Globalization may increase choices (though the number of car manufacturers to choose from has only decreased in recent years, rather than grown) but the point is that to get 'cheap foreign goods' requires going through a middleman who will take a good portion of the savings.
Items that were $1 in China go for five to ten times that price outside of the country, due primarily to markup. Domestic goods have less markup. This is part of what I meant by consumers not getting the biggest share of the benefit.
the English language orginates from many different languages.
Yes, but there are 'standard' rules to English. Over time, foreign words tend to give up their foreign pluralizations in favor of those which match better with 'standard' English.
There isn't really a better authority in this case than precedent and facility. This is what usually happens to language. It usually happens because its easier.
Just like we no longer say the 'ed' at the ends of words, just the 'd' sound. It changed because it's easier, and words do that.
It's curious that that pluralization to aurorae boreales has stuck around so long. It's certainly used. For example, Walt Whitman wrote
" Amid pictures that dart upon me even as I speak, and glow and mix and coruscate and fade like aurorae boreales. --Walt Whitman, "Notes (Such as They Are) Founded on Elias Hicks" "
But why is this?
For example, "major general" would be pluralized to "majors general" when it was newly introduced into the language. The pluralization would follow its, I believe, french roots.
As the word stayed longer in our language it would be treated as an english phrase. We would eventually start saying "major generals"
Websters dictionary gives the following entymology for aurora borealis;
[New Latin aurra borelis : Latin aurra, dawn + Latin borelis, northern.]
My question is; why are we still treating 'Aurora Borealis' like a foreign phrase? In English, we certainly wouldn't say "northerns lights." Is it because it's considered a technical term so we still treat it as a latin phrase? Or is it just not popular enough in its usage to be treated as plain English?
Mostly I'm talking about the consumer and those who are subjected to the effect that 'free trade' has on the dollar value of their labor, as opposed to large organizations which are far better able to insulate themselves from the negative consequences of globalization and capitalize on the benefits.
Prices have continued to rise as wages have fallen. Most American consumers are unable to effectivly capitalize on 'globalization' and continue to pay wholesale rather than retail.
I still don't get why we got rid of the joystick and started sliding these damn strange things around on our desks.
Are you implying that the touchpad is a newer or better then the eraser-head? You clearly did not follow the evolution of the pointing devices, it was trackball->touchpad->eraserhead. By your logic we should be all using the "eraser-heads" because they are newer! While I do like the eraser-heads over the touchpads 100-fold, I would never advocate such mindless, stupid adherence to newer=better as you seem to.
And I hate it when people accept the notion of free market and competition only when they are on the winning side.
So which nation is it that doesn't act in its own self interest? India has laws saying that if you're going to be a foreign company on Indian soil, you hire native workers. China counterfits everything from American brand names to American currency within its borders.
Boeing protects itself from competition by getting the standard for US runways set differently than Europe.
The Philippines has a growing call center business, but charges 50%-100% tax, plus fees for imports to the country.
Why do you think that any country should agree to be on the 'losing side' of a deal if they can avoid it?
Our company went with this option. Vinnie has taken our check but has yet to extract vengance. Inquiries into the matter via his secretary get the reply "I'm working on it."
Still, you don't want to play chess against the West Chicago chess team. I think you'll see a black Grand Master a long time before you'll see a female one.
I was on chess team in H.S. There were girls on the team too, but they were all lower boards. Out of 40 upper boards at a major chess meet, you'd find 3-4 girls, tops. I have a hard time believing that this is due to social factors which prevent women from excelling at chess.
If there's one thing that can be said about using chess as a measure of certain mental abilities, it's that it's very good at eliminating 'social bias' from the equation.
Fischer has said that there will never be a female grand master. While I don't know if that's true, he's been right so far. And I'm sure the proportions will always be male heavy.
Not to say that men are smarter. Girls are better at other things. But the notion that intelligence types are not influenced by sex just doesn't seem to hold water.
This is a very philosophical question, grasshopper.
Are asses simply muscles and fat, or do we define an ass as muscles and fat in proximity to an anus?
To universalize this question, to what degree should a thing be defined by its composition, and to what degree by its position and relation to things around it. Western thinking tends to emphasize the former, Eastern thinking, the latter.
