportunity to plug Canada. In Canada, all gambling winnings are completely tax-free. Also, there's none of this crap about winning $100 million "paid out over 25 years, or you can have a $45 million lump sum." If you win $100 million, you get the whole $100 million, right now. And you don't owe any tax on it. Yay, Canada!
To be honest, although most MBAs might be successful at gaining money, they are often not particularly successful in terms of being contented. There's not much point in being rich if the result is stress and unhappiness.
The notion that rich people are unhappy is a myth. In reality, rich people are generally happier than middle- and low-income earners. The idea that money makes people miserable is a fairy tale perpetuated by poor people to try and console themselves regarding their own unhappiness.
Money can't buy happiness, but poverty guarantees misery.
I've never understood the "If you can't help everyone, why help anyone" arguement.
I didn't say that. I gave 2 specific examples of other people you could help.
Everyone is not equal, and should not be treated as such. I am far more likely to give money to a cultural icon whom I personally respect, than some guy I don't even know.
Why? Because he wrote some books? That makes him worthy of charity?
Let's keep things in perspective here. You're saying that since this guy wrote some books, and is famous, that he deserves your money. But the soldiers who lose limbs fighting for your right to read those books don't deserve your money, because "you don't even know them?"
I weep for our future.
In other news, another 300 cancer patients died today because they couldn't afford the examinations that would have detected their disease earlier, at a preventable stage. Nor could they have afforded the treatment that could have beaten their cancer, even if they'd known about it.
If you're looking for sob stories about nice people falling on hard times, there are for more worthy cases than Robert Anton. Why don't you stop by the local Veterans hospital, or contact the Children's Wish Foundation, if you really have money you feel should be used to help others.
Instead of vocalizing with mod-points, why not reply instead?
Because then the mod risks having their own post modded down, resulting in negative karma for themselves, and the "offending" post remains upmodded and seemingly unopposed. It's quite simple, really.
Is it just me, or are the quality of the comments on Slashdot dropping significantly lately? It seems that every time I click "Read More," the first couple dozen comments are lame, one or two line jokes. Do people not realize that "Funny" mods don't garner you any karma? Why even post such inane drivel? Is it asking to much to have an interesting, insightful conversation? This story has several potentially significant aspects. We could be discussing how this will benefit the handicapped, the elderly, maybe soldiers of shelf-stockers. Perhaps this has implications for the space program, moving large items on our manned mission to Mars.
But instead, we get throwback jokes about "Hans and Frans" pumping me up (ha ha, very funny, because they mentioned cuffs will inflate to boost strength, "pumping" up, how clever of you). It's almost to the point where I don't even bother reading the comments anymore.
I always wondered why they couldn't start and the shuttle with some cabling and dropped it down towards the earth. Put enough mass on the end so that it actually reaches the earth and enough thrust on the shuttle (or other vehicle) to keep it up until the rest of the support mechanism is worked out.
Because the shuttle is only capable of Low-Earth-Orbit, which means that once it reaches orbit, it is tracing a track along the surface of the Earth at a speed of around 17,000 mph. It does this at an altitude of about 180 miles to 250 miles.
In order to accomplish what you describe, the shuttle would have to attain geosynchronous orbit, which would be an altitude of about 22,000 miles, or roughly 100 times higher than the space shuttle has ever flown before. The shuttle is not capable of this.
If the last time it got this warm was thousands of years ago, then doesn't that mean that after that, it cooled off for a very long time? Wasn't there even an ice age in there somewhere? Doesn't this contradict the scientists claiming that this warming trend is irreversible? Doesn't this data show that in fact, this exact same trend did reverse, thousands of years ago, before it started warming up again to get us to where we are today?
Everyone seems to be focusing on the "inconvenience" aspect of this, rather than the very real and much more important "safety" aspect of this. Civil aviation uses a band of frequencies just slightly above those used for commercial FM broadcasts. If a bunch of selfish, ignorant anarchists start broadcasting on the same frequency as the emergency locator beacon (121.5/243 MHz), or a local navigational beacon, or the ATIS information, or a nearby FSS... this would cause a great deal of problems for aircraft.
In this day and age, with the Internet and podcasts making it easier and cheaper than ever to reach the biggest audience ever, why is this movement surfacing with some seemingly pointless, rebellious desire to "reclaim" airwaves they never owned in the first place?
