"...all free schools in England must teach evolution as a 'comprehensive and coherent scientific theory.'"
They aren't required to teach it as fact, they are simply required to actually teach it...
You seem to have a misunderstanding of the word "Theory" when used in a scientific context.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory
a quote from the linked article, "Scientific theories are the most reliable, rigorous, and comprehensive form of scientific knowledge.[3] This is significantly different from the word "theory" in common usage, which implies that something is unproven or speculative."
First of all, investment banks and insurance companies are indistinguishable.
This is patently untrue. Sure investment banks to make counter party deals that they believe will insure them against losses on other investments, and people refer to this as "insurance." But it is nothing like insurance. The insurance business is based on statistics and actuarial data. The data are used to make rational decisions about how much to charge a particular group for insuring a particular risk. The risks are well known and thoroughly accounted for. In fact insurance is lots like the casino business. Sure the individual transactions are gambles but in the aggregate the house wins a certain percentage. Investment banking is more like the customer at a casino, where entire stakes are bet in single transactions based on a hunch.
why wouldn't you want a banker to be attracted to money?
Personally I want my banker to be boring and conservative because I want my money to be there when I need it. I also want my banker to ethically handle my money in a way that benefits me, not him.
Not everyone should be socially conscious as a job requirement.
I'm astonished. Did you actually say that? Being "socially conscious" is nothing more than being aware of consequences and making ethical decisions. Being ethical shouldn't be a requirement of employment, it is a requirement of participation in society at all.
If it makes them better bankers, then more power to them.
That's the whole point, it doesn't make them better bankers. It makes them more likely to cheat, steal, and lie. Is that really what you look for in a banker?
Methinks that in a decade or two some natural process will start to decrease carbon levels and then those people put in charge of whatever-crackpot-carbon-saving scheme now will be able to do an I-told-you-so then. When, really, everything we did made zero difference whatsoever.
Magical thinking at its worst. If you look at the evidence, god forbid, you'll find that there many examples of opposite happening. For instance warming is causing an accelerated release of methane from permafrost and since methane is a strong greenhouse gas... Sea warming is starting to cause release of methane hydrate deposits from the sea floor, which will also accelerate warming. Reduction of ice cover on the Arctic Ocean is reducing albedo (the amount of solar radiation (heat) reflected back into space). All of these are factors that are causing an acceleration of global warming.
Ballooning started in France, so I'd guess that was to keep the landowner from surrendering after being invaded by air.
Asshole. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Resistance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_II#France.27s_effort_in_WWI
I apologize for my rudeness, but this idea of the French being cowards is a pile of horseshit, and a genuinely offensive bit of bigotry. It seems to me that this stupid meme started during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. During this period the French government proved itself to be America's most courageous friend by stating a hard truth, invasion of Iraq was unlawful, unjustified, and stupid. I wish my government had listened.
I will say this, I definitely received less bullying at a private school than I believe I would've at the local public school. I never felt like I should underperform in order to fit in better or to avoid bullying.
Then you were lucky. I was terrorized at private school. Once I switched to public school, the bullying didn't actually stop, but it got down to a level I could deal with and eventually learn to defend myself against. As someone further up the thread noted, it's a whole lot harder to get the administration to deal with problem students when their parents are writing the checks. There's a class issue at work here too--my parents were sending me to schools they really couldn't afford in the (mistaken) belief that I'd get a better education that way, and being a middle-class nerd surrounded by rich juvenile delinquents is really a special kind of hell.
On the other hand there are private schools that are oriented to academics instead of day care for rich shits who got expelled from other schools. I was lucky enough to go to such a school, Rowland Hall-St. Marks in Salt Lake. I was never bullied there. In the public schools bullying was a frequent problem. I felt perfectly comfortable being as good as I could be, which was really good in physics, and terrible in German. In fact my ability in physics lead to me helping others with the homework, and not a single person said a derogatory word when I took Calculus for the second time. If you can find a school like that, find a way to get your kids into it.
investment is very global now, and has for a long time been less local, this means it will.have a broader area it improves, and less of it will go to poorer areas.
That's not the real problem with "investment." The real problem is that "investment" usually takes the form of buying already issued stock in already existing companies and buying derivatives. The change of hands of a share of stock does nothing-zip-zilch for the economy of people, and then the money just stays in the stock market and it doesn't buy anything or cause anything to be made or done. Derivatives do even less since they are essentially gambling and have no intrinsic value. If you include derivatives the amount of money that is tied up in the global casino, doing nothing real except extracting ever more money from the real economy into the the casino economy, is actually far greater than the amount of money left in the real economy of making things and providing services. http://xkcd.com/980/ (look down in the trillions corner and compare the global GDP to the size of the annual derivatives market)
That's the reason that tax breaks for the rich do nothing. The last 30 years of US history are clear cut proof that trickle down economics do exactly the opposite of what they claim.
