course, is a theocracy, and Saudi Arabia exhibits a religion-state entanglement that might be described as a brand of caesaropapism, but most of the regimes throughout the Islamic world are secular, though often quite authoritarian, regimes. It is, I would think, the authoritarianism of the regimes in question that is the biggest factor in suppressing inquiry than the regimes' religious character. You might think so, but you'd probably be wrong. Authoritarian regimes aren't necessarily anti-science or scientific inquiry. The Germans under Hitler, for example, were quite good at pushing the technological envelope in some areas. But then again, the Germans themselves were fairly innovative before and after Hitler. You can overlay a despot on a culture and the culture remains. The bottom line is that Islamic society, in so far as it's Islamic, is simply anti-science. The few areas you've had successes in science in Islamic countries has largely arisen in spite of, not because of, Islam. Even in Egypt, which is nominally secular, professors routinely have to flee the country in fear of their life because they say something that supposedly profanes the Prophet, Allah, or some other token feature of Islam. I suspect that Islamic societies will remain backwards until the day comes when an Islamic artist can carry out the Islamic equivilent of putting the cross in a jar of piss and not worry about getting killed in reprisal.
Unfortunately, the real purpose of international student programs is to fill University coffers. The reason why graduate engineering programs have difficulty recruiting natives is one of utility: what will a graduate degree in mechanical engineering do that a bachelors won't do? Will you get to work on cooler projects? Enter the corporate ladder at a high rung? Make ridiculously more money out of the gate? Unfortunately, the usual answer to all of those questions is an emphatic NO. You do get to defray your student loans for a couple more years and keep going to those college keggers, but then again if you are a graduate engineering student...chances are you aren't going to those.
Now, contrast that with a medical degree or a law degree, which really does open doors you can't walk through with just a bachelors degree.
Well, if the DREAM act becomes law, illegal aliens will be subsidized with local in-state tuition, while out of state US citizens will have to pay the full out of state price. I'm sure legal aliens on student visas will probably have to pay the full out of state price too. So, the trick when going to the bursar's office is to claim that you are here illegally.
Um, ethanol floats on water, so you can just siphon off the top layer. You might want to get a refund on any chemistry classes you took...because you were ripped off.
Uh, we functionally already have yeast that eat waste cellulose and excrete ethanol. The problem is, the cellulose has to be emersed in water, ethanol is a waste product that eventually poisons the yeast at a fairly low concentration, and you have to distill the solution to extract the alcohol...and distillation is energy intensive.
Aren't many of the manufacturing jobs that we're exporting the same ones that also tend to be dangerous? In the US life is very highly valued (much more so than in say China), and it is expensive to use manufacturing equipment that is safer, and even more expensive to deal with insurance and lawsuits. Wait, so you are saying chip fabrication is dangerous? Manufacturing of computers is dangerous?
Not to mention that the average american demands much much higher salaries than people in 3rd world countries. It's largely because of something called "purchasing power parity". On a cash valuation basis, China's GDP is about 1/8th of the US GDP. On a PPP basis, their GDP is almost 4/5th the size of the US GDP. It takes more money to live at a certain level in the West than it does to live at the same level in China or India.
Unless you have an idea for how to pay american workers $3/hour to work in hellish conditions, I'd suggest you don't complain about moving manufacturing jobs overseas. How about we don't engage in no-tariff "free trade" with countries that run slave labor factories rather than trying to figure out how we can being US workers down to the level of the Chinese?
Yep. We're at "full" employment, with a growing, growing, growing service economy based on $8/hr jobs with people (not infrequently illegal aliens) asking "Would you like fries with that" instead of manufacturing jobs (of which we've been losing a million or so permanently every few years) paying $25/hr, or, gasp, IT jobs paying 70-150k a year.
If you take a hard look at the numbers, employment numbers for whites, blacks, and teenagers has gone down over the last decade, not up. We're busy exporting the the good jobs overseas (including stuff like radiology in addition to manufacturing and IT), and giving away menial and entry level jobs to illegal aliens. At the same time we are overburdened with government, business, and personal debt. What a recipe for economic success!
