The claim is not tenable. Evolution can filter out deleterious mutations that affect the ability to reproduce. Mutations that happen after the body loses ability to bear or sire babies will not be filtered out. This is the blind side of evolution. Once reproduction stops evolution does not care whether you die of heart disease or cancer or osteoporosis or get eaten by the lions.
Mutations that enhance the ability to make/sire babies in the short term but are actually deleterious in the long term will be preferred by evolution. For example storing fat in times of plenty lets one ride out cycles of famine/plenty. But the fats clogging the arteries eventually kill you, but by that time the body has made more babies.
Cancer is no more the "final checkpoint" "ultimate back stop" than heart disease or arthritis or lions.
The whole concept of "property ownership" exists only because of the government enforcing property rights. Without government, you can claim all the ownership you want. But what you actually own is limited to what you can personally defend against your neighbor. Today a stronger neighbor does not infringe on your property because he/she fears the government. Absent the government, you imagine you can run rough shod over the wimpy libtards who does not know the stock from the muzzle of a rifle. But you will be run rough shod over by criminal gangs who are far more ruthless than you can possibly dream.
Without government protecting you, you are dead as a door nail.
The government is not ENTITLED to part of my income. The government is entitled to nothing, absolutely nothing. What they can have is what we as a society have agreed to give up TO the government, through the proper legislative channels, to provide those services we as a society deem necessary.
Oh, yeah. And the legislature, duly elected by the people, have enacted a tax code, and the president duly elected by the people has signed it and the courts, duly appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the duly elected legislature have ruled the tax as constitutional.
What you think as what the government entitled to or not is totally irrelevant. Go ahead, stand on a soap box and exercise you first amendment rights. But, I will exercise my first amendment rights to ridicule you and make fun of you and tell everyone and his brother, "look here, a total idiot mouthing off!".
No, tax deductions are not government handouts. Another big fail from the leftist authoritarians.
No the big fail is not understanding the invisible role the government plays in contract enforcement, and the investments it makes to make earning income possible. You have not lived in countries where the civil courts are jammed up or corrupt or both. A small business owner takes a credit card from a private citizen issued by a private company to transfer money to a private bank. All private with no role for the government you think? Without good speedy efficient contract enforcement such a thing can not exist. Government enforces the property rights easements to lay the cables that carry the data, protects the communication infrastructure, provides for standards and interoperability.
You are like someone sitting in an airconditioned living room without any idea of the airconditioner humming in the basement keeping your room cool. Step out, and see how business is conducted in Afghanistan or Ghana or even rural India. Even well developed infrastructure in the pacific ring is not accompanied by a fair justice system for contracts. Poor people there have no way to get ahead. People with inherited wealth are the only ones who stay on top . A large professional middle class exists, in relative prosperity. And there is the huge mass of underclass with no way to move up legally efficiently.
The underlying assumption is that all income is the property of government, and allowing you to keep a portion of it is generosity on the government's part..
No. The underlying assumption is, government is entitled to part of your income. Your ability to earn that income is the result of investment made by the government in law enforcement, property rights enforcement, maintaining civil courts. When you have a contract with someone, that party does not default because you have government standing by you with a big baseball bat to enforce it. It deserves a cut on the money you make on that contract.
No, the rich dude does not have to use these tax deductions. Just treat capital gains as income and pay the tax, no need to undergo drug testing. But if you want one income to be treated with special consideration, pee in the cup and hand it over buddy.
Yes, tax deductions are government handouts. Their recipients should be tested for drugs and have some limit on how long a particular tax break one can enjoy.
Ideally all forms of income earned income, interest and dividend income, capital gains, carried interest, partnership distributions, profits, gambling gains, IRA distributions all should be just treated the same way. Ordinary salaried folks have no ability to reclassify their income streams. They have limited ability to defer income. But the top 0.1% earners can create shell corporation after shell corporation, trusts etc. Each acting as a way to defer income, change its category etc.
One concession I would agree for capital gains is to let people adjust their cost basis for inflation. This will help people who buy and hold rather than short term investors. Reduce volatility and provide stability to the instruments.