I never understood that idea that giving a tax break to high salary people will stimulate the economy.
Usually the reasonning is that since they will have more money, they will consume more and that will help the economy. If you give a tax break to low income people for the same amount of tax dollars, they will use that money as well. They are not going to set it on fire, they will use it in a grocery store.
Am I understanding something wrong?
You don't understand it because it doesn't make sense. But you are getting the explanation for the twisted internal logic a bit wrong. The idea of trickle down economics is that the wealthy already have what they need so they won't spend the extra money, they will invest it. That is supposed to be good for the economy. It could be if the investments were new investment in new economic activity. But we all know that when they invest money they buy already issued stock in already existing companies. That does almost nothing for the economy. The money stops moving in the real economy, it circulates in the stock market/casino for years and contributes virtually nothing.
If anyone remembers their macroeconomics 101 class from freshman year you'll recall that speed of money is a key factor in the health of an economy. You want each dollar out there to change hands lots of times. And you want it changing hands in a way that makes things or activity. Each time it changes hands a dollar worth of activity takes place. So like all conservative ideology these days they are almost exactly wrong. Giving tax breaks to the poor will trickle up because the poor will have no choice but to spend most every dollar they get their hands on and they spend it on stuff or services. Unfortunately we can't give more tax breaks to many of the poor since they currently pay little or no income taxes. There are lots of hungry people in the US so we could spend more on food stamps. We could also start big infrastructure projects and hire the unemployed to do them. This also gets money into the economy in an effective way. The stimulus package worked. The bailout of detroit worked. The bailout of the banks was a tremendous failure in terms of helping the economy. We missed a big opportunity to massively reconfigure the banking business into a form that would benefit the people of the US.
So it seems to me that the more money that is in the hands of the already rich, the worse it is for the economy since money just stops when it gets there. I believe that this was a factor in the steady economic growth during the post-war period, our tax structure prevented money from becoming stagnant in the pockets of the rich.
So lets tax the hell out of the rich, and lets tax the derivatives markets and get some of those dollars back into the real economy via big infrastructure projects where they will be spent on real things likes cars, computers, apps, movies, toys, appliances, houses, and food. Lets build fiber to the curb for every house. Let's build mass transit for every major city. Let's build massive solar power plants. That's the way to make the win-win scenario.
Well, if you are in Seattle, you only have to worry about the police if you are a minority armed with a sword or knife. In that event, expect to get murdered by cops with guns. I expect the UAVs are probably to locate minorities armed with knives more efficiently.
What makes you think the current batch of Republicans wouldn't do just that? They'd get their names in the papers, contiunous coverage of their principled stand, etc. They'd love it if their filibusters were more dramatic and media-worthy.
I don't agree. I honestly don't think that any senator would want to be seen holding up the business of the US by yammering on and on, putting a face on the obstructionism, just to block a nominee for some low level federal judge or some assistant-deputy secretary of nose picking. See the thing about the old school filibuster is that it doesn't prevent just a vote on a particular issue, it brings the functioning of the entire senate to a halt. That makes it a big deal that gets lots of publicity. Right now a minority can filibuster every single minor nomination without any effort or without attracting any negative attention. If preventing a bill or nomination is really important enough then the minority will be willing to take the political risk. Right now there is no political risk associated with this blatant and continuous obstruction of the functioning of our government.
Splinter of the Mind's Eye, I think by Alan Dean Foster, was the first book I ever read, which lead to a life long love of reading.
The Bible, largely responsible for converting me to atheism.
Snow Crash lead to me reading all of Stephenson's books. I have about 2.5 shelf-feet of his books and I've read them all about 5 times each (except the Big-U and Diamond Age) so that accounts for about 12.5 shelf-feet of reading in my life.
The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell, was the only self-help book worth a damn that I've read.
I read the entire Harry Potter series, out loud, to my son, over the course of a year when he was about 5-6. I think when I am old and dying that will still be one of my favorite memories. Reading a book out loud is a profoundly different experience than reading it to yourself. It engages totally different parts of your brain.
The Dems only had 4 months with a filibuster proof majority. The rest of those two years was perpetual GOP filibustering.