Well, the ACLU has actually been involved in some gun cases, such as working with the NRAonce in a while. They certainly can't take all cases, and I'm unsure what specific civil rights were violated in this case. Excessive prosecution, probably, which unfortunately happens all the time. The ACLU's "agenda" usually extends to 9/10 of the Bill of Rights. You have a horribly optimistic view of the ACLU. The ACLU is active in defending the 1st and 4th Amendments and sometimes the 5th, but the 2nd, 9th, and 10th they are pretty silent on.
As far as doing more harm than good, would you prefer to have just the NRA, which sticks up for 1/10 of the Bill of Rights? Comparing the ACLU and the NRA is pretty dumb. The ACLU is ostensibly an organization built around defending innate freedoms, aka the Bill of Rights, but their primary purpose these days seems to be the eradication of all Christian displays in public places (while at the same time supporting prayer in school for Muslims, which is sort of an odd position to take). The NRA evolved from basically a gun club to a national lobbying organization due to the relentless attacks on gun ownership by anti-gunners. Their purpose has never been defending the entire Bill of Rights. They are a gun organization, pure and simple.
Inflation does not tax the poor: They have no cash savings.
Inflation does not tax the middle class: They keep their assets in real-estate and mutual funds.
Inflation forces everyone else to invest in something, because hoarding money isn't good for the economy. This is an idiotic collection of statements. Really.
1. Plenty of poor people have cash savings. They may not be significant compared to Warren Buffet's, but that doesn't mean the savings are valueless to them nor that erosion of that value due to inflation is of negligible impact.
2. People on fixed incomes (annuities, pensions, etc) are hit hard by inflation, and can easily see the value of their fixed incomes inflated into worthlessness.
3. Not all middle class people "keep thier assets in real-estate and mutal funds".
4. Inflation forces people to SPEND money, not invest it, because over time it becomes worthless as a store of value.
Right now we don't really factor environmental degradation into our economic situation. Instead we pretty much allow anyone to do whatever they want at no cost You know, people who claim to be environmentalists bandy this around quite a bit. "This" being the "hidden economic costs of environmental degradation". The problem with that is, there really isn't (in many cases at least) a way to actually measure what the economic costs are. And generally speaking, the free market does a hell of a lot better job of pricing things than the government or "experts" or environmentalists can. I mean, really, what is the net environmental damage of burning a ton of coal? How do you measure that in dollars and cents and apply that to a company who's business is burning coal to generate electricity for the American market (government, commercial, and residential)? Should power companies be required to sequester 750 kg of carbon for every ton of coal they burn. A bright like that would sorta destroy the net energy ROI that you get for pretty much any carbon energy source Where exactly are you trying to go with this argument when the vast majority of the world's economy runs carbon fuel? And what gets me is guys like you complain when someone comes along with something that might actually help alleviate carbon pollution.
Providing all of the US's electrical energy requirements by covering Nevada with solar cells is probably prohibitively expensive, environmentally. But this doesn't mean that some areas can't be used as part of the solution. There are low tech solutions available that use solar collectors and stirling engines to generate electricity. Photovoltaic cells aren't the only game in town.
But the best solution is still conservation. As long as energy remains at an artificially low price (with respect to environmental costs), people will continue to use it without reserve. Identifying environmental costs and setting prices so as to minimize those costs does not seem to me to be at all unreasonable. Trying to ensure that the environmental burden is spread out rather than in one area can also help minimize costs. And finally asking people not to use expensive resources unnecessarily seems reasonable to me. Maybe I'm not an "Earth First type", though. You may not be an "Earth First" type but you come across as incredibly naive. One, you assume that current energy prices are "artificially" low, but again, try to come up with a "real" energy price with any degree of accuracy, especially in a highly volatile market with a depreciating currency like exists today. You can't. So it's a little pointless to talk about artificiality with regards to the market. What you are really talking about is modifying people's behavior with the stick (ie, taxes). The net effect, of course, is a reduction in the standard of living of everyone except those who can afford the "energy tax". Congrats, you just implemented a de facto regressive tax the poor scheme. Maybe you look forward to a stratified society where the elites live in post 21st century modernity with all the conveniences of a high tech luxurious lifestyle, and everyone else lives in 12th century serdom with no electricity and dirty water. I guess you figure you'll be among that 5% elite?