You bring another important point. Most of the time when we "see" objects, it is on reflected light. Light intensity decays as the square of the distance. In a normal room the distance between the light source and the object, and the distance from object to observer is usually small and the loss of intensity is negligible. But in this case, there is significant distance between sun and the asteroid and significant distance between asteroid and earth. Given law of squares, the number of reflected photons would be so few, the astronomer could count it one by one;-) So it is even more amazing that we found this thing.
Quick mental calculation shows that object is subtending 3e-09 radians at Earth. Need back of the envelop for solid angle. About 5e-19 stradians if it its a ball 300 feet across. Give or take a few orders of magnitude.
Now the question is not "how come we missed it for 50 years?". The question is "how come we found it in just 50 years! OMG our astronomers are awesome!".
No. It is not a matter of sign convention. Some charge of some polarity is moving in some direction. It induces force in one direction and not its reverse direction. That is true in this universe. We assigned some convention for polarity and it results in right hand rule, and a different convention will produce left hand rule. But the fact remains, it will always be a left hand rule or right hand rule based on our definition of left right positive and negative charges. Whatever rule we end up with, we have no explanation why the "other handed" rule is not true, nor do we know if there are other universes where the other handed rule could be true.
Don't even get me started on the concept of lateral inversion in the mirror images. A mirror on vertical plane produces a laterally inverted image. OK. Why it does not produce upside down image? Is it in our brain? A mirror on horizontal plane, like a lake surface, produces an upside down and laterally inverted image. Why?
From freshman chemistry class I keep hearing this "mirror image" molecules, and only one form is found in anything biological and it is very strange. As far as chemical reactions go, both left handed and right handed forms work equally well. I even remember a puzzler from Discover magazine, where the answer was, "take a biopsy sample of the alleged alien life form and check if it is the right handed or left handed version of the molecule. 50% chance you will get a definite answer".
While biologists are finding this property perplexing and strange, in the same freshman year, the physics prof started electro magnetics class with Biot-Savart law. Basically electric currents going around in a loop create a magnetic field using right-hand-thumb rule: Make a thumbs up sign with your right hand, current goes along the fingers and the mag field is along the thumb. Never wondered why it is right hand thumb rule, and not the left hand thumb rule. Never philosophized why electro magnetics in our universe is following the right hand thumb rule. No Discover mag puzzler with the solution, "Check the Biot-Savart law. If the mag field of that coil is following left handed thumb rule, it is 100% certain that worm hole has transported you to a different universe".
Because, drug companies have money and they lobby congress to squelch anything that threatens their profit stream. The supreme court has ruled money is speech. It has also ruled corporations are not only people, but they are endowed with deeply held religious beliefs that must be accommodated by the society. Flesh and blood employees and their access to health care is not important. It is the right of the nameless faceless soulless corporation to claim "deeply held religious belief" to shirk its responsibilities is sacrosanct!. Yes we are in this deep a mess.
But, don't blame SCOTUS, don't you blame the congress critters and the governors and the president, and the talk radio and fake news tv.
We have to blame ourselves. We do not turn up to vote. We are not keeping us informed. The voter turn out is 15% for local elections and primaries, 30% for off year elections, and 60% for presential elections, Let it reach 60% for local and primaries, 75% for off year and 85% for presidential elections, ALL the problems will go away. We will get good governance and common sense laws and the society will prosper.
We Americans have fought company towns and coal barons and railroad robber barons before, we can fight these venal politician-lobbying-corporations nexus too.
When Chuck Norris throws an exception, it is always fatal.
Exceptions thrown by Chuck Norris kills the process.
Exceptions thrown by Rajnikant kills the process, kills the OS, kills the computer, kills all the computer on the LAN, and the CEO of the company that created the OS.
You are not an idiot. Anyone who takes time to retract false statements is a good guy/gal. If I had not hit the 200 friends limit, I would have marked you my friend.
It just popped up, "All the information in this computer is scheduled to be posted to LinkedIn in 10 minutes" and there were just two buttons "Do it now" and "Spam all email addresses in this machine beseeching them to join LinkedIn with more dire warnings".
It predicted the future like a calendar or an almanac predicted the future. Jun 15 of the next year is going to be Sunday" or "the next full moon day is going to be on Jul 22". If you consider this predicting the future, oh yeah, it did. It is the whole point of the machine.
This is a machine that simulated the movement of the planets and the moon using gears. The whole idea of this machine is to predict the phases of the moon and the location of the planets in the coming days.