This I don't get. When I was a kid I remember hearing the news using this weird word filibuster. They were showing this wrinkly white haired guy droning on about whatever. He looked a bit rumpled because he'd been at it for hours. It used to be if you wanted to filibuster you needed to hold the floor and have enough votes to prevent a vote to end debate. Filibusters were pretty rare and even a bit of a shocking tactic. It was not frequently done, because you had to both keep talking and keep enough senators supporting the filibuster in the room constantly. Now days it has morphed into something completely different. The senate republicans have used the filibuster for every single vote in the last 4 years. This is a level of obstructionism that literally has no precedence in our history. Effectively the senate rules have been changed to require a 60% majority to pass anything. There are hundreds of appointed positions that have gone unfilled for the entire Obama administration. The republicans used this power to hold our nation's economy and credit rating hostage on multiple occasions to force their minority positions through.
The senate rules need to change. Filibusters should actually be required to fillibuster.
From what I understand, such practices are completely in the spirit of the free market. These traders have created and exploited an advantage for profit. There is not altruistic component of capitalism that demands "contributing something back."
Following your logic, a mugger is good example of a free market capitalist - he exploits the advantage he has over other people (big posture, a knife in his pocket) for profit, whilst contributing nothing back. You're right in saying that capitalism is not about altruism, but it's also not about exploiting the weaknesses of the system, and certainly isn't about using that advantage to curtail the efforts of others.
It is absolutely in the spirit of modern finance capitalism. Modern finance capitalism is all about siphoning money out of the real economy (by that I mean the economy that produces and sells physical things, services, and data) and putting it into the pockets of a class of "investors" who do nothing but trade/gamble. And it has worked very effectively. We are all aware that the wealth of the [cliche] 99% [/cliche] has stagnated or decreased for decades while the wealth of the [cliche] 1% [/cliche] has skyrocketed. What many people don't know is that the total annual volume of the derivatives markets is several times the size of the world GDP. http://xkcd.com/980/
In other words there is way more money tied up in the global finance casino than there is involved in all agriculture, all manufacturing, all services, and all content creation in the entire world.
The helium we use is not pure,' says Lee. 'It's recycled from the gas which is used in the medical industry, and mixed with air. We call it balloon gas rather than helium for that reason.'"
This is nonsense on a massive scale. Helium is inert. It hasn't been used up and it isn't dirty. It could be easily separated from the air and used again.
As long as there is a somewhat unhampered economy in the locus of data centers (and there is), then every entrepreneur will attempt to economize power usage.
There is not an "unhampered" energy economy. The energy economy is massively subsidized in several ways. The US government has spent trillions in wars and foreign aid to secure energy supplying areas. Our natural gas glut right now is going to be paid for by future generations in the form of devastating environmental damage, like damage to our water tables. Our continued use of fossil fuels in general will also be paid for mostly by future generations in the form of the costs of global climate change. If the full cost of energy was represented in the price of electricity then data centers would behave very differently.
All things are interconnected. You claim that data centers are a market that behaves rationally, but data center's main feedstock comes from a market that is distorted to the point where it is threatening the continuation of our civilization.
Any country that cant find some way of deleting the offensive excoritating rubbish that this film represents doesnt deserve to belong to the world community whatever santimonious freespeech bullshit they go on about. If you go online and threaten the president it wont take long for your free speech to put you in a cell. So how some right wing nutjobs can be allowed to kill an ambassador and hundreds of thick rioting foriegners I dont understand at all.
And who exactly is going to decide which rubbish will be censored? And when will the rubbish be censored? This particular movie was apparently screened once. To have prevented that screening and to have prevented the "trailer" from being released would have required a whole infrastructure of censorship. We would have to have a government agency whit offices everywhere to which you would submit all visual media (since it is visual portrayals of Muhammad that piss of these assholes so much) prior to it being published or disseminated. The censorship agency would have to screen every youtube video after submission but prior to posting for content offensive to whatever group of religious zealots who might get violent. They'd have to do the same at vimeo, and every web hosting server in the nation. It would require literally millions of censors working full time to even come close to being able to screen all video postings. Can you imagine the effort it would take to pre-approve every facebook posting? Every photo on flickr and photobucket? Exactly what sort of world do you want to live in?
What you are getting wrong here is that the jewish religious asshole who made this video didn't kill an ambassador. A whole series of mobs of muslim religios assholes rioted and a cell of terrorists used that as cover to kill an ambassador. You can certainly blame the movie maker of being a disgusting excuse for a human but he didn't murder anyone, and he bears no responsibility for the murder. That's like when the villian says "you must do X or I will kill this hostage and if you don't his blood is on your hands." That's a load of BS.