The reality for more of us is that we can only afford a 10 year old car...and guess what was most popular 10 years ago? Gas guzzling SUVs.
Are you seriously saying that the reason so many people are driving 10-year old SUVs is because they can't find any 10-year old cars for sale? Do you realize how stupid that sounds?
There are plenty of 10-year old cars and SUVs for sale. And the 10-year old cars are a lot cheaper than the 10-year old SUVs.
Maybe they dont want to drive cars that amount to being not much larger than coffins - before they're crushed by that semi they eventually run into on the crowded highway.
I guess the Europeans solve this problem by simply being better drivers and not "running into a semi on a crowded highway."
I'll take a 3.8l powered car from GM any day with some actual performance in it
GM makes cars with performance in them? OK, I'll give you this one, but the rest of their lineup is utter crap. Why would anyone buy a GM for any reason other than the fact that they can't afford a better car?
People justify driving huge SUVs because of "safety." By driving the bigger, heavier vehicle, then when they screw up and run a red light because they were on their cell phone and weren't paying attention, they ensure that the poor, innocent victims in the reasonably-sized, efficient vehicle they crushed will bear the lion's share of the energy of the ensuing collision. They get to walk away from their Ford Excursion and say, "Oops," while the family in the Toyota Yaris that had the green light is dead.
I resent SUVs because I find this line of thinking selfish and elitist.
WRONG! The reason we put in "rights" and other limitations on laws is so that mob rule does not ensue. No one has the right to beat Jews just because they are in the minority - and Sharia has far more severe rules included in it as well.
So, we should prevent Britain from becoming an Islamic society, even if that's what the majority want, because some aspects of Sharia law are violent and barbaric?
Uhm... have you read the Christian Bible lately? Ours too, is a vengeful God.
Americans are not afraid of terrorists - we the people took down a plane ourselves once we knew what was going on.
Actually, the terrorists crashed the plane, not the passengers. The passengers never even made it inside the cockpit. And I'm pretty sure that the passengers were trying to regain control of the plane so they could live. They didn't collectively form some spur-of-the-moment suicide pact and decide to martyr themselves in the name of the USA.
And evidently, USAmericans are afraid of terrorists, because they're putting up with all these ridiculously invasive new initiatives with nary a whimper. Sure, there are some isolated objectors (labeled by the media as "unpatriotic crackpots") who see what the administration is really doing, but on the whole, people are quite comfortable to let Bush and Cheney Inc. do what needs to be done, so they can feel safer.
If crime has increased. If there are more desperate people on the streets and if drugs and poverty are everywhere. Then stop and think about the contributing factors. One of theme is this 'credit check before higher procedure'. It is not the main reason but it is a majority reason. And is further proof that bigotry is not dead!!!.
It is so much bigger than that. Class stratification in our society cannot be attributed to one or two isolated and easily-correctible factors. You have to look at the whole picture. You have to look at common traits among people in certain situations, both those they have control over (credit history, geographic location, education level) and those they don't have control over (age, sex, race, upbringing, health). They all contribute to our individual situations.
Our society likes to pretend that everybody is equal in every way. Even you yourself referred to Dr. King in your post, evoking memories of his "dream" of total equality. It makes a nice, warm, fuzzy, idealistic fantasy, but in reality, people are different. Here's the bottom line: Everyone is not equally intelligent. Some people have higher than average intelligence, and some people have below-average intelligence. No amount of Ritalin or "No Child Left Behind" programs or after-school programs can take a person with an IQ of 80 and turn them into a person with an IQ of 120.
And people with IQ's of 80 will never be successful business owners. It's sad, but it's true.
When we're children, our parents and teachers like to feed us the line, "You can do anything you want to do, if you just set your mind to it and work hard at it." At some point in life, we eventually realize that that's not true. No matter how hard I work at it, even if I devote every waking hour to working for it, there are several things I can never be. I can never be an NBA star (I'm not tall enough, and I lack natural athletic aptitude of those rare "short" players who've succeeded in the NBA). I can never be a jet fighter pilot (I'm colour blind). I can never be an Astronaut (I have a mild heart murmur). These are obstacles that life has placed in front of me, and are utterly insurmountable. These are limitations I must accept. It's part of life.