Sorry, no. One, your argument isn't valid, and two, you misunderstand my point. Fossil fuels like oil and natural gas will cease to be economically significant carriers of energy within our lifetimes. Their heir apparent, in terms of utility and energy density, is coal. From an "oh noes, the ice caps are melting" point of view, coal is a disaster because it's CO2 output is much worse, on a BTU basis, than oil or natural gas. Coal is also the primary form of electricity production in the United States (51% according to DOE). It's also the cheapest source of electricity production. But, given research into things like solar which have the potential to alleviate much of the environmental concerns of coal and other fossil fuels, the Earth Firster neo-luddite environmentalists STILL complain about impact of solar to the environment.
Thats 100^2 miles that will be devoid of sunlight because it covered up by panels. I see that as a huge problem. Compared to what pie-in-the-sky alternative? The status quo is untenable.
Probably 1 acre would be 1 acre too much for the Earth First types.
Can't use coal because it's a CO2 producer.
Can't use nuclear because radioactive waste is scary.
Can't use hydro because those damns endanger the snail darter minnow.
Can't use tidal because it disrupts the spawning cycles of the crab.
And now we can't use solar because it puts areas under shade.
Rubber bullets aren't non-lethal they are less lethal. IE, still capable of causing serious injury or death, but much less dangerous than copper jacketed lead core bullets.
Even tasers are less-lethal, not non-lethal devices. Within force continuums, tasers are usually at a lower level than physical restraints (ie, arm barring a subject) because, statistically speaking, tasers kill and/or seriously injure fewer people than night sticks and knees in the neck.
The drug cartels and the "authorities" in Mexico are basically indistinguishable. Authorities get killed in Mexico usually as part of intra-cartel strife. Most of the "good, honest cops" the DEA works with in Mexico have later been found out to be in the pay (and enforcers for) the cartes.
My, my, aren't we smug. That being said, you gave a reasonably decent explanation. However, there are, of course, a few problems remaining.
According to your wiki article, we have ice core samples going back 800,000 years. Not ice core samples from the Northwest Passage area, but simply ice core samples. The primary temperature proxy in ice core samples is isotopic concentration within the trapped gases. The trapped gases within an ice core sample tend to be younger than the ice itself, and can vary in age of anywhere from a few hundred to several (6+) thousand years. Additionally, the arguments I've seen posited before is that the temperature analogues are for GLOBAL mean temperature, not local temperature. Which means it's pretty much impossible to say with any degree of credibility whether or not the Northwest Passage has ever been open, or has been closed continuously over the past x thousand years. We just don't have the data at a fine enough granularity.
I'm not a global warming skeptic, per se. I am skeptical of the fact that it's taken on cult like status, with the cult like tendency to burn the heretics. Religions shouldn't masquerade as science, and good science can withstand a little skepticism.
I think there's serious money to be made fixing the problem. The longer we wait, the more money there will be in it. Nothing sells like disaster!
We have pulled ice cores which show temperatures going back tens of millions of years. Speaking of which, would you be interested in buying the Brooklyn bridge? I've yet to see a convincing explanation of how ice core samples somehow give accurate local and/or global temperatures going back "tens of millions of years". Somehow I doubt that there is a calendar buried alongside a thermometer every few meters of ice. Carbon dating will give you an accurate reading of around 60,000 years, assuming there is enough carbon gas in the ice to measure, and that it hasn't diffused through the ice from earlier or later epochs.
Microsoft's skill, as an organization, is creating and defining the market. And frequently, destroying the market to kneecap a competitor. Aside from the initial Bill Gates break with DOS, Microsoft hasn't been that "lucky" in a business sense. A lot of people, especially on Slashdot, look at Microsoft and their frequently shoddy products, and go "How did Microsoft get here? It must've been luck!". Never mind that Microsoft isn't the only one that releases shoddy products and engages in unfair business practices (IBM, today's darling, used to be yesterday's nemesis). What Microsoft has today that most companies don't have is tens of billions of dollars of cash reserves. Which means they can survive a mistake or two that might otherwise kill a competitor (like Borland).