I was about to hook up our ohm meter one time before I knew the "rules" and was told I would have a grievance filed against me.
This sort of behavior is like a histamine reaction and it does not happen in isolation. It is an overreaction to a minor insult brought on by a historically learned need to be protective of their jobs. There are many tools that management can use to attempt to undermine unions. One technique is to hire non-union employees or contractors to do the sort of work that the unionized employees typically do. Over time you can reduce the size of the union you are dealing with until they become irrelevant. In workplaces where this has been attempted the union workers will tend to get very protective of the work they are supposed to do. The arrogance of doing work intentionally slowly probably has it's roots is some other bit of adversarial relationship with the employer.
Sadly for the Transit Authority, all work will have to be stopped and archeologists will have to be called in. I expect this project will lose at least two years in construction time.
From TFA
"Excavation work in the area was halted while the find was examined, but Allen said that because of the depth of the discovery, it's unsafe and unrealistic to send someone down to inspect the site, so digging was allowed to continue. "
Since the annual value of derivatives trading is approximately 7 times the size of the annual world GDP( http://xkcd.com/980/huge/ ); and since money is so tight that governments are enacting austerity programs in an attempt to reduce costs and pay debt; and since our infrastructure is falling apart because of lack of funding we should institute a time-based tax on securities and derivatives trades. Tax such that these lightning fast trades are so heavily taxed that they become valueless and tax such that long term holdings are almost not taxed at all. Long term investment is good for the economy and for society. Wall street gambling is bad for the economy and bad for society.
As always it is with all gov't regulations, laws, the actual effect is the exact opposite of the supposedly desired one, and it's always negative for the people.
If you though about it for just a moment instead of just spouting a talking point you'd realize that you are being silly. By your statement above the government ban on murder actually encourages murder and is somehow bad for the people. There are thousands of regulations that have exactly the effect they were intended to have.
The OSHA and EPA regulations regarding asbestos result in a condition where the overwhelming majority of asbestos installed in buildings is handled in a much safer manner than it was prior to the institution of the regulations, and the beneficiaries are, well, construction workers, the public, tenants, and nearly everyone else.
The Glass-Stegal Act prevented banks that held deposits from investing those deposits in speculative investments and prevented run away banking stupidity for decades. That stupidity returned to the point where it plunged us into another depression within 15 years of the repeal of Glass-Stegal.
The requirement that car drivers carry liability insurance means that in the overwhelming number of cases people are compensated when you make a stupid driving mistake AND you don't go bankrupt in the process! Nearly everybody wins (especially the insurance companies.)
Perhaps you should reconsider your use of words like "always" and "never" it always makes you wrong never helps your argument.
It has some sort of counterweight system so with hand pressure you can adjust it up and down. I usually start out my days standing, but by afternoon my dogs are tired so I just move it down and it sits at just the right height for my cushy office chair. All the other adjustable solutions that I found cost at least $1000.
Slow vehicle driving significantly black the prevailing speed cause accidents for other vehicles, while seldom getting hit themselves. They cause chain reaction fender benders two or three cars back, which they are seldom even aware of, and drive away, never to show up in accident statistics.
The California Highway Patrol agrees with you. Here in the Bay Area you don't see police on the interstates during rush hour. They know that everyone is speeding and everyone is tailgating. They know that when they get on the freeway people in their immediate vicinity hit their brakes often causing accidents. The only time I see the highway patrol is when there is already an accident. Of course this means that the interstates have the most appalling bad behavior from some drivers. It's a law free zone. I'm not saying I think this is a good thing, it is just the way it is.
I see biggest problems being with the interaction of human and AI cars. If the AI cars drive the limit and stay on the right, it might work. If an AI car will move to the right and yield right of way to a faster car or someone who flashes their lights (as is required in CA) then great. It might even be fun.
Here is a benefit I haven't hear yet. What if we could re-task our police away from traffic duty and get them working solving crime! In a place like Oakland where there are over 100 murders per year and most go unsolved, that would be a huge benefit. In a place like Marin where violent street crime is less common, you could actually reduce the number police!! I've always thought that the presence of heavily armed public employees who think they are above the law was detrimental to our society. Wouldn't it be nice to give half of the the pink slip?
Slashdot Mirror
"...all free schools in England must teach evolution as a 'comprehensive and coherent scientific theory.'" ...
They aren't required to teach it as fact, they are simply required to actually teach it
You seem to have a misunderstanding of the word "Theory" when used in a scientific context.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory
a quote from the linked article, "Scientific theories are the most reliable, rigorous, and comprehensive form of scientific knowledge.[3] This is significantly different from the word "theory" in common usage, which implies that something is unproven or speculative."