Lobby the municipality. Get some stop signs and speed breakers approved.
In my commute I know a good short cut. But it has three speed breakers. I value my
brake pads, and fuel too. I take the long way around, may be half a mile longer,
but easy on the brakes and easy on the gas.
I think even if Microsoft did not want such a thing to happen, it can not stop such things. It is incompetent to that level. But, as they say sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
If the website made money by the contents users posted, then they also have a liability. Allowing them to profit from the contents, but without any liability will create perverse incentives. There are enough provisions and protections for the websites already. If they did not know about the criminals misusing their site, it is one thing. If they knew about it and kept quiet to make money they are liable.
But where to draw a line between rapists claiming to be photographers posting classified ads to lure people in? Or even simple job posting in your old dead tree newspaper to lure applicants in?
We should draw the line on a case by case basis. Let them sue, let us look at the facts of the case and then decide whether they are culpable or not. Giving them blanket immunity without even looking at the facts of the case is simply wrong.
If you let private pilots undercut commercial airlines, by skirting safety regulations, then airlines will lobby to lower their compliance burden too. And they will exit the market. In then end all our safety, whether you use air uber or not will be affected.
Slashdot Mirror
Mutations that enhance the ability to make/sire babies in the short term but are actually deleterious in the long term will be preferred by evolution. For example storing fat in times of plenty lets one ride out cycles of famine/plenty. But the fats clogging the arteries eventually kill you, but by that time the body has made more babies.
Cancer is no more the "final checkpoint" "ultimate back stop" than heart disease or arthritis or lions.
Without government protecting you, you are dead as a door nail.
The government is not ENTITLED to part of my income. The government is entitled to nothing, absolutely nothing. What they can have is what we as a society have agreed to give up TO the government, through the proper legislative channels, to provide those services we as a society deem necessary.
Oh, yeah. And the legislature, duly elected by the people, have enacted a tax code, and the president duly elected by the people has signed it and the courts, duly appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the duly elected legislature have ruled the tax as constitutional.
What you think as what the government entitled to or not is totally irrelevant. Go ahead, stand on a soap box and exercise you first amendment rights. But, I will exercise my first amendment rights to ridicule you and make fun of you and tell everyone and his brother, "look here, a total idiot mouthing off!".
No, tax deductions are not government handouts. Another big fail from the leftist authoritarians.
No the big fail is not understanding the invisible role the government plays in contract enforcement, and the investments it makes to make earning income possible. You have not lived in countries where the civil courts are jammed up or corrupt or both. A small business owner takes a credit card from a private citizen issued by a private company to transfer money to a private bank. All private with no role for the government you think? Without good speedy efficient contract enforcement such a thing can not exist. Government enforces the property rights easements to lay the cables that carry the data, protects the communication infrastructure, provides for standards and interoperability.
You are like someone sitting in an airconditioned living room without any idea of the airconditioner humming in the basement keeping your room cool. Step out, and see how business is conducted in Afghanistan or Ghana or even rural India. Even well developed infrastructure in the pacific ring is not accompanied by a fair justice system for contracts. Poor people there have no way to get ahead. People with inherited wealth are the only ones who stay on top . A large professional middle class exists, in relative prosperity. And there is the huge mass of underclass with no way to move up legally efficiently.
The underlying assumption is that all income is the property of government, and allowing you to keep a portion of it is generosity on the government's part. .
No. The underlying assumption is, government is entitled to part of your income. Your ability to earn that income is the result of investment made by the government in law enforcement, property rights enforcement, maintaining civil courts. When you have a contract with someone, that party does not default because you have government standing by you with a big baseball bat to enforce it. It deserves a cut on the money you make on that contract.
No, the rich dude does not have to use these tax deductions. Just treat capital gains as income and pay the tax, no need to undergo drug testing. But if you want one income to be treated with special consideration, pee in the cup and hand it over buddy.
Ideally all forms of income earned income, interest and dividend income, capital gains, carried interest, partnership distributions, profits, gambling gains, IRA distributions all should be just treated the same way. Ordinary salaried folks have no ability to reclassify their income streams. They have limited ability to defer income. But the top 0.1% earners can create shell corporation after shell corporation, trusts etc. Each acting as a way to defer income, change its category etc.
