25 spelling and grammar mistakes in a 5 paragraph screed? I studied engineering, and I dare say I have a better knowledge of the English language than you do. Engineering demands precision; otherwise, bridges fall down, and planes (and software!) crash, so I pride myself on using language precisely. If I received one of your manuscripts, I would never hire you.
Your tenuous grasp of English is exceeded by your lack of Internet knowledge. The free Firefox browser lets you check your spelling as you type. I assume you're still using Internet Explorer. Too bad you don't have any of that "technical knowledge" you decry.
I doubt the power load will go up at all. After all, if these people are using computers at work, the power load won't be affected by their using computers at home; the total drain would be the same. And, I think it would actually drop, because there won't be as much photocopying being done. The average copier uses about 1 kW; and most companies have two or three of those.
China doesn't need to nuke the US. All they need to do is dump their massive hoard of US dollars, which will cause the dollar to drop like a stone. That would make all US imports - which total nearly $2 trillion - more expensive, and devestate the US economy. On the other hand, it would hamper Chinese growth, which China needs to placate its masses. So its a symbiotic relationship; both countries need the other.
Russia, on the other hand, is a different story. I don't think Putin likes Americans very much, but I don't think he would risk the possibility of the US response.
What the hell is all this foreign stuff? Could you please
convert these to the universal unit all Americans understand,
Libraries of Congress? Thanks so much...
You should at least mention that this was due to the industrial revolution, which was basically Moore's law applied to manufacturing and distribution. The overall production and transportation base in the US grew like crazy during this period, so manufacturers coulds sell things for 1/2 as much and still make a profit.
You are perfectly correct. I didn't feel the need to point out the reasons *why* prices fell in response to the OP; just to point out that his assertion that current inflation levels are lower than at any time in US history was pure nonsense.
However, I would also note that from 1900-2000, we saw the introduction of the production line, the tremendous growth of both electricity and telephone networks, significantly more dependable and less expensive shipping, and, of course, the entire computer/internet/software revolution, yet the average price level increased by a factor of twenty during that period. (I don't say this to be snotty, just to say that increasing industrial productivity is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for price stability. Some irresponsible wags might suggest that the price increases of the 20th century were due to the complete abandonment of metal-backed money for fiat currency, but such thought is counter-revolutionary, and must be surpressed.)
Geez, didn't Robert Heinlein predict something like this years ago? IIRC, he postulated that future societies would build enormous towers to "poke through" the smog layer into the cooler atmosphere above. Hot air would be brought in the bottom; the hot air would rise and spin turbines, generating electriciy; cooler air would come down, and cool the ground while dispersing pollutants. Of course, he wrote that over 50 years ago, so doubtless he missed some things.
Last time I checked inflation has been consistently the lowest it's been the last twenty years than in any other time in our nation's history.
You don't get out much, do you? Check out http://www.westegg.com/inflation/, and try the
US from 1800-1850, and 1850-1900. Looking at the latter case first, what cost $100 US in
1850 cost $100.10 in 1900 - virtual price stability over half a century! In the former case,
what cost $100 in 1800 cost less than $49 in 1850. Now read that last sentence over slowly
for maximum comprehension - prices actually fell by half in the years 1800-1850.
From 1900-1950, prices roughly tripled. From 1950-2000, prices roughly went up by a factor of 7. So if you're trying to say that recent inflation has been less than it was in, say, the 1970's, I'll agree with you, but your original statement is pure nonsense.
Now maybe you mean cost of living. Yes that has gone up, but not so much do to increase costs, those have been steadily dropping as well in terms of real dollars, but in terms of people's expectations.
Now, this is truly hilarious. What is the substantive difference between "cost of living" and "inflation"? Here's the Statistics Canada definition of cost of living:
A cost-of-living adjustment is used to offset a change (usually a decrease) in the purchasing power of income. Cost-of-living adjustments modify future benefits, typically on an annual basis, to keep pace with inflation. These adjustments are usually linked to changes as measured by an index of movements in prices; the most widely used is the Consumer Price Index (CPI).
I'll be the first to admit that there are many different ways to measure inflation, although the CPI is often the most common. The "GDP deflator" is another popular measure; it is usually very close to the CPI figure.