First of all, investment banks and insurance companies are indistinguishable.
This is patently untrue. Sure investment banks to make counter party deals that they believe will insure them against losses on other investments, and people refer to this as "insurance." But it is nothing like insurance. The insurance business is based on statistics and actuarial data. The data are used to make rational decisions about how much to charge a particular group for insuring a particular risk. The risks are well known and thoroughly accounted for. In fact insurance is lots like the casino business. Sure the individual transactions are gambles but in the aggregate the house wins a certain percentage. Investment banking is more like the customer at a casino, where entire stakes are bet in single transactions based on a hunch.
why wouldn't you want a banker to be attracted to money?
Personally I want my banker to be boring and conservative because I want my money to be there when I need it. I also want my banker to ethically handle my money in a way that benefits me, not him.
Not everyone should be socially conscious as a job requirement.
I'm astonished. Did you actually say that? Being "socially conscious" is nothing more than being aware of consequences and making ethical decisions. Being ethical shouldn't be a requirement of employment, it is a requirement of participation in society at all.
If it makes them better bankers, then more power to them.
That's the whole point, it doesn't make them better bankers. It makes them more likely to cheat, steal, and lie. Is that really what you look for in a banker?
Methinks that in a decade or two some natural process will start to decrease carbon levels and then those people put in charge of whatever-crackpot-carbon-saving scheme now will be able to do an I-told-you-so then. When, really, everything we did made zero difference whatsoever.
Magical thinking at its worst. If you look at the evidence, god forbid, you'll find that there many examples of opposite happening. For instance warming is causing an accelerated release of methane from permafrost and since methane is a strong greenhouse gas... Sea warming is starting to cause release of methane hydrate deposits from the sea floor, which will also accelerate warming. Reduction of ice cover on the Arctic Ocean is reducing albedo (the amount of solar radiation (heat) reflected back into space). All of these are factors that are causing an acceleration of global warming.
Ballooning started in France, so I'd guess that was to keep the landowner from surrendering after being invaded by air.
Asshole.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Resistance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_II#France.27s_effort_in_WWI
I apologize for my rudeness, but this idea of the French being cowards is a pile of horseshit, and a genuinely offensive bit of bigotry. It seems to me that this stupid meme started during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. During this period the French government proved itself to be America's most courageous friend by stating a hard truth, invasion of Iraq was unlawful, unjustified, and stupid. I wish my government had listened.
I will say this, I definitely received less bullying at a private school than I believe I would've at the local public school. I never felt like I should underperform in order to fit in better or to avoid bullying.
Then you were lucky. I was terrorized at private school. Once I switched to public school, the bullying didn't actually stop, but it got down to a level I could deal with and eventually learn to defend myself against. As someone further up the thread noted, it's a whole lot harder to get the administration to deal with problem students when their parents are writing the checks. There's a class issue at work here too--my parents were sending me to schools they really couldn't afford in the (mistaken) belief that I'd get a better education that way, and being a middle-class nerd surrounded by rich juvenile delinquents is really a special kind of hell.
On the other hand there are private schools that are oriented to academics instead of day care for rich shits who got expelled from other schools. I was lucky enough to go to such a school, Rowland Hall-St. Marks in Salt Lake. I was never bullied there. In the public schools bullying was a frequent problem. I felt perfectly comfortable being as good as I could be, which was really good in physics, and terrible in German. In fact my ability in physics lead to me helping others with the homework, and not a single person said a derogatory word when I took Calculus for the second time. If you can find a school like that, find a way to get your kids into it.
investment is very global now, and has for a long time been less local, this means it will.have a broader area it improves, and less of it will go to poorer areas.
That's not the real problem with "investment." The real problem is that "investment" usually takes the form of buying already issued stock in already existing companies and buying derivatives. The change of hands of a share of stock does nothing-zip-zilch for the economy of people, and then the money just stays in the stock market and it doesn't buy anything or cause anything to be made or done. Derivatives do even less since they are essentially gambling and have no intrinsic value. If you include derivatives the amount of money that is tied up in the global casino, doing nothing real except extracting ever more money from the real economy into the the casino economy, is actually far greater than the amount of money left in the real economy of making things and providing services. http://xkcd.com/980/ (look down in the trillions corner and compare the global GDP to the size of the annual derivatives market)
That's the reason that tax breaks for the rich do nothing. The last 30 years of US history are clear cut proof that trickle down economics do exactly the opposite of what they claim.
