You're right, the $20 billion figure is for Iraq and Afghanistan. Thank you for pointing that out.
Total expenditures for Iraq and Afghanistan are expected to cost $170.7 billion this year, so the General is really claiming that we spend 11.9% of our war costs in Iraq and Afghanistan on air conditioning tents (and not the 18.9% figure I mistakenly came up with).
Still, 1/10 of our war cost is air conditioning? That is still beyond believable.
I am not seeing where NPR posted the breakdown of this cost. The only explanation was General Anderson's statement of including "escorting, command and control, medevac support".
In fact, if you read the transcript of the interview the article is based on, General Anderson does not say if the $20 billion figure is per year, or over the whole ten years we have been at war.
Finally, just because General Anderson is an expert and "knows what he's talking about", does not mean he is being honest. Argument from authority and all that.
That $219 million is still two orders of magnitude less than what NASA gets in funding per year; so yes, I really doubt we spend more on air conditioning our tents in Afghanistan than we do on NASA.
I suspect the direct costs are not more than we spend on NASA, and thus not anti-war news worthy (thrown out there based on the big bold quote from Sen. Manchin).
...Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security account for far more spending than the $107 billion the Pentagon says it will spend in Afghanistan next year.
So of the $107 billion we will spend in Afghanistan, $20.2 billion of it is for air conditioning? Seriously, almost 20% of our war cost?
But the devil is in the details. The calculation takes into consideration all sorts of services that are not solely used for air conditioning. Escort, command and control, medevac support...all are resources that support multiple purposes and not just creature comforts for soldiers. That would be like me saying the annual cost of maintaining my vehicle includes the band-aids I keep in the medicine chest because I occasionally scrape my knuckles loosening the drain plug.
In other words, we do not spend $20 billion on air conditioning. Instead, the cost of every resource that has any tangential effect on air conditioning has a combined cost of $20 billion. Wake me up when NPR posts some information that is actually useful.
Early adolescence is marked by poor abstract thinking abilities. As a result their curriculum is designed to be more concrete-based. This is what the title of the article, "Why Johnny can't program", aludes to. The title is borrowed from a book titled Why Johnny Can't Add: The Failure of the New Math, which identified a similar problem in the revised American math education of the 1960s & 70s. This new curriculum was designed by mathematicians without a great deal of consideration of their target audience, or how their target audience learned.
A computer programming curriculum that is heavily logic based has no hope in being taught to students who lack well-developed abstract thinking skills. This is why things like AgentSheets sees much success.
Myopic and purely profit-driven ISPs won't give their users what the users want
That is silly. Of course ISPs will give their users what they want. They will not, however, lose money in the process of giving it to them.
And investment in infrastructure will not make "network neutrality" irrelevant, because neutrality is about treating traffic equally. It has nothing to do with giving users unlimited bandwidth for a low fixed price.
No, I made an argument using the same phraseology you used in your anti-gun rant. And by your saying that statement would be false, which is right, we have come full circle and it appears you really did mean what you said.
You are grasping at straws now. If someone made the statement that "seat belts do not really protect anyone", nobody would take that as meaning seat belts actually do protect some people but hurt others.
Are you referring to the global cooling predictions, or to some actual warming prediction that existed in the 1970s? If the later, I will extend my juvenile analogy and say the Church of Global Warming is writing checks its science can't cash.:-)
In other words, your statement that "having guns does not really protect anyone" was equivocation about the aggregate statistics of gun violence and control measures. Got it.
In the future if you would kindly avoid ambiguous statements in order to further your ideology, I would appreciate it.
My point is that the conclusion you draw in your last sentence does not follow from the evidence you presented. In other words, if I conceded that gun control reduces murders, accidents, and suicides, that does not mean they do nothing to protect anyone.
No, a law whose unintended consequences undermines its intended consequences is useless against what it was intended for. A gun ban may stop a few accidental killings, and a handful of crimes, but at what cost? It never ceases to amaze me how some very bright individuals will cast away their critical thinking skills when it comes to certain hot-button issues like gun control. Laws must be evaluated in terms of cost and benefit. You have plainly put forth the benefit, but have failed to consider any minimal cost whatsoever.