Now, since you're clearly economically illiterate, let me fill you in a couple of not so widely hidden secrets. 1) Since both the US and Canadian governments are on the hook for huge entitlement programs, such as welfare, pensions, etc., all of which are subject to annual COLA changes, both governments have a vested interest in the keeping that COLA number as low as possible. Now, in 2003-2004, the average US household spent 34% of its net income on housing, 18% on transportation, and 13% on food; that's 65% of total disposable income. Doesn't leave a whole lot for those "wants" you rant on about, especially when you consider that health care and insurance/pensions eat up another 15% of income. (http://www.bls.gov/ro6/fax/cex_hou.htm) However, whenever you see "core CPI", it's usually accompanied by the phrase "not including volatile food and energy components". Meanwhile, housing expenses have been adjusted down to reflect the low rates people are paying on "teaser" mortgages that offered low initial rates, no down payment, no principal repayment, "overmortgaging" (i.e. providing a mortgage worth $130,000 on a $100,000 house - sweet, you've got $30k to buy a new car!), etc. Now, when those mortgages get reset this year and next (you have been reading about the sub-prime crisis, haven't you?), what do you want to bet that "volatile housing costs" will also be excluded from the government stats?
And that's not even discussing the "hedonic" adjustments, where beauraucrats attempt to divine how much recent improvements in processor speeds, lower RAM and disk costs, etc. have lowered the "real" cost of computing resources. (I'll be the first to admit that the 512k RAM, 10MB disk Mac that I bought for $3,000 Cdn in 1985 was far more expensive in real terms than the Dell Pentium4 running at 2.8 Ghz with 512 MB RAM, and an 80 GB hard disk for $800 Cdn paid two years ago.) However, how do you compute the decrease in the cost of living from having 4 blades on your razor instead of 2? From having 4 or 6 airbags in your car instead of 2? In short, the official statistics are giggered to produce a consistently
My experience with skipping was they crammed two years (grade 3 and 4) into one. This was in no way a hardship, and it didn't leave any holes in my education. I have no doubts that I could have learned the entire Grade 3 curriculum in six weeks, and maybe 8 weeks for the Grade 4 stuff. I was still way bored most of the time, and in fact, perfected the technique of reading a book in my lap while pretending to listen to the teacher.
Re:Do you also own a cat with a diamond collar?
on
Failing Our Geniuses
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I have to echo your comments, and would like to add some perspective of my own. I too was a gifted child, who could read before I started kindergarten. I remember getting our first "Dick and Jane" type reader in Grade 1 (that would be in 1961; yes, I'm a geezer). The first page was a picture of a young boy with the single word "Sandy" underneath. (IIRC, the entire book introduced some 50+ words.) The teacher took five minutes to go over that page, during which time I read the entire book. When she asked me what I thought of Sandy, I babbled on for thirty seconds about the boy, his sister, his dog, his teacher, etc. The teacher hauled me out of my seat, pulled me onto her lap, and gave me a few smacks on the ass - not at all painful, just a little humiliating. "That'll teach you to read ahead!" she said. In fact, it didn't, but it did teach me that school was not all concerned that I progress as quickly as possible.
In Grade 3, I was skipped (they compressed 3 and 4 into one year for the five of us - four girls and me). The next year, I started Grade 5 - in a class with my older sister which continued until Grade 9, an affront for which she has never entirely forgiven me. I was also a year younger than all the other boys in the class, which meant that I was always the smallest and lightest kid in the class; since the iron code of the schoolyard prevented me from playing games with my age peers in Grade 4, I was always chosen in the last few for sports and games. Doubtless, this contributed to my smart mouth and my rep as "class rebel".
All this was endured within the public school system. In Grade 10, I was admitted to a boys' school in Toronto, modeled on the English schools such as Eton. No phony egalitarianism there! There were two types of classes (or "forms" as they were known) - A-forms, and B-forms. The A-forms were considered the brighter students, and we took seven academic subjects. The B-forms were the lesser lights, and they took 6 classes and a mandatory study hall. In addition, on every report card (of which there were five a year), my ranking in the class ("2 out of 22") was duly noted. Unlike Orwell, I mostly enjoyed my years there; I was still bored from time to time, but many of my classmates had also been skipped, and so I was generally surrounded by bright kids. It also helped that the school teams were Under-15's, Under-16's, etc., so my competition for sports teams was against kids my own age, which helped soothe some of the inferiority I had experienced in public school. (It's no fun always being the shrimp!)