I never understood that idea that giving a tax break to high salary people will stimulate the economy.
Usually the reasonning is that since they will have more money, they will consume more and that will help the economy. If you give a tax break to low income people for the same amount of tax dollars, they will use that money as well. They are not going to set it on fire, they will use it in a grocery store.
Am I understanding something wrong?
You don't understand it because it doesn't make sense. But you are getting the explanation for the twisted internal logic a bit wrong. The idea of trickle down economics is that the wealthy already have what they need so they won't spend the extra money, they will invest it. That is supposed to be good for the economy. It could be if the investments were new investment in new economic activity. But we all know that when they invest money they buy already issued stock in already existing companies. That does almost nothing for the economy. The money stops moving in the real economy, it circulates in the stock market/casino for years and contributes virtually nothing. If anyone remembers their macroeconomics 101 class from freshman year you'll recall that speed of money is a key factor in the health of an economy. You want each dollar out there to change hands lots of times. And you want it changing hands in a way that makes things or activity. Each time it changes hands a dollar worth of activity takes place. So like all conservative ideology these days they are almost exactly wrong. Giving tax breaks to the poor will trickle up because the poor will have no choice but to spend most every dollar they get their hands on and they spend it on stuff or services. Unfortunately we can't give more tax breaks to many of the poor since they currently pay little or no income taxes. There are lots of hungry people in the US so we could spend more on food stamps. We could also start big infrastructure projects and hire the unemployed to do them. This also gets money into the economy in an effective way. The stimulus package worked. The bailout of detroit worked. The bailout of the banks was a tremendous failure in terms of helping the economy. We missed a big opportunity to massively reconfigure the banking business into a form that would benefit the people of the US.
So it seems to me that the more money that is in the hands of the already rich, the worse it is for the economy since money just stops when it gets there. I believe that this was a factor in the steady economic growth during the post-war period, our tax structure prevented money from becoming stagnant in the pockets of the rich.
So lets tax the hell out of the rich, and lets tax the derivatives markets and get some of those dollars back into the real economy via big infrastructure projects where they will be spent on real things likes cars, computers, apps, movies, toys, appliances, houses, and food. Lets build fiber to the curb for every house. Let's build mass transit for every major city. Let's build massive solar power plants. That's the way to make the win-win scenario.
Minecraft login is down too!
Well, if you are in Seattle, you only have to worry about the police if you are a minority armed with a sword or knife. In that event, expect to get murdered by cops with guns. I expect the UAVs are probably to locate minorities armed with knives more efficiently.
Or if you espouse left wing political ideas, or own anarchist literature or participate in protests against authority. http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/fbi-raid-anarchist-literature-portland-seattle/6267/
What makes you think the current batch of Republicans wouldn't do just that? They'd get their names in the papers, contiunous coverage of their principled stand, etc. They'd love it if their filibusters were more dramatic and media-worthy.
I don't agree. I honestly don't think that any senator would want to be seen holding up the business of the US by yammering on and on, putting a face on the obstructionism, just to block a nominee for some low level federal judge or some assistant-deputy secretary of nose picking. See the thing about the old school filibuster is that it doesn't prevent just a vote on a particular issue, it brings the functioning of the entire senate to a halt. That makes it a big deal that gets lots of publicity. Right now a minority can filibuster every single minor nomination without any effort or without attracting any negative attention. If preventing a bill or nomination is really important enough then the minority will be willing to take the political risk. Right now there is no political risk associated with this blatant and continuous obstruction of the functioning of our government.
Thank you for the correction. You are correct.
Splinter of the Mind's Eye, I think by Alan Dean Foster, was the first book I ever read, which lead to a life long love of reading.
The Bible, largely responsible for converting me to atheism.
Snow Crash lead to me reading all of Stephenson's books. I have about 2.5 shelf-feet of his books and I've read them all about 5 times each (except the Big-U and Diamond Age) so that accounts for about 12.5 shelf-feet of reading in my life.
The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell, was the only self-help book worth a damn that I've read.
I read the entire Harry Potter series, out loud, to my son, over the course of a year when he was about 5-6. I think when I am old and dying that will still be one of my favorite memories. Reading a book out loud is a profoundly different experience than reading it to yourself. It engages totally different parts of your brain.
The Dems only had 4 months with a filibuster proof majority. The rest of those two years was perpetual GOP filibustering.
