When I first moved to the SF Bay Area I had the same problem: I was unable to tell most of my coworkers apart. Since then I have learned to pick up on other cues: weight, dress, shoes, age, voice, location where I see them, etc. It is still moderately difficult to tell with some of them since their faces mostly look identical, but my heuristics allow me to identify the majority of them. And if I run into them outside the context of the workplace, in street clothes, it is much harder.
So, I take it then that you are an uncultured moron. The last job I had, I was about the only person there who wasn't Chinese (aren't H1-B visas great). I never had trouble telling anyone apart. I guess you did and had to tell them apart in the ways you described probably since you never bothered to actually talk to any of them. In the first place, there are Han Chinese and about 51 other different minority groups throughout China. Then, of course, there are people who are mixed - half Han and half Manchurian being one of the more common mixes. Of course, stupid people like you would group them all together despite the incredible differences between them. Would you consider Swedes to be the same as Italians to be the same as Spaniards? Then why do you think all Chinese look the same? And even apart from vast racial differences, Chinese simply do not look so much alike each other. It is only ignorant people like you who believe so. Get out of your parents' basement and actually meet people for a change. Perhaps you'll even meet people who aren't incredible dumbasses like you.
I never said Democrats are perfect. And yes, some can be downright horrible. But that does not excuse the horrible activities of the present administration. I also opposed Clinton's unjustified invasion of Kosovo. Just because Clinton (or anyone else for that matter) did something wrong, doesn't mean that everything Dear Leader does now is all right.
That 8k block of Kennedy votes coming out of Chicago, however... please. Luckily, Nixon had more class than Gore.
Well, you might be right about JFK (but only maybe). My comments, especially about winning the presidency with less than 50% of the popular vote, was directed more towards what was commonly said about when Clinton first won the presidency and lots of Republicans whined about Perot. Basically, the presidency has been "spoiled" much more historically than we have seen in recent times.
Also, it has been shown that Gore would have won if all the votes in the state of Florida were recounted. Which is why (among other reasons) it was so stupid of him to try to cherry pick the counties. As far as accepting funds from foreign countries is concerned, have you even heard of the connections both Bushes have with Saudi Royal Family? That doesn't excuse Gore, but in America we generally are forced to choose between the lesser of two evils, though at this point a vote for Cthulu is beginning to look somewhat promising.
Nazi Germany was planning a similar but telegraph based system that included a centralized department with everyone's picture and a detailed description that could be telegraphed to local police and SS stations to aid suspect identification, interrogations, and worse. Hitler would have been proud of his Chinese friends...
Funny thing about that (not ha-ha, of course) is that there is a book by Aldous Huxley called "Brave New World Revisited" which goes into detail about what is becoming more and more possible due to the "Will to Order" that people, especially those on the top, tend to have. One main thrust in the book is to describe Hitler and the abilities he had with the limited technology of that time and demonstrate what someone like Hitler could do in the future given the types of technology in development. I guess we'll get to find out now, what with the Chinese Communist Party, Putin's Russia, and Bush's US, among others.
Clinton and JFK were duly elected according to the laws of the US. Clinton got less than half the popular vote the first time, but then so did Abraham Lincoln and a lot of other presidents. In fact, "spoilers" as they are called today (like Nader and Perot) were quite common before the time of the Eisenhower election. Nader and Perot simply diverted some of the popular vote, and even that is questionable given how much turnout there usually is at election time. The "spoilers" of before actually got Electoral College votes. Strom Thurmond, for example, actually won electoral votes in a couple of states (care to guess which ones?) in the election of 1948. So, to complain about Clinton is disingeneous. The JFK election was simply close.
Bush stole the first election outright and probably stole the second one, though Diebold machines in Ohio (along with unequal access to voting equipment in largely Democratic areas) make determining that much more difficult.
The problem isn't "easy" to get mortgages, the problem is getting mortgages that are too big for home buyers. After buying a home, unless the buyer gets an ARM mortgage, and they get a good mortgage thier housing cost will stay the same excepting maintainance. However renters will pay more and more every year. When they move they don't have any property to show for it, whereas a new homeowner that buys a starter home after a few years can sale the home and move into a little bigger home which they can use because their family has grown. Even better is if they can get a multiunit building. If the buyer can swing it they may be able to buy a duplex or triplex. Then they can live in one unit while renting out the other(s).
What you are saying is quite true, and I have no argument with it. The problem is that you are discussing the individual motivations and effects. I am referring to the effect of easy to get mortgages on the entire market. By making it easy for people to borrow tons of money that they shouldn't, the housing prices in a region skyrocket quickly since desperate people are able to buy at the higher prices since their ability to buy is based largely on the amount of the monthly payment (+ taxes + insurance) they can afford. If people in general did not have the easy mortgages available, the highest price that they could pay for a property would be lower and the laws of supply and demand would dictate lower housing prices. One of the most egregious mortgages I've seen available are the negative amortization loans where you don't even pay off the amount of interest accrued that month. In this case, you are truly gambling that your house's value will increase since your monthly payments, while lower, do not even cover the interest, so the amount you owe increases as time goes on.