Now I have two daughters, 10 and 13, who have both been accepted into the PACE program at our local school. (PACE is the "Program for Academic and Creative Extension") Now, instead of skipping kids, they are brought together with other bright kids of their own age, where they explore subjects in greater depth than the standard classes. Frankly, I think this works better than skipping them. While both girls admit they are bored from time to time, they also work on more projects and have developed a greater understanding of the material than the standard stream allows. And neither of them have suffered from the social problems that I felt; both have lots of friends and seem well integrated into their classes.
From my perspective, I think the girls' school is doing a good job of challenging them academically without short-changing them socially. As I noted, they are bored at times, but I think all good students will experience those moments; I'm sure there are times their classmates wish my girls were picking something up a little faster.
Of course, this is just one school board, and I don't know what's going on in other boards in Ontario, let alone in Canada. I won't even try to comment on any other country's system.
The GP did not state that he was not influenced by these things. They stated that they would be happy to NOT be influenced by these things.
Here's what the GP wrote:
"I'd be happy never to see a politician, or hear them, so I'm not influenced by such trivialities."
Sorry, I don't agree with your interpretation, I think he *IS* claiming he's not influenced by how a candidate sounds or looks.
Unfortunately, numerous experiments have shown that people are not impervious to such influences. As a pertinent example, people who watched the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon presidential debates thought that the younger, more telegenic Kenneday won the debate over Nixon and his five-o'clock shadow, while people who listened to the debates on radio thought Nixon had won easily. Similarly, good looking people are ascribed better qualities (smarter, better student or worker, nicer, etc.) than ugly people by most observers. Pick up any first year psychology book, and look up the "halo" effect.
Of course, Doc Brown in "Back to the Future" had the idea all along "You people watch so much TV, no wonder the president has to be an actor".
A Canadian computer firm, MDG, has been advertising for the last two weeks that any notebook
or system purchase beyond their base system will be accompanied by a free (as in beer) X-box.
Since they offer qualifying notebooks for as low as $699, and desktops for $599, (which includes
system, monitor, OS, and a software bundle including Corel and MS-Works, etc.), it seems to me
that the X-box is being given to MDG pretty darn cheap.
This looks like Barbie-doll marketing to me - give away the doll, and make all the money on the outfits. I don't know what cut MS gets from Xbox game sales, but I'd be expecting them to increase it..
Yep, it's ridiculous, but it's the law in most provinces in Canada. So if you get too drunk, and climb into the back seat of your car to sleep it off, you can still be charged if the cop is sufficiently angry with you, or if he's just an a-hole.
Further ridiculous note: if your car keys can be found within 30 feet of the vehicle, you can still be charged with "Care and control while impaired", even though the keys are not in the car.
But what happens when that little machine becomes the newest novelty bar game?
"Hey Joe, betcha I can get wasted before you can..."
Twenty years ago, on my 30th birthday, a friend took me out. They had a breath
machine at the bar. I blew.34; my friend was "only".26, so he drove home. (It
was about 2 miles in a small town; yes, it was irresponsible..)
To me, the funny thing is I signed up that night for the bar's golf tournament
which was held the next day (at 7:00 am!), and I shot a 76 to win the damn thing.
Who'da thunk being hungover was good for your golf game?!
If so, refute him point by point. Otherwise you're just being an ass.
I'm not the OP, but I'll take a stab at it...
At first the easy credit is funnelled into investment (because investment is already a habbit of the old savings-based society). Businesses do amazingly well with all of the new capital and a bunch of new products appear on the market.
Not necessarily; in Weimar Germany, the intial inflation was due to the enormous reparation payments due Britain and France after WWI. This forced the government to start printing money just so that people had enough to eat.
Then, people realize that there's even more credit to be had and start spending it on a few luxuries here and there. Seeing that a few luxuries didn't lead to immediate bankrupcy, people go out and buy more and more things on credit. At some point, the loans come due and since people aren't usually willing to get rid of their stuff they pull their investments out of businesses and use them to pay the loans that have come due. Businesses suffer, wages don't go up and prices don't go down as fast as they should, people go get more loans to support their new spending habbits.