This I don't get. When I was a kid I remember hearing the news using this weird word filibuster. They were showing this wrinkly white haired guy droning on about whatever. He looked a bit rumpled because he'd been at it for hours. It used to be if you wanted to filibuster you needed to hold the floor and have enough votes to prevent a vote to end debate. Filibusters were pretty rare and even a bit of a shocking tactic. It was not frequently done, because you had to both keep talking and keep enough senators supporting the filibuster in the room constantly. Now days it has morphed into something completely different. The senate republicans have used the filibuster for every single vote in the last 4 years. This is a level of obstructionism that literally has no precedence in our history. Effectively the senate rules have been changed to require a 60% majority to pass anything. There are hundreds of appointed positions that have gone unfilled for the entire Obama administration. The republicans used this power to hold our nation's economy and credit rating hostage on multiple occasions to force their minority positions through.
The senate rules need to change. Filibusters should actually be required to fillibuster.
From what I understand, such practices are completely in the spirit of the free market. These traders have created and exploited an advantage for profit. There is not altruistic component of capitalism that demands "contributing something back."
Following your logic, a mugger is good example of a free market capitalist - he exploits the advantage he has over other people (big posture, a knife in his pocket) for profit, whilst contributing nothing back. You're right in saying that capitalism is not about altruism, but it's also not about exploiting the weaknesses of the system, and certainly isn't about using that advantage to curtail the efforts of others.
It is absolutely in the spirit of modern finance capitalism. Modern finance capitalism is all about siphoning money out of the real economy (by that I mean the economy that produces and sells physical things, services, and data) and putting it into the pockets of a class of "investors" who do nothing but trade/gamble. And it has worked very effectively. We are all aware that the wealth of the [cliche] 99% [/cliche] has stagnated or decreased for decades while the wealth of the [cliche] 1% [/cliche] has skyrocketed. What many people don't know is that the total annual volume of the derivatives markets is several times the size of the world GDP.
http://xkcd.com/980/
In other words there is way more money tied up in the global finance casino than there is involved in all agriculture, all manufacturing, all services, and all content creation in the entire world.
The helium we use is not pure,' says Lee. 'It's recycled from the gas which is used in the medical industry, and mixed with air. We call it balloon gas rather than helium for that reason.'"
This is nonsense on a massive scale. Helium is inert. It hasn't been used up and it isn't dirty. It could be easily separated from the air and used again.
Rectangular with rounded corners is pretty bogus. How about all design patents and all software patents.
As long as there is a somewhat unhampered economy in the locus of data centers (and there is), then every entrepreneur will attempt to economize power usage.
There is not an "unhampered" energy economy. The energy economy is massively subsidized in several ways. The US government has spent trillions in wars and foreign aid to secure energy supplying areas. Our natural gas glut right now is going to be paid for by future generations in the form of devastating environmental damage, like damage to our water tables. Our continued use of fossil fuels in general will also be paid for mostly by future generations in the form of the costs of global climate change. If the full cost of energy was represented in the price of electricity then data centers would behave very differently.
All things are interconnected. You claim that data centers are a market that behaves rationally, but data center's main feedstock comes from a market that is distorted to the point where it is threatening the continuation of our civilization.
Any country that cant find some way of deleting the offensive excoritating rubbish that this film represents doesnt deserve to belong to the world community whatever santimonious freespeech bullshit they go on about. If you go online and threaten the president it wont take long for your free speech to put you in a cell. So how some right wing nutjobs can be allowed to kill an ambassador and hundreds of thick rioting foriegners I dont understand at all.
And who exactly is going to decide which rubbish will be censored? And when will the rubbish be censored? This particular movie was apparently screened once. To have prevented that screening and to have prevented the "trailer" from being released would have required a whole infrastructure of censorship. We would have to have a government agency whit offices everywhere to which you would submit all visual media (since it is visual portrayals of Muhammad that piss of these assholes so much) prior to it being published or disseminated. The censorship agency would have to screen every youtube video after submission but prior to posting for content offensive to whatever group of religious zealots who might get violent. They'd have to do the same at vimeo, and every web hosting server in the nation. It would require literally millions of censors working full time to even come close to being able to screen all video postings. Can you imagine the effort it would take to pre-approve every facebook posting? Every photo on flickr and photobucket? Exactly what sort of world do you want to live in?
What you are getting wrong here is that the jewish religious asshole who made this video didn't kill an ambassador. A whole series of mobs of muslim religios assholes rioted and a cell of terrorists used that as cover to kill an ambassador. You can certainly blame the movie maker of being a disgusting excuse for a human but he didn't murder anyone, and he bears no responsibility for the murder. That's like when the villian says "you must do X or I will kill this hostage and if you don't his blood is on your hands." That's a load of BS.