I wonder how much advertising/marketing had to do with this.
That's a very good point. A lot of people do try to live outside their means. Plus, there are other factors which affect everyone, housing being the most obvious one. One of the key factors in the astronomical housing prices in places like the SF Bay area, DC metro and so on is the ready availability of credit. If it were not so easy to get mortgage, especially the more ridiculous ones like the interest-only or the negative amortization loans (in which you don't even pay off the interest acrued each month!), people would have said "I can't possibily pay any more" a lot sooner. Then, the market would simply have risen more sanely and not overextended so much.
When it comes to stupid people screwing themselves up by buying expensive cars and other things they can't afford, that's one thing. But, stuff like this allows stupid people (or at least people not very good with money) to immediately and directly affect me and people who have good sense with money. I may be careful and not buy outside my means, but "outside my means" becomes narrower and narrower in terms of housing due to the conditions created by the desperate and the greedy.
The same way that someone asking how the first post can be redundant is also redundant. "Redundant" does not necessarily mean within the context of a single article.
Weird Al is another example. Do you want to see them send out SWAT teams to arrest him as well?
Actually, not to pick too many nits, but Weird Al does generally get permission to parody songs (IIRC), even though he doesn't think he needs to from a legal standpoint. I guess he wants to make sure he covers all his bases.
Arrest me for getting a lift in a friends car, not paying for the listening permission to hear what is on his CD player and getting the song stuck in my head, then whistling it down the street, thus pirating illegally distributing whistle-tabs!
Just give them time. All they need is for the US Gov to set up microphones everywhere like they have now in Britain, get access to them (easy to have written in to law), and presto! you can be fined for whistling while you walk.
Management of the frequency spectrum and management of the content are two *fundamentally* different things.
Quite true, but it still misses the point. The radio spectrum is a public medium. It is obviously not "space" in the true sense, but it is analogous to a public space. Allowing only one type of private entity to buy up the use of that public space and exclude others with different views does not serve the public interest. It is not like the book publishing industry where you can and do get a wide variety of viewpoints. People all over the political spectrum, and at various right angles to the political spectrum, are able to get their books published. Both conservative and liberal writers (among others) do quite well in the literary marketplace. It is the nature of radio that is inherently different and requires a certain balance.
To go back to my public space analogy, it would be like allowing a few private corporations to buy the use of all of the public space at the beginning (when, say, Reagan allowed the spectrum to be auctioned off) and thus control all that is said in that public space. Clearly, allowing others to use the public space should be required. Also, (and this is key) this arrangement does not in any way alter the content of the individual speakers. It simply allows other voices to be heard. Limbaugh, Hannity, and so on do not have to change a single, solitary thing about their shows. Other people of differing views would simply have a chance to be heard. Don't underestimate how popular this would be. What caused Air America to fail was that they tried to be a liberal version of the right-wing ranting talk shows. Also, instead of individual shows on a radio station, they had to finance an entire radio station from the beginning, which is hardly a small task. And even before Air America, individual liberal radio show hosts had the dickens of a time even staying on the air since the already well-established right-wing talk show hosts threatened to pull out if any of the liberal hosts were allowed even a minute of air time on the same radio station. Talk about being afraid of diverse views.
P.S. Theodore Roosevelt was a "Progressive" not a "Conservative".
Very true, and I wasn't trying to suggest that he was a conservative (though that admittedly didn't come through well in what I wrote). And you are certainly right that, on the whole, politicians of all stripes first worry about maintaining their own power. That's why you almost never see Republicans or Democrats debating third party candidates. I mean, God forbid if anyone thought there could be other choices.
then abolish the FCC instead of trying to quash what you disagree with via government action
So how, pray tell, would I keep rival radio stations from simply blanketing my frequencies rather than using their own? What is to keep some punk with a ham radio from screwing up the emergency frequencies? Who decides what the emergency frequencies are? Radio spectrum is of limited availability and cannot be run by a wild west mentality like the internet can. Plus, noone is quashing anything. If anything, you are allowing the corporations who get in on the ground floor to quash anything they don't like.
Just don't expect, like AirAmerica did, that a sufficiently large number of people actually want to listen to you and that the commercial side of the business will automagically support you.
The problem with Air America is that they tried to be a liberal version of shows like Limbaugh and the rest of them. Basically, they spewed anger on the radio as much as their conservative counterparts. What people of a more liberal mentality actually wanted was thoughtful discussion, which Air America did not provide. That is why they failed.
Reality? Kucinich is a moderate? So he didnt get very far in his presidential bid because he was too moderate for the Democrats?
I'm saying by international standards Kucinich is a moderate. Certainly by American standards he is extremely liberal. That was my whole damn point. What is considered "liberal" to Americans isn't really all that liberal.