Not at all what's happening in the US right now. People realized their houses (which may have been completely paid off) were worth many thousands more than they had paid for them. Since the US allows mortgage interest deductibility, people realized that the effective interest rate on 2nd mortgages on their homes were much less than the usurious rates charged on credit cards. (3-4% vs. 20-28%). Thus, the "housing ATM" was born, and it was exacerbated by "Easy Al" Greenspan's reductions in fed funds rates over the late 90's and early 80's. This, in turn with the introduction of no-money-down mortgages and adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs), let many people into the credit market who had no business being there.
Now this has recently led to a "repricing" (nice euphemism there!) of credit risk, which has caused a bunch of hedge funds to close, many others to lose massive amounts of their customers' investments, and the delay or cancellation of a number of bond issues intended to take public companies private. However, there has been no massive exit from the stock markets; in fact, for the first six months of 2007, the net flow of funds into the US markets was positive.
The spiral continues until many of the jobs have been outsourced to cheap foreign labour (since the locals are demanding higher wages which businesses can't/won't provide - especially when they face the threat of having their share price go down). Desperate politicians resort to pork-barrel spending and random wars to prop up the economy, but the inflation these actions cause hurts the middle and lower classes more than it helps the businesses that sustain them, forcing them further into debt.
Um, Russia, Argentina and Weimar Germany all experienced massive increases in credit and money supply in the 1920's, and subsequent hyperinflation but none started any "random" wars. Nor did they start "exporting" jobs to lower cost jurisdictions; in fact, they generally erected tariff barriers to maintain domestic employment (as did the US, Britain, and France). Global free trade is a relatively new phenomenon.
A few generations go by. People forget all about the crash of 'whenever. The cycle repeats.
This point I do agree with; it's summed up in the old proverb "From rags to rags in three generations".
200 years after the Industrial Revolution, the rich are dying out. Their long hours managing their money means they have significantly less time for family- there isn't a first world country today that is above ZPG demographically when you eliminate immigration.
Well, this is certainly a unique perspective. I think most people rooted in reality would believe that the increasing education and emancipation of women, combined with the dramatic reduction of both death in childbirth and infant mortality, the increased availability of reliable contraception and the elimination of societal taboos against sex outside of marriage, and the establishment of a social safety net that transferred care of the aged from their families to the state, are responsible for non-immigrant first world women choosing to have fewer babies and choosing to have them later in life. But you are definitely free to indulge your fantasy of rich women staying up until the wee small hours, poring over spreadsheets calculating their net worth,
while their semi-impotent husbands ponder the choice between butterfly-spread option strategies
and the yen-carry trade.
If you want to see Gibson's roots, read Dashiell Hammett. Gibson is like an eery echo of him, and I say that as a Gibson fan.
I've read pretty much everything written by both authors, and love them both, but this is not a comparison I would have made. I would be sincerely interested if you would elaborate.
My dad was a big sci-fi fan, and I read his back copies of "Analog" and "Astounding" pulps in the early 60's. My mom worked as a librarian, and so we got advanced access to all the new, good SF as it came out. I especially enjoyed Judith Merrill's "The Year's Best SF" anthologies, which introduced me to authors such as Fred Pohl, Philip K. Dick, and Fritz Leiber. (I was also lucky to attend the engineering school at the University of Toronto; directly across from the engineering building was Merrill's "Spaced Out Library", which was the most complete selection of SF works I had ever seen. Many a happy lunch hour was spent there!)
I like Gibson, not because he's some techno-visionary, but because he's an exquisite writer. Fritz Leiber's "Gonna Roll Some Bones" is about a boy whose co-ordination is so good, he can throw rock chips back into place in the rock - there's some serious suspension of disbelief required here! - but the beauty of the story is in Leiber's prose, not the premise. Virtually everything Philip K. Dick wrote seemed completely implausible 40 years ago, but the stories were still fascinating reads. (When you consider that "Blade Runner", "Total Recall" and "Minority Report" were all based on Dick's works, it appears that Hollywood can better transform his stories to the screen than those of other SF writers. I offer the movie versions of "Neuromancer" and "Starship Troopers" as evidence.)
I also find it interesting that Neal Stephenson has also gone back in time, with the "Diamond Age", and his "Baroque Cycle" (which I'm plowing through at the moment; Mom's passed away, and I'm too cheap to buy the hardcovers). I'm half expecting him to do some novels based on the Renaissance next.