I was about to hook up our ohm meter one time before I knew the "rules" and was told I would have a grievance filed against me.
This sort of behavior is like a histamine reaction and it does not happen in isolation. It is an overreaction to a minor insult brought on by a historically learned need to be protective of their jobs. There are many tools that management can use to attempt to undermine unions. One technique is to hire non-union employees or contractors to do the sort of work that the unionized employees typically do. Over time you can reduce the size of the union you are dealing with until they become irrelevant. In workplaces where this has been attempted the union workers will tend to get very protective of the work they are supposed to do. The arrogance of doing work intentionally slowly probably has it's roots is some other bit of adversarial relationship with the employer.
Sadly for the Transit Authority, all work will have to be stopped and archeologists will have to be called in. I expect this project will lose at least two years in construction time.
From TFA
"Excavation work in the area was halted while the find was examined, but Allen said that because of the depth of the discovery, it's unsafe and unrealistic to send someone down to inspect the site, so digging was allowed to continue. "
Since the annual value of derivatives trading is approximately 7 times the size of the annual world GDP( http://xkcd.com/980/huge/ ); and since money is so tight that governments are enacting austerity programs in an attempt to reduce costs and pay debt; and since our infrastructure is falling apart because of lack of funding we should institute a time-based tax on securities and derivatives trades. Tax such that these lightning fast trades are so heavily taxed that they become valueless and tax such that long term holdings are almost not taxed at all. Long term investment is good for the economy and for society. Wall street gambling is bad for the economy and bad for society.
As always it is with all gov't regulations, laws, the actual effect is the exact opposite of the supposedly desired one, and it's always negative for the people.
If you though about it for just a moment instead of just spouting a talking point you'd realize that you are being silly. By your statement above the government ban on murder actually encourages murder and is somehow bad for the people. There are thousands of regulations that have exactly the effect they were intended to have.
The OSHA and EPA regulations regarding asbestos result in a condition where the overwhelming majority of asbestos installed in buildings is handled in a much safer manner than it was prior to the institution of the regulations, and the beneficiaries are, well, construction workers, the public, tenants, and nearly everyone else.
The Glass-Stegal Act prevented banks that held deposits from investing those deposits in speculative investments and prevented run away banking stupidity for decades. That stupidity returned to the point where it plunged us into another depression within 15 years of the repeal of Glass-Stegal.
The requirement that car drivers carry liability insurance means that in the overwhelming number of cases people are compensated when you make a stupid driving mistake AND you don't go bankrupt in the process! Nearly everybody wins (especially the insurance companies.)
Perhaps you should reconsider your use of words like "always" and "never" it always makes you wrong never helps your argument.
I like my Ergotron Workfit adjustable workstation.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824994123&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleAdwords&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-_-pla-_-NA-_-NA
It has some sort of counterweight system so with hand pressure you can adjust it up and down. I usually start out my days standing, but by afternoon my dogs are tired so I just move it down and it sits at just the right height for my cushy office chair. All the other adjustable solutions that I found cost at least $1000.
Right now, suspected terrorists don't get any privacy. That's why we have people getting molested at airports.
Sure but that's just a side-effect of the fact that right now none of us get any privacy.
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/20/whistleblower_the_nsa_is_lying_us
Slow vehicle driving significantly black the prevailing speed cause accidents for other vehicles, while seldom getting hit themselves. They cause chain reaction fender benders two or three cars back, which they are seldom even aware of, and drive away, never to show up in accident statistics.
The California Highway Patrol agrees with you. Here in the Bay Area you don't see police on the interstates during rush hour. They know that everyone is speeding and everyone is tailgating. They know that when they get on the freeway people in their immediate vicinity hit their brakes often causing accidents. The only time I see the highway patrol is when there is already an accident. Of course this means that the interstates have the most appalling bad behavior from some drivers. It's a law free zone. I'm not saying I think this is a good thing, it is just the way it is.
I see biggest problems being with the interaction of human and AI cars. If the AI cars drive the limit and stay on the right, it might work. If an AI car will move to the right and yield right of way to a faster car or someone who flashes their lights (as is required in CA) then great. It might even be fun.
Here is a benefit I haven't hear yet. What if we could re-task our police away from traffic duty and get them working solving crime! In a place like Oakland where there are over 100 murders per year and most go unsolved, that would be a huge benefit. In a place like Marin where violent street crime is less common, you could actually reduce the number police!! I've always thought that the presence of heavily armed public employees who think they are above the law was detrimental to our society. Wouldn't it be nice to give half of the the pink slip?