*tries to work self into a yoga position and chant somthing incomprehensable*
Man, when they told me this computer was a clone, they weren't kidding.
Man, when they said these new Apple PCs were organic I thought they were talking about the shape.
In Soviet Russia, when somthing isn't working, the technology hits you.
Mmmm. This nanotechnology tastes like CHICKEN!
These things are made from rat muscle. So how soon before they build cute little nano traps for them?
Dude, can you imagine if we taped a smiley face to the top of these and let them run around the apartment?
Can I have some amphetamines, please? I need to overclock my nanotechnology.
Sing with me everybody! These nanobots were made for walking, and that's what they're gonna do! Cause one of these days these bots are gonna walk in side of you...
*cue 'weird science* as thousands of little bots wander around a lab*
*cue 'chariots of fire' with thousands of little bots outrunning Ben Johnson* (Heck, one artificially created muscular system deserves another, right?)
Or just cue 'popcorn' and play 'wack a mole'
The Bemani test; Artificial intelligence is not a reality until it can beat a human in 'Dance Dance revolution'
Can devices like this potentially use chemicals in blood to generate mechanical energy and then electricity so as to replace pacemakers? It'd be nice if those things had indefinite battery life rather than what they have now, what, 9 years?
Of course, I'm surprised that you couldn't just do a mechanical generator for that. Or have they?
Nice chatting with you as well. You're now on my 'friends' list.:)... Not sure I understand what Scotch has to do with influenza, though.
I think immunocompromised patients add an interesting element to the evolution of infectious disease. If you have a host who is infected by multiple pathogens and likely to die in a few months, long term strategies which slowly use up a host's resources don't make sense. A few immunocompromised (or multiply infected) people in a population should increase the overall virulence of disease in a population.
I didn't catch the dep provera/medrol thing. Didn't know one from the other, to be honest. But good to know.:)
I shouldn't have been so general when saying 'Africa.'
Ebola stays latent?
Yes, I agree the longer the time in host to host transmission, the less lethal a virus can afford to be. TB might be lethal eventually, but doesn't use up host resources at a rapid rate. Also, TB has been around for some time, I believe. According to Burnette and White's theories, a few hundred to a few thousand years from now TB might be non lethal. I don't claim that B&W are 100% accurate, though. On the contrary, their rules seem to break down when you have people crammed into close quarters and airborne diseases can move quickly from person to person, even if the patients are very sick.
This seems to be the source of the influenza epidemic of ~1918- folks stuffed into boxcars.
It doesn't. The counter to a religious argument is not disregard but measured skepticsm. The problem is that, unfortunatly, religion tends to bias people's arguments and their conculsions. They omit crucial facts. They reach conclusions before weighing arguments. They propose models which are not predictive and they don't ask whether or not a particular model is predictive because they already know that they're right.
I say this as a person who believes strongly in God but also in the need for truth, even if it clashes with our preconceptions.
My, what a smug smart-ass you are. As you appear to be not only clueless but arrogantly so, I'd like to point out to you the difference between an acronym and an initialization. An acronym forms a word while an initialization does not. And I never said you lived in the US, so what was that about baseless assumptions, again?
It says you don't even read your own posts. And I don't blame you. Your subject was UK/US.
You were the one who personally attacked me with this holier than thou attitude. The reporter was totally uncritical of the claim presented to him, as is common in scientific reporting. I have a Biotech background. I wrote an undergrad thesis on the Communication of the Human Genome Project. I've probably been in more countries than you can spell.
An acronym forms a word while an initialization does not.
There's no such thing as an AIDS. An AID, yes. An AIDS, no.
Why can't reporters critically examine scientific theories the same way that they're expected to investigate other things. The folks who wrote this report didn't even know that AIDS was an acronym, and wrote it Aids.
Slashdot Mirror
I was very unabiguios. I wasn't sarcastic.
I happen to like joysticks.
Globalization may increase choices (though the number of car manufacturers to choose from has only decreased in recent years, rather than grown) but the point is that to get 'cheap foreign goods' requires going through a middleman who will take a good portion of the savings.
Items that were $1 in China go for five to ten times that price outside of the country, due primarily to markup. Domestic goods have less markup. This is part of what I meant by consumers not getting the biggest share of the benefit.
the English language orginates from many different languages.