No, it would not have any relevance to anything other than a fairy tale. Some skeptics would say that it's a fairy tale anyway.
Governments control their economies. No, with a few notable exceptions, governments excercise influence over economies. They do this through a whole host of factors, of which monetary policy is only one of many. And governments exercised control before there were central banks based on fiat currencies. The idea that macroeconomics, or it's validity, hinges on a central bank and government debt is absurd. It's not unlike saying the laws of physics depends on the existence of rocket ships (and please, no reference to the Copenhagen school). My point: the validty of macroeconomics doesn't depend on a central bank. Central banks use macroeconomics to plan policy, not the other way around (e.g., rocket ships use physics, physics isn't dependent on rocket ships).
Otherwise, the government would not have much in the way of revenue. Again, this is nonsensical. Governments tax productivity. Income doesn't suddenly appear out of the quantum foam. Manipulation of credit markets and central banks allows them to spend beyond their ability to raise tax revenue, in much the same way that debasing currency did in the past (and why debasing / counterfeiting has been dealt with harshly...only the government is allowed to destroy the value of money or currency), but it does not remove the need for taxation.
Huh? Traditional macro-economics has nothing to do with the Federal Reserve. Wave a magic wand and make the Fed disappear, and macro-economics would be just as valid (or invalid if you are a cynic).
You can scale a hydrogen bomb up pretty much arbitrarily, by adding more tritium; similarly Actually, it's a whole lot easier to add lithium deuteride to scale up h-bombs. Large amounts of tritium are messy to deal with in a weapons package. All that cryogenics makes for a not very portable device (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_mike...used deuterium instead of tritium, but the principle is the same if you are going to use a hydrogen isotope as the nuclear fusion fuel).
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, the real purpose of international student programs is to fill University coffers. The reason why graduate engineering programs have difficulty recruiting natives is one of utility: what will a graduate degree in mechanical engineering do that a bachelors won't do? Will you get to work on cooler projects? Enter the corporate ladder at a high rung? Make ridiculously more money out of the gate? Unfortunately, the usual answer to all of those questions is an emphatic NO. You do get to defray your student loans for a couple more years and keep going to those college keggers, but then again if you are a graduate engineering student...chances are you aren't going to those.
Now, contrast that with a medical degree or a law degree, which really does open doors you can't walk through with just a bachelors degree.
Well, if the DREAM act becomes law, illegal aliens will be subsidized with local in-state tuition, while out of state US citizens will have to pay the full out of state price. I'm sure legal aliens on student visas will probably have to pay the full out of state price too. So, the trick when going to the bursar's office is to claim that you are here illegally.
Uh, we functionally already have yeast that eat waste cellulose and excrete ethanol. The problem is, the cellulose has to be emersed in water, ethanol is a waste product that eventually poisons the yeast at a fairly low concentration, and you have to distill the solution to extract the alcohol...and distillation is energy intensive.
Yep. We're at "full" employment, with a growing, growing, growing service economy based on $8/hr jobs with people (not infrequently illegal aliens) asking "Would you like fries with that" instead of manufacturing jobs (of which we've been losing a million or so permanently every few years) paying $25/hr, or, gasp, IT jobs paying 70-150k a year.
If you take a hard look at the numbers, employment numbers for whites, blacks, and teenagers has gone down over the last decade, not up. We're busy exporting the the good jobs overseas (including stuff like radiology in addition to manufacturing and IT), and giving away menial and entry level jobs to illegal aliens. At the same time we are overburdened with government, business, and personal debt. What a recipe for economic success!
Uh, the fraud was probably misrepresentation of either his credentials or the purpose of purchasing the bioligical sample.
1. Plenty of poor people have cash savings. They may not be significant compared to Warren Buffet's, but that doesn't mean the savings are valueless to them nor that erosion of that value due to inflation is of negligible impact.