I think it's safe to say both major parties want it, so the future is not a voting machine that prints a vote that voters will manually drop into a sealed box. The most we'd likely see is a voting machine that prints a receipt for the voter.
I bet most California politicians of any stripe (Repub/Dem/Moonbat) disliked the idea of a cap on property taxes but somehow, that got on the ballot, and became law. What happened to citizen-sponsored referenda or propositions?
And I agree with other posters on this and other threads who wonder why the first Tuesday in November is the only day you vote. Here in Canada, we vote on different days for our federal, provincial, and municipal candidates. The municipal one is normally the most complicated, as you are often voting for mayor, ward councillor, school trustee (and we used to vote for hydro trustees as well, although I think that's gone now.)
At any rate, I still want someone to tell me why my concept of an electronic machine that prints a copy of your ballot, which you, after reviewing it, then put into a sealed box at the polling station, doesn't meet the criteria of a swift count with a tamper-proof backup system.
Batteries - frankly - haven't got a lot to recommend them. They are extreme polluters, hugely difficult to dispose of, expensive and complicated to recycle, charge slowly, can't deliver much power at once, and perform worse and worse as they get older (and not a lot older, for that matter.) I look forward with great anticipation to the day I can say "no more batteries."
I bought an "e-bike" this week. It's a 7-speed bicycle with a 700W motor assist. It uses a sealed
lead-acid battery for power storage. Now, the motor is great for going up steep hills and long grades (I'm a 51-year old geezer, and I'm not courting a heart attack), and on the downhills, I don't need the motor at all. But on the flats - the battery, which must weigh 30 lbs at least (and it feels like more), really does slow you down. My old beater (which is a 7 speed without any motor) is a lot easier to ride on level services; it requires less effort to get up to speed, and to maintain speed.
So I'm eagerly awaiting lighter power sources as well!
Slashdot Mirror
Shouldn't that be "clucking fowl"?
Your tenuous grasp of English is exceeded by your lack of Internet knowledge. The free Firefox browser lets you check your spelling as you type. I assume you're still using Internet Explorer. Too bad you don't have any of that "technical knowledge" you decry.
I doubt the power load will go up at all. After all, if these people are using computers at work, the power load won't be affected by their using computers at home; the total drain would be the same. And, I think it would actually drop, because there won't be as much photocopying being done. The average copier uses about 1 kW; and most companies have two or three of those.
Russia, on the other hand, is a different story. I don't think Putin likes Americans very much, but I don't think he would risk the possibility of the US response.
What the hell is all this foreign stuff? Could you please convert these to the universal unit all Americans understand, Libraries of Congress? Thanks so much...
http://es.geocities.com/midithebeatles/video/yello w.htm
You are perfectly correct. I didn't feel the need to point out the reasons *why* prices fell in response to the OP; just to point out that his assertion that current inflation levels are lower than at any time in US history was pure nonsense.
However, I would also note that from 1900-2000, we saw the introduction of the production line, the tremendous growth of both electricity and telephone networks, significantly more dependable and less expensive shipping, and, of course, the entire computer/internet/software revolution, yet the average price level increased by a factor of twenty during that period. (I don't say this to be snotty, just to say that increasing industrial productivity is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for price stability. Some irresponsible wags might suggest that the price increases of the 20th century were due to the complete abandonment of metal-backed money for fiat currency, but such thought is counter-revolutionary, and must be surpressed.)
Geez, didn't Robert Heinlein predict something like this years ago? IIRC, he postulated that future societies would build enormous towers to "poke through" the smog layer into the cooler atmosphere above. Hot air would be brought in the bottom; the hot air would rise and spin turbines, generating electriciy; cooler air would come down, and cool the ground while dispersing pollutants. Of course, he wrote that over 50 years ago, so doubtless he missed some things.
You don't get out much, do you? Check out http://www.westegg.com/inflation/, and try the US from 1800-1850, and 1850-1900. Looking at the latter case first, what cost $100 US in 1850 cost $100.10 in 1900 - virtual price stability over half a century! In the former case, what cost $100 in 1800 cost less than $49 in 1850. Now read that last sentence over slowly for maximum comprehension - prices actually fell by half in the years 1800-1850.