Yes, but there are 'standard' rules to English. Over time, foreign words tend to give up their foreign pluralizations in favor of those which match better with 'standard' English.
There isn't really a better authority in this case than precedent and facility. This is what usually happens to language. It usually happens because its easier.
Just like we no longer say the 'ed' at the ends of words, just the 'd' sound. It changed because it's easier, and words do that.
Not in the original quote, it didn't. But I've changed it, lest I get any more commments.
It's curious that that pluralization to aurorae boreales has stuck around so long. It's certainly used. For example, Walt Whitman wrote
"
Amid pictures that dart upon me even as I speak, and glow and mix and coruscate and fade like aurorae boreales.
--Walt Whitman, "Notes (Such as They Are) Founded on Elias Hicks"
"
But why is this?
For example, "major general"
would be pluralized to "majors general"
when it was newly introduced into the language. The pluralization would follow its, I believe, french roots.
As the word stayed longer in our language it would be treated as an english phrase. We would eventually start saying "major generals"
Websters dictionary gives the following entymology for aurora borealis;
[New Latin aurra borelis : Latin aurra, dawn + Latin borelis, northern.]
My question is; why are we still treating 'Aurora Borealis' like a foreign phrase? In English, we certainly wouldn't say "northerns lights." Is it because it's considered a technical term so we still treat it as a latin phrase? Or is it just not popular enough in its usage to be treated as plain English?
...and that one liner.
Mostly I'm talking about the consumer and those who are subjected to the effect that 'free trade' has on the dollar value of their labor, as opposed to large organizations which are far better able to insulate themselves from the negative consequences of globalization and capitalize on the benefits.
Prices have continued to rise as wages have fallen. Most American consumers are unable to effectivly capitalize on 'globalization' and continue to pay wholesale rather than retail.
I still don't get why we got rid of the joystick and started sliding these damn strange things around on our desks.
Are you implying that the touchpad is a newer or better then the eraser-head? You clearly did not follow the evolution of the pointing devices, it was trackball->touchpad->eraserhead. By your logic we should be all using the "eraser-heads" because they are newer! While I do like the eraser-heads over the touchpads 100-fold, I would never advocate such mindless, stupid adherence to newer=better as you seem to.
Huh?
I still don't get why we got rid of the joystick and started sliding these damn strange things around on our desks.
Makes me have to keep a portion of my desk clean for starters.
Atari! Where are you when we need you!
No, wait. Don't answer that.
And I hate it when people accept the notion of free market and competition only when they are on the winning side.
So which nation is it that doesn't act in its own self interest? India has laws saying that if you're going to be a foreign company on Indian soil, you hire native workers. China counterfits everything from American brand names to American currency within its borders.
Boeing protects itself from competition by getting the standard for US runways set differently than Europe.
The Philippines has a growing call center business, but charges 50%-100% tax, plus fees for imports to the country.
Why do you think that any country should agree to be on the 'losing side' of a deal if they can avoid it?
Our company went with this option. Vinnie has taken our check but has yet to extract vengance. Inquiries into the matter via his secretary get the reply "I'm working on it."
Still, you don't want to play chess against the West Chicago chess team. I think you'll see a black Grand Master a long time before you'll see a female one.
I was on chess team in H.S.
There were girls on the team too, but they were all lower boards. Out of 40 upper boards at a major chess meet, you'd find 3-4 girls, tops. I have a hard time believing that this is due to social factors which prevent women from excelling at chess.
If there's one thing that can be said about using chess as a measure of certain mental abilities, it's that it's very good at eliminating 'social bias' from the equation.
Fischer has said that there will never be a female grand master. While I don't know if that's true, he's been right so far. And I'm sure the proportions will always be male heavy.
Not to say that men are smarter. Girls are better at other things. But the notion that intelligence types are not influenced by sex just doesn't seem to hold water.
This is a very philosophical question, grasshopper.
Are asses simply muscles and fat, or do we define an ass as muscles and fat in proximity to an anus?
To universalize this question, to what degree should a thing be defined by its composition, and to what degree by its position and relation to things around it. Western thinking tends to emphasize the former, Eastern thinking, the latter.