These are examples of physiological limitations (height, vision, heart) that even the most naive idealist will acknowledge cannot be overcome. However, there is another physiological limitation that people, through their rose-coloured glasses, insist on ignoring: intelligence. People are born with a certain capability for intelligence. We can optimize the intelligence we have, but we cannot exceed whatever natural limitation is wired into our brains. Some people are just plain smarter than other people. Some people will understand things faster, just as some people will pick up a new sport or a new instrument and be better at them faster than others. There's nothing wrong with that, but people don't like to acknowledge that there is a mental limitation they cannot overcome.
What does any of this have to do with class structure? A great deal. Poor people, on average, have below average intelligence. Don't attack me; as I said at the beginning, the "rich/poor" issue is not one with a single, simple, straightforward cause. I am not saying that poor people are poor because they are stupid. There are a great many other factors at play.
Poor people with below-average intelligence (which is to say, most of them, but not all of them) make poor decisions. They don't understand the consequences of long-term, compound interest debt as readily as people with above-average intelligence. They are more likely to make the poor decisions that lead to teen pregnancies, which is another crucial factor in keeping them from breaking the cycle of poverty. Poor people can't afford the education that would help them maximize their intelligence. So they make bad decisions and have poor children, which themselves are destined to be poor. Poor peop
Bad credit can also indicate bad luck. Maybe you suddenly need to have expensive surgery or medical treatments, or what if your house and everything you have is destroyed in a flood or fire?
There's this thing called "insurance." Responsible people buy it so their families aren't irreversibly ruined by the exact situations you've described.
A lot of people claim they pay off their credit cards in full every month. That's fine -- but I do wonder, then, why they don't just pay cash?
Reward points and credit rating.
My credit card gives me 1% cash-back on all my purchases. If I pay it off every month and pay $0 in interest, then I'm effectively getting a 1% discount on everything I buy.
My wife's credit card gives her air miles. Again, we pay it off every month, so we never pay any interest, making the air miles effectively free. (OK, it's not that simple: her card has an annual fee, but by using her card frequently, we obtain enough air miles to outweigh the annual fee).
And by having and using credit cards, you build up a credit rating. This can be useful when you, say, buy a car or a apply for a mortgage.
You don't have the foggiest notion what you're talking about
Bzzt! Nice try. I'm a licensed private pilot.
Why don't you post details about the "very specific protocols" you're so knowledgable about for these situations?
Although it is pretty hard to argue with the "facts" you dredged from a fanatical conspiracy book entitled "The War on Freedom," the "very specific protocols" you asked for are readily available on the FAA's website. There's nothing at all in there about "scrambling fighter planes."
The complete lack of standard military interception on 9/11 is most reasonably explained as being by design.
I think maybe you've read that conspiracy book a few too many times. Reality doesn't jibe with the myriad holes in your crazy theories.
Very strange, I'm not sure either. You'd think that even BEFORE 9/11 happened, NORAD would have known about the planes' diverted flight path (and if not the first plane, the second one at least..??) ...but for some reason they had no idea.
Of course, the controllers did notice the plane's diverted flight path. While this is unusual, it is by no means a cause for alarm. Put yourself in the controller's shoes. It's another normal day on the job. You notice one of your planes changing heading without clearance. You call him/her on the radio, they don't answer. Then their transponder goes offline. A terrorist hijacking? Probably not. More likely, they've had a radio failure, and are diverting to a nearby airport.
Unfortunately, it turns out it was a terrorist hijacking. And when a second plane started behaving erratically, the panic button was pushed, and intercepter jets were dispatched from Massachusetts. They flew out over the Atlantic ocean and went supersonic trying to catch up to the wayward airplane, but they were too late.
There was nothing unusual about the way the controllers did their jobs. They did everything by the book, and followed their training to the letter. There are very specific protocols in place for aircraft who experience radio failures, and it's not entirely unheard of for it to happen. An aircraft that isn't responding to controllers, and who is changing course, is not cause for immediate panic.
Three names: Timothy McVeigh, Theodore Kaczynski, and Richard Reed. Three terrorists who would not set off your criteria.
Actually, Richard Reid would have (he used aliases like Tariq Raja and Abdel Rahim and had a criminal record), and the other two didn't use airplanes. But that's not the point. No individual component is expected to achieve a 100% detection rate. But the combination of all the factors should accomplish an "acceptably high" prevention rate, without causing an "unacceptably high" inconvenience for the passengers.