Your sig is probably less ironic than you'd have us believe.
Why? Because I support someone you disagree with? That's so typical of right-wing nutballs. Try to eliminate any chance anyone has to debate and then villify anyone who still dares to disagree. Who really hates freedom here?
1) The deficit - money is not being conserved
2) The environment - not being conserved either; Teddy Roosevelt spinning in grave
3) Economy - allowing entities with special government protections (corporations) run roughshod over people who actually work and produce things
Basically, the people who think Bush is a conservative also see him as an ordinary, middle-class Texan, and not an ultra-rich spoiled Yale-educated Yankee frat boy whose daddy gave him every toy he wanted, including his very own country to play with.
If I want to write a book, I can. If I want to publish a web page, I can. If I want to talk at a town meeting, I can. If I want to talk over the radio, I will get fined like mad since I don't have a license and others have already bought the spectrum licenses from the FCC. See the difference?
They are balanced, it's just the rest of the media leans so far to the left they don't recognize something that's actually balanced.
Sorry, but "left" in the parlance of the rest of the world usually means "Socialist" or something similar. American media only has "far right" (pseudo- or neo-Nazi like Fox News) "leans to the right" (like CNN or people like the Clintons) or "moderate" (people like Kucinich). This "left" you speak of doesn't noticeably exist in the USA. But, to people like you, leftists are people who say things like "Gee, maybe we shouldn't go around blowing shit up and killing people simply because they have a government that disagrees with us" (think, for example, the attempted assassination of Chavez and Bush's recent decision to start arming right-leaning paramilitary groups in South America again). The rest of the world would consider this merely to be somewhat sane, whereas you apparently consider it to be the ravings of a leftists loony.
Have fun in your little dream world. Don't come crawling to the rest of us when reality hits you in the ass.
Translation: Apparently big oil can't disprove the overwhelming evidence which proves global warming, so they've turned to the only alternative they have. Get Bush to make NASA stop collecting the evidence.
And, of course, the raving Bushbots have modded you "flamebait" from the get-go.
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I never said Democrats are perfect. And yes, some can be downright horrible. But that does not excuse the horrible activities of the present administration. I also opposed Clinton's unjustified invasion of Kosovo. Just because Clinton (or anyone else for that matter) did something wrong, doesn't mean that everything Dear Leader does now is all right.
Also, it has been shown that Gore would have won if all the votes in the state of Florida were recounted. Which is why (among other reasons) it was so stupid of him to try to cherry pick the counties. As far as accepting funds from foreign countries is concerned, have you even heard of the connections both Bushes have with Saudi Royal Family? That doesn't excuse Gore, but in America we generally are forced to choose between the lesser of two evils, though at this point a vote for Cthulu is beginning to look somewhat promising.
Bush stole the first election outright and probably stole the second one, though Diebold machines in Ohio (along with unequal access to voting equipment in largely Democratic areas) make determining that much more difficult.
When it comes to stupid people screwing themselves up by buying expensive cars and other things they can't afford, that's one thing. But, stuff like this allows stupid people (or at least people not very good with money) to immediately and directly affect me and people who have good sense with money. I may be careful and not buy outside my means, but "outside my means" becomes narrower and narrower in terms of housing due to the conditions created by the desperate and the greedy.
To go back to my public space analogy, it would be like allowing a few private corporations to buy the use of all of the public space at the beginning (when, say, Reagan allowed the spectrum to be auctioned off) and thus control all that is said in that public space. Clearly, allowing others to use the public space should be required. Also, (and this is key) this arrangement does not in any way alter the content of the individual speakers. It simply allows other voices to be heard. Limbaugh, Hannity, and so on do not have to change a single, solitary thing about their shows. Other people of differing views would simply have a chance to be heard. Don't underestimate how popular this would be. What caused Air America to fail was that they tried to be a liberal version of the right-wing ranting talk shows. Also, instead of individual shows on a radio station, they had to finance an entire radio station from the beginning, which is hardly a small task. And even before Air America, individual liberal radio show hosts had the dickens of a time even staying on the air since the already well-established right-wing talk show hosts threatened to pull out if any of the liberal hosts were allowed even a minute of air time on the same radio station. Talk about being afraid of diverse views.
Why? Because I support someone you disagree with? That's so typical of right-wing nutballs. Try to eliminate any chance anyone has to debate and then villify anyone who still dares to disagree. Who really hates freedom here?2) The environment - not being conserved either; Teddy Roosevelt spinning in grave
3) Economy - allowing entities with special government protections (corporations) run roughshod over people who actually work and produce things
Basically, the people who think Bush is a conservative also see him as an ordinary, middle-class Texan, and not an ultra-rich spoiled Yale-educated Yankee frat boy whose daddy gave him every toy he wanted, including his very own country to play with.
Have fun in your little dream world. Don't come crawling to the rest of us when reality hits you in the ass.