*tries to work self into a yoga position and chant somthing incomprehensable*
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Raaaattttt.
Man, when they told me this computer was a clone, they weren't kidding.
Man, when they said these new Apple PCs were organic I thought they were talking about the shape.
In Soviet Russia, when somthing isn't working, the technology hits you.
Mmmm. This nanotechnology tastes like CHICKEN!
These things are made from rat muscle.
So how soon before they build cute little nano traps for them?
Dude, can you imagine if we taped a smiley face to the top of these and let them run around the apartment?
Can I have some amphetamines, please? I need to overclock my nanotechnology.
Sing with me everybody! These nanobots were made for walking, and that's what they're gonna do! Cause one of these days these bots are gonna walk in side of you...
*cue 'weird science* as thousands of little bots wander around a lab*
*cue 'chariots of fire' with thousands of little bots outrunning Ben Johnson* (Heck, one artificially created muscular system deserves another, right?)
Or just cue 'popcorn' and play 'wack a mole'
The Bemani test; Artificial intelligence is not a reality until it can beat a human in 'Dance Dance revolution'
Dude, my tiny two legged microscopic robots can so kick your tiny two legged microscopic robots asses. ... if they had asses.
Can devices like this potentially use chemicals in blood to generate mechanical energy and then electricity so as to replace pacemakers? It'd be nice if those things had indefinite battery life rather than what they have now, what, 9 years?
Of course, I'm surprised that you couldn't just do a mechanical generator for that. Or have they?
Nevermind. Got the scotch reference.
Nice chatting with you as well. You're now on my 'friends' list. :) ... Not sure I understand what Scotch has to do with influenza, though.
:)
I think immunocompromised patients add an interesting element to the evolution of infectious disease. If you have a host who is infected by multiple pathogens and likely to die in a few months, long term strategies which slowly use up a host's resources don't make sense. A few immunocompromised (or multiply infected) people in a population should increase the overall virulence of disease in a population.
I didn't catch the dep provera/medrol thing. Didn't know one from the other, to be honest. But good to know.
Interesting.
I shouldn't have been so general when saying 'Africa.'
Ebola stays latent?
Yes, I agree the longer the time in host to host transmission, the less lethal a virus can afford to be. TB might be lethal eventually, but doesn't use up host resources at a rapid rate. Also, TB has been around for some time, I believe. According to Burnette and White's theories, a few hundred to a few thousand years from now TB might be non lethal. I don't claim that B&W are 100% accurate, though. On the contrary, their rules seem to break down when you have people crammed into close quarters and airborne diseases can move quickly from person to person, even if the patients are very sick.
This seems to be the source of the influenza epidemic of ~1918- folks stuffed into boxcars.
It doesn't. The counter to a religious argument is not disregard but measured skepticsm. The problem is that, unfortunatly, religion tends to bias people's arguments and their conculsions. They omit crucial facts. They reach conclusions before weighing arguments. They propose models which are not predictive and they don't ask whether or not a particular model is predictive because they already know that they're right.
I say this as a person who believes strongly in God but also in the need for truth, even if it clashes with our preconceptions.
My, what a smug smart-ass you are.
As you appear to be not only clueless but arrogantly so, I'd like to point out to you the difference between an acronym and an initialization. An acronym forms a word while an initialization does not. And I never said you lived in the US, so what was that about baseless assumptions, again?
It says you don't even read your own posts. And I don't blame you. Your subject was UK/US.
You were the one who personally attacked me with this holier than thou attitude. The reporter was totally uncritical of the claim presented to him, as is common in scientific reporting. I have a Biotech background. I wrote an undergrad thesis on the Communication of the Human Genome Project. I've probably been in more countries than you can spell.
An acronym forms a word while an initialization does not.
There's no such thing as an AIDS. An AID, yes. An AIDS, no.
0/4 now
They capitalized HIV.
They always capitalize BBC.
They didn't capitalize AIDS.
And just for the record, I'm not living in the US.
So you're 0/2 in your baseless assumptions.
But thanks for playing.
Why can't reporters critically examine scientific theories the same way that they're expected to investigate other things. The folks who wrote this report didn't even know that AIDS was an acronym, and wrote it Aids.
Gah
Get a reporter with a fvcking science degree!
I expect more of the BBC.