From 1900-1950, prices roughly tripled. From 1950-2000, prices roughly went up by a factor of 7. So if you're trying to say that recent inflation has been less than it was in, say, the 1970's, I'll agree with you, but your original statement is pure nonsense.
Now maybe you mean cost of living. Yes that has gone up, but not so much do to increase costs, those have been steadily dropping as well in terms of real dollars, but in terms of people's expectations.
Now, this is truly hilarious. What is the substantive difference between "cost of living" and "inflation"? Here's the Statistics Canada definition of cost of living:
A cost-of-living adjustment is used to offset a change (usually a decrease) in the purchasing power of income. Cost-of-living adjustments modify future benefits, typically on an annual basis, to keep pace with inflation. These adjustments are usually linked to changes as measured by an index of movements in prices; the most widely used is the Consumer Price Index (CPI).
I'll be the first to admit that there are many different ways to measure inflation, although the CPI is often the most common. The "GDP deflator" is another popular measure; it is usually very close to the CPI figure.
Now, since you're clearly economically illiterate, let me fill you in a couple of not so widely hidden secrets. 1) Since both the US and Canadian governments are on the hook for huge entitlement programs, such as welfare, pensions, etc., all of which are subject to annual COLA changes, both governments have a vested interest in the keeping that COLA number as low as possible. Now, in 2003-2004, the average US household spent 34% of its net income on housing, 18% on transportation, and 13% on food; that's 65% of total disposable income. Doesn't leave a whole lot for those "wants" you rant on about, especially when you consider that health care and insurance/pensions eat up another 15% of income. (http://www.bls.gov/ro6/fax/cex_hou.htm) However, whenever you see "core CPI", it's usually accompanied by the phrase "not including volatile food and energy components". Meanwhile, housing expenses have been adjusted down to reflect the low rates people are paying on "teaser" mortgages that offered low initial rates, no down payment, no principal repayment, "overmortgaging" (i.e. providing a mortgage worth $130,000 on a $100,000 house - sweet, you've got $30k to buy a new car!), etc. Now, when those mortgages get reset this year and next (you have been reading about the sub-prime crisis, haven't you?), what do you want to bet that "volatile housing costs" will also be excluded from the government stats?
And that's not even discussing the "hedonic" adjustments, where beauraucrats attempt to divine how much recent improvements in processor speeds, lower RAM and disk costs, etc. have lowered the "real" cost of computing resources. (I'll be the first to admit that the 512k RAM, 10MB disk Mac that I bought for $3,000 Cdn in 1985 was far more expensive in real terms than the Dell Pentium4 running at 2.8 Ghz with 512 MB RAM, and an 80 GB hard disk for $800 Cdn paid two years ago.) However, how do you compute the decrease in the cost of living from having 4 blades on your razor instead of 2? From having 4 or 6 airbags in your car instead of 2? In short, the official statistics are giggered to produce a consistently
My experience with skipping was they crammed two years (grade 3 and 4) into one. This was in no way a hardship, and it didn't leave any holes in my education. I have no doubts that I could have learned the entire Grade 3 curriculum in six weeks, and maybe 8 weeks for the Grade 4 stuff. I was still way bored most of the time, and in fact, perfected the technique of reading a book in my lap while pretending to listen to the teacher.
In Grade 3, I was skipped (they compressed 3 and 4 into one year for the five of us - four girls and me). The next year, I started Grade 5 - in a class with my older sister which continued until Grade 9, an affront for which she has never entirely forgiven me. I was also a year younger than all the other boys in the class, which meant that I was always the smallest and lightest kid in the class; since the iron code of the schoolyard prevented me from playing games with my age peers in Grade 4, I was always chosen in the last few for sports and games. Doubtless, this contributed to my smart mouth and my rep as "class rebel".
All this was endured within the public school system. In Grade 10, I was admitted to a boys' school in Toronto, modeled on the English schools such as Eton. No phony egalitarianism there! There were two types of classes (or "forms" as they were known) - A-forms, and B-forms. The A-forms were considered the brighter students, and we took seven academic subjects. The B-forms were the lesser lights, and they took 6 classes and a mandatory study hall. In addition, on every report card (of which there were five a year), my ranking in the class ("2 out of 22") was duly noted. Unlike Orwell, I mostly enjoyed my years there; I was still bored from time to time, but many of my classmates had also been skipped, and so I was generally surrounded by bright kids. It also helped that the school teams were Under-15's, Under-16's, etc., so my competition for sports teams was against kids my own age, which helped soothe some of the inferiority I had experienced in public school. (It's no fun always being the shrimp!)