2. People on fixed incomes (annuities, pensions, etc) are hit hard by inflation, and can easily see the value of their fixed incomes inflated into worthlessness. 3. Not all middle class people "keep thier assets in real-estate and mutal funds". 4. Inflation forces people to SPEND money, not invest it, because over time it becomes worthless as a store of value.
Sorry, no. One, your argument isn't valid, and two, you misunderstand my point. Fossil fuels like oil and natural gas will cease to be economically significant carriers of energy within our lifetimes. Their heir apparent, in terms of utility and energy density, is coal. From an "oh noes, the ice caps are melting" point of view, coal is a disaster because it's CO2 output is much worse, on a BTU basis, than oil or natural gas. Coal is also the primary form of electricity production in the United States (51% according to DOE). It's also the cheapest source of electricity production. But, given research into things like solar which have the potential to alleviate much of the environmental concerns of coal and other fossil fuels, the Earth Firster neo-luddite environmentalists STILL complain about impact of solar to the environment.
Probably 1 acre would be 1 acre too much for the Earth First types.
Can't use coal because it's a CO2 producer.
Can't use nuclear because radioactive waste is scary.
Can't use hydro because those damns endanger the snail darter minnow.
Can't use tidal because it disrupts the spawning cycles of the crab.
And now we can't use solar because it puts areas under shade.
Rubber bullets aren't non-lethal they are less lethal. IE, still capable of causing serious injury or death, but much less dangerous than copper jacketed lead core bullets.
Even tasers are less-lethal, not non-lethal devices. Within force continuums, tasers are usually at a lower level than physical restraints (ie, arm barring a subject) because, statistically speaking, tasers kill and/or seriously injure fewer people than night sticks and knees in the neck.
The drug cartels and the "authorities" in Mexico are basically indistinguishable. Authorities get killed in Mexico usually as part of intra-cartel strife. Most of the "good, honest cops" the DEA works with in Mexico have later been found out to be in the pay (and enforcers for) the cartes.
My, my, aren't we smug. That being said, you gave a reasonably decent explanation. However, there are, of course, a few problems remaining.
According to your wiki article, we have ice core samples going back 800,000 years. Not ice core samples from the Northwest Passage area, but simply ice core samples. The primary temperature proxy in ice core samples is isotopic concentration within the trapped gases. The trapped gases within an ice core sample tend to be younger than the ice itself, and can vary in age of anywhere from a few hundred to several (6+) thousand years. Additionally, the arguments I've seen posited before is that the temperature analogues are for GLOBAL mean temperature, not local temperature. Which means it's pretty much impossible to say with any degree of credibility whether or not the Northwest Passage has ever been open, or has been closed continuously over the past x thousand years. We just don't have the data at a fine enough granularity.
I'm not a global warming skeptic, per se. I am skeptical of the fact that it's taken on cult like status, with the cult like tendency to burn the heretics. Religions shouldn't masquerade as science, and good science can withstand a little skepticism.
Microsoft's skill, as an organization, is creating and defining the market. And frequently, destroying the market to kneecap a competitor. Aside from the initial Bill Gates break with DOS, Microsoft hasn't been that "lucky" in a business sense. A lot of people, especially on Slashdot, look at Microsoft and their frequently shoddy products, and go "How did Microsoft get here? It must've been luck!". Never mind that Microsoft isn't the only one that releases shoddy products and engages in unfair business practices (IBM, today's darling, used to be yesterday's nemesis). What Microsoft has today that most companies don't have is tens of billions of dollars of cash reserves. Which means they can survive a mistake or two that might otherwise kill a competitor (like Borland).
Huh? Traditional macro-economics has nothing to do with the Federal Reserve. Wave a magic wand and make the Fed disappear, and macro-economics would be just as valid (or invalid if you are a cynic).
The same reason why I know what the LD/50 of Parathion is. I used to work in a safety department!
Actually, isn't that exactly what science is?
Hypothesis, test, revise. It's adherence to a dogma that isn't science.