As for humans being good at anything, it is often using tools for their unintended purpose as well. It is called adaptability.
It is pretty funny. The original poster makes an incoherent ad hominem against "conservatives" (with a nice added libertarian jab), and gets modded up as insightful. And the reply, while also ad hominem, is directed at "liberals", has added substance, and is modded down.
One could conclude then liberals are not very tolerant of differing viewpoints. How does this relate back to the issue of climate science?
The argument that Microsoft and Sony should build these controllers to increase their reputation, but do not because of market forces seems contradictory to me.
In other words, Microsoft and Sony should NOT build these controllers because the cost to do so would outweigh the small increase to their reputation that would result. After all, companies commonly do charitable things to increase their reputation. So who do we blame when it stops being advantageous for them to do so? Most want to blame the companies. I blame all of us.
I think it is society's fault that these controllers are not built. Imagine if Sony and Microsoft did build these things. How many of us would be thinking, "gee, that is nice of them"? I know that I would not. I would most likely shrug, believing they were required to do so under some sort of Federal regulation.
Debate over things like ADA are for another time, but what I am trying to say is that obligatory charity cheapens voluntary charity, and that is hardly the fault of capitalism.
Are you referring to the fear and ignorance of saying a phase out of nuclear power is irresponsible? Or the fear and ignorance of saying nuclear power can never be safe?
Not quite. When it comes to multifactor authentication, knowing the numbers from the fob is only one factor. You usually also have to put in a password.
Imagine an SSH keyfile with no passphrase, which gets you to the login prompt.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right, the $20 billion figure is for Iraq and Afghanistan. Thank you for pointing that out.
Total expenditures for Iraq and Afghanistan are expected to cost $170.7 billion this year, so the General is really claiming that we spend 11.9% of our war costs in Iraq and Afghanistan on air conditioning tents (and not the 18.9% figure I mistakenly came up with).
Still, 1/10 of our war cost is air conditioning? That is still beyond believable.
Oh, and according to Senator Mark Udall, $20 billion is what the Department of Defense spends as a whole on energy each year. Apparently this all goes to running air conditioning. *eyes roll*
I am not seeing where NPR posted the breakdown of this cost. The only explanation was General Anderson's statement of including "escorting, command and control, medevac support".
In fact, if you read the transcript of the interview the article is based on, General Anderson does not say if the $20 billion figure is per year, or over the whole ten years we have been at war.
Finally, just because General Anderson is an expert and "knows what he's talking about", does not mean he is being honest. Argument from authority and all that.
That $219 million is still two orders of magnitude less than what NASA gets in funding per year; so yes, I really doubt we spend more on air conditioning our tents in Afghanistan than we do on NASA.
I suspect the direct costs are not more than we spend on NASA, and thus not anti-war news worthy (thrown out there based on the big bold quote from Sen. Manchin).
...Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security account for far more spending than the $107 billion the Pentagon says it will spend in Afghanistan next year.
So of the $107 billion we will spend in Afghanistan, $20.2 billion of it is for air conditioning? Seriously, almost 20% of our war cost?
But the devil is in the details. The calculation takes into consideration all sorts of services that are not solely used for air conditioning. Escort, command and control, medevac support...all are resources that support multiple purposes and not just creature comforts for soldiers. That would be like me saying the annual cost of maintaining my vehicle includes the band-aids I keep in the medicine chest because I occasionally scrape my knuckles loosening the drain plug.
In other words, we do not spend $20 billion on air conditioning. Instead, the cost of every resource that has any tangential effect on air conditioning has a combined cost of $20 billion. Wake me up when NPR posts some information that is actually useful.
Early adolescence is marked by poor abstract thinking abilities. As a result their curriculum is designed to be more concrete-based. This is what the title of the article, "Why Johnny can't program", aludes to. The title is borrowed from a book titled Why Johnny Can't Add: The Failure of the New Math, which identified a similar problem in the revised American math education of the 1960s & 70s. This new curriculum was designed by mathematicians without a great deal of consideration of their target audience, or how their target audience learned.
A computer programming curriculum that is heavily logic based has no hope in being taught to students who lack well-developed abstract thinking skills. This is why things like AgentSheets sees much success.