One concession I would agree for capital gains is to let people adjust their cost basis for inflation. This will help people who buy and hold rather than short term investors. Reduce volatility and provide stability to the instruments.
You bring another important point. Most of the time when we "see" objects, it is on reflected light. Light intensity decays as the square of the distance. In a normal room the distance between the light source and the object, and the distance from object to observer is usually small and the loss of intensity is negligible. But in this case, there is significant distance between sun and the asteroid and significant distance between asteroid and earth. Given law of squares, the number of reflected photons would be so few, the astronomer could count it one by one ;-) So it is even more amazing that we found this thing.
Now the question is not "how come we missed it for 50 years?". The question is "how come we found it in just 50 years! OMG our astronomers are awesome!".
I was under the impression Microsoft is lightyears ahead of its competitors in TrollChatBot, TrashTalkBot technologies...
Don't even get me started on the concept of lateral inversion in the mirror images. A mirror on vertical plane produces a laterally inverted image. OK. Why it does not produce upside down image? Is it in our brain? A mirror on horizontal plane, like a lake surface, produces an upside down and laterally inverted image. Why?
While biologists are finding this property perplexing and strange, in the same freshman year, the physics prof started electro magnetics class with Biot-Savart law. Basically electric currents going around in a loop create a magnetic field using right-hand-thumb rule: Make a thumbs up sign with your right hand, current goes along the fingers and the mag field is along the thumb. Never wondered why it is right hand thumb rule, and not the left hand thumb rule. Never philosophized why electro magnetics in our universe is following the right hand thumb rule. No Discover mag puzzler with the solution, "Check the Biot-Savart law. If the mag field of that coil is following left handed thumb rule, it is 100% certain that worm hole has transported you to a different universe".
But, don't blame SCOTUS, don't you blame the congress critters and the governors and the president, and the talk radio and fake news tv.
We have to blame ourselves. We do not turn up to vote. We are not keeping us informed. The voter turn out is 15% for local elections and primaries, 30% for off year elections, and 60% for presential elections, Let it reach 60% for local and primaries, 75% for off year and 85% for presidential elections, ALL the problems will go away. We will get good governance and common sense laws and the society will prosper.
We Americans have fought company towns and coal barons and railroad robber barons before, we can fight these venal politician-lobbying-corporations nexus too.
When Chuck Norris throws an exception, it is always fatal. Exceptions thrown by Chuck Norris kills the process. Exceptions thrown by Rajnikant kills the process, kills the OS, kills the computer, kills all the computer on the LAN, and the CEO of the company that created the OS.
You are not an idiot. Anyone who takes time to retract false statements is a good guy/gal. If I had not hit the 200 friends limit, I would have marked you my friend.
We are moving everything to the cloud.
The cloud is accessed from browser sessions with current credentials automatically and silently.
So arbitrary code execution with current user privileges on a browser session is really a serious threat.
It just popped up, "All the information in this computer is scheduled to be posted to LinkedIn in 10 minutes" and there were just two buttons "Do it now" and "Spam all email addresses in this machine beseeching them to join LinkedIn with more dire warnings".
This is a machine that simulated the movement of the planets and the moon using gears. The whole idea of this machine is to predict the phases of the moon and the location of the planets in the coming days.
Whoosh.
In my commute I know a good short cut. But it has three speed breakers. I value my brake pads, and fuel too. I take the long way around, may be half a mile longer, but easy on the brakes and easy on the gas.
If the newspaper knew the guy posting the ad was using it to lure victims, they too would be liable.
Prof Mahabala, Dept of Comp Sci, IIT Madras, IBM 370/155, punch cards, FORTRAN
I think even if Microsoft did not want such a thing to happen, it can not stop such things. It is incompetent to that level. But, as they say sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
But where to draw a line between rapists claiming to be photographers posting classified ads to lure people in? Or even simple job posting in your old dead tree newspaper to lure applicants in?
We should draw the line on a case by case basis. Let them sue, let us look at the facts of the case and then decide whether they are culpable or not. Giving them blanket immunity without even looking at the facts of the case is simply wrong.
If you let private pilots undercut commercial airlines, by skirting safety regulations, then airlines will lobby to lower their compliance burden too. And they will exit the market. In then end all our safety, whether you use air uber or not will be affected.