The difference is that the police have a KNOWN bad guy, a specific individual which they have already identified as having committed a crime and all the ancilliary evidence that goes with it. By "profiling" him they are matching known facts about him with a list of likely characteristics. The terrorists are UNKNOWN, all you have is a list of characteristics and by "profiling" you are trying to associate those characteristics with somebody you have no other knowledge of, who may not even exist.
You misunderstand. We're not talking about the police hunting for a particular suspect. We're talking about the police applying "profiling" in exactly the same way as the airport screeners. We're talking about the police spending more time in neighborhoods with statistically higher crime rates than those with lower rates (profiling), paying closer attention to the 4 young minority males in a beat-up old car than the middle-aged family in the minivan. This is called "profiling," and the police do it.
You've said so many incredibly stupid things that I can't possibly address them all, but the one point I'd like to make to you is that it is not nearly as "easy" to disguise a middle eastern man as a convincing Swedish woman as you appear to believe it is. Security screeners are not idiots. They are trained to detect liars and disguises and accents and hidden items. That you seem to think it is "easy" (I still can't believe you used that word) to fool them into thinking a middle eastern man is a white woman is positively idiotic.
So what is your solution? To scrutinize absolutely everyone, ignoring that such a system would be insanely costly and cause huge delays? To use a completely random system that may allow obviously sketchy people to pass through with minimal examination, because the computer didn't happen to randomly select them?
NOW, on top of this, any contract you sign can modify your legal right to act in certain ways. If you sign a valid contract saying 'I will not say 'thud' in your presence', and then say 'thud' in his presence, you may be contractually bound by any penalties stipulated in the contract, free speech be damned. Why? BECAUSE YOU LEGALLY AGREED TO LIMIT YOUR OWN RIGHTS.
I'm not certain that's correct. From my (admittedly limited) understanding of US constitutional law, you cannot sign away fundamentally protected rights. For example, you cannot sign a contract agreeing to be a slave, or agreeing to let someone murder you. Correction, you can sign such a contract, but it would have absolutely no validity in court.
You can't sign away guaranteed civil rights. The constitution trumps any and all other agreements.
Nice ad hominem examples there.
Actually, they were, at best, red herrings. Don't use big words if you don't know what they mean. Logical fallacies are pretty basic material. The fundamentals are available on Wikipedia.
The poster was claiming no one can "own" art because it's just numbers, and you can't own a number. I responded by illustrating some widely-accepted examples of where "numbers" can indeed be treated very seriously, given particular numbers' unique meaning and traits (such as, happening to be the exact value that matches a Metallica MP3, or a Word document containing state secrets).
Only someone who invested some serious research time and effort could gain access to my valuables and get away with it. And for what? My passport, some petty cash, and copies of my legal documents?
Burglars don't want your passport and legal documents. They're not going to deftly pick your lock and carefully disable your security alarm, so they can work on your fireproof safe for 2 hours.
They're going to jump your fence, throw your garden gnome through your patio window, go upstairs and take all the drugs in your medicine cabinet. If they happen to see any guns, jewelry, or cash along the way, they'll take that, too. They'll be in and out in less than a minute.
People give burglars too much credit. We're not talking about Thomas Crown here, folks. We're talking about homeless heroin addicts.
The bytes on a CD are, guess what, information. If you call someone on the phone and read them off the list of digits, eventually they'll be able to put together their own copy of the song. The desire to prevent someone from sharing those digits is no more justified than the desire to stop them from sharing the digits of pi.
What if those digits, when fed into a JPG renderer, form a picture of child porn? Is that OK in your mind, since it's really just a number? In fact, an entire child porn movie could be represented as a single (albeit, very large) number. So that makes it exempt from regulation, in your eyes?
An email sent from Osama bin Laden to Ramzi Yousef, telling him where to find the bomb supplies, and which flights to bomb, could be represented as a single number. Are you arguing that such an email should be inadmissible as evidence of charges of terrorism, because it can be depicted as a number?
Don't be ridiculous.
Correct - it's nobody's right to own it. You can't own a number.
Uhm, can you be charged with distributing child porn if that "number" happens to form a JPG image of underage sex acts? If that "number" happens to be the binary representation of a Word document containing classified government tactics for fighting the war on terror, you don't think you should be charged with treason for giving it to Osama bin Laden? After all, "it's just a number," right?