Myopic and purely profit-driven ISPs won't give their users what the users want
That is silly. Of course ISPs will give their users what they want. They will not, however, lose money in the process of giving it to them.
And investment in infrastructure will not make "network neutrality" irrelevant, because neutrality is about treating traffic equally. It has nothing to do with giving users unlimited bandwidth for a low fixed price.
No, I made an argument using the same phraseology you used in your anti-gun rant. And by your saying that statement would be false, which is right, we have come full circle and it appears you really did mean what you said.
You are grasping at straws now. If someone made the statement that "seat belts do not really protect anyone", nobody would take that as meaning seat belts actually do protect some people but hurt others.
You do not need to read TFA to know that intolerance can exist on both sides of a debate.
(Not sure if troll, or...)
Are you referring to the global cooling predictions, or to some actual warming prediction that existed in the 1970s? If the later, I will extend my juvenile analogy and say the Church of Global Warming is writing checks its science can't cash. :-)
In other words, your statement that "having guns does not really protect anyone" was equivocation about the aggregate statistics of gun violence and control measures. Got it.
In the future if you would kindly avoid ambiguous statements in order to further your ideology, I would appreciate it.
My point is that the conclusion you draw in your last sentence does not follow from the evidence you presented. In other words, if I conceded that gun control reduces murders, accidents, and suicides, that does not mean they do nothing to protect anyone.
The Churches of Gravity, Evolution, and Quantum Mechanics have paid their rent with predictions that have turned out to be true.
That rent from the Church of Global Warming has yet to be paid.
So because guns failed to protect some people, you conclude that guns will fail to protect all people?
No, a law whose unintended consequences undermines its intended consequences is useless against what it was intended for. A gun ban may stop a few accidental killings, and a handful of crimes, but at what cost? It never ceases to amaze me how some very bright individuals will cast away their critical thinking skills when it comes to certain hot-button issues like gun control. Laws must be evaluated in terms of cost and benefit. You have plainly put forth the benefit, but have failed to consider any minimal cost whatsoever.
As for humans being good at anything, it is often using tools for their unintended purpose as well. It is called adaptability.
It is pretty funny. The original poster makes an incoherent ad hominem against "conservatives" (with a nice added libertarian jab), and gets modded up as insightful. And the reply, while also ad hominem, is directed at "liberals", has added substance, and is modded down.
One could conclude then liberals are not very tolerant of differing viewpoints. How does this relate back to the issue of climate science?
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2008-05-07/
This sort of email sifting is more about drumming up negative publicity for one's political enemies than watching out for government abuse.
If you really want to find government abuse all you need is thomas.loc.gov. Most if it is documented there.
The argument that Microsoft and Sony should build these controllers to increase their reputation, but do not because of market forces seems contradictory to me.
In other words, Microsoft and Sony should NOT build these controllers because the cost to do so would outweigh the small increase to their reputation that would result. After all, companies commonly do charitable things to increase their reputation. So who do we blame when it stops being advantageous for them to do so? Most want to blame the companies. I blame all of us.
I think it is society's fault that these controllers are not built. Imagine if Sony and Microsoft did build these things. How many of us would be thinking, "gee, that is nice of them"? I know that I would not. I would most likely shrug, believing they were required to do so under some sort of Federal regulation.
Debate over things like ADA are for another time, but what I am trying to say is that obligatory charity cheapens voluntary charity, and that is hardly the fault of capitalism.
Spain does not export energy to France. It imports energy from France, and exports energy to Portugal, Morocco, and Andorra.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/dec/28/spain-renewables-energy-electricity-france
Are you referring to the fear and ignorance of saying a phase out of nuclear power is irresponsible? Or the fear and ignorance of saying nuclear power can never be safe?
I forgot which one we're supposed to side with.
Not quite. When it comes to multifactor authentication, knowing the numbers from the fob is only one factor. You usually also have to put in a password.
Imagine an SSH keyfile with no passphrase, which gets you to the login prompt.
So a cheap tablet PC running Windows is like eating at Yoshinoya on coupon day?
Ha! Rickroll interrupted by Youtube advertisement.