Now I have two daughters, 10 and 13, who have both been accepted into the PACE program at our local school. (PACE is the "Program for Academic and Creative Extension") Now, instead of skipping kids, they are brought together with other bright kids of their own age, where they explore subjects in greater depth than the standard classes. Frankly, I think this works better than skipping them. While both girls admit they are bored from time to time, they also work on more projects and have developed a greater understanding of the material than the standard stream allows. And neither of them have suffered from the social problems that I felt; both have lots of friends and seem well integrated into their classes.
From my perspective, I think the girls' school is doing a good job of challenging them academically without short-changing them socially. As I noted, they are bored at times, but I think all good students will experience those moments; I'm sure there are times their classmates wish my girls were picking something up a little faster.
Of course, this is just one school board, and I don't know what's going on in other boards in Ontario, let alone in Canada. I won't even try to comment on any other country's system.
You must be new here.
Here's what the GP wrote:
"I'd be happy never to see a politician, or hear them, so I'm not influenced by such trivialities." Sorry, I don't agree with your interpretation, I think he *IS* claiming he's not influenced by how a candidate sounds or looks.
Unfortunately, numerous experiments have shown that people are not impervious to such influences. As a pertinent example, people who watched the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon presidential debates thought that the younger, more telegenic Kenneday won the debate over Nixon and his five-o'clock shadow, while people who listened to the debates on radio thought Nixon had won easily. Similarly, good looking people are ascribed better qualities (smarter, better student or worker, nicer, etc.) than ugly people by most observers. Pick up any first year psychology book, and look up the "halo" effect.
Of course, Doc Brown in "Back to the Future" had the idea all along "You people watch so much TV, no wonder the president has to be an actor".
Since they offer qualifying notebooks for as low as $699, and desktops for $599, (which includes system, monitor, OS, and a software bundle including Corel and MS-Works, etc.), it seems to me that the X-box is being given to MDG pretty darn cheap.
This looks like Barbie-doll marketing to me - give away the doll, and make all the money on the outfits. I don't know what cut MS gets from Xbox game sales, but I'd be expecting them to increase it..
I wish I were joking.
Thank you, your comment has been noted.
Please bend over while your anally injected RFID (AIR) is blown in.
Thank you for your co-operation.
The Central Scrutinizeer
You use vinegar as a replacement for K-Y jelly? You are the ultimate /.er!
Further ridiculous note: if your car keys can be found within 30 feet of the vehicle, you can still be charged with "Care and control while impaired", even though the keys are not in the car.
"Hey Joe, betcha I can get wasted before you can..."
Twenty years ago, on my 30th birthday, a friend took me out. They had a breath machine at the bar. I blew .34; my friend was "only" .26, so he drove home. (It
was about 2 miles in a small town; yes, it was irresponsible..)
To me, the funny thing is I signed up that night for the bar's golf tournament
which was held the next day (at 7:00 am!), and I shot a 76 to win the damn thing.
Who'da thunk being hungover was good for your golf game?!
I'm not the OP, but I'll take a stab at it...
At first the easy credit is funnelled into investment (because investment is already a habbit of the old savings-based society). Businesses do amazingly well with all of the new capital and a bunch of new products appear on the market.
Not necessarily; in Weimar Germany, the intial inflation was due to the enormous reparation payments due Britain and France after WWI. This forced the government to start printing money just so that people had enough to eat.
Then, people realize that there's even more credit to be had and start spending it on a few luxuries here and there. Seeing that a few luxuries didn't lead to immediate bankrupcy, people go out and buy more and more things on credit. At some point, the loans come due and since people aren't usually willing to get rid of their stuff they pull their investments out of businesses and use them to pay the loans that have come due. Businesses suffer, wages don't go up and prices don't go down as fast as they should, people go get more loans to support their new spending habbits.
Not at all what's happening in the US right now. People realized their houses (which may have been completely paid off) were worth many thousands more than they had paid for them. Since the US allows mortgage interest deductibility, people realized that the effective interest rate on 2nd mortgages on their homes were much less than the usurious rates charged on credit cards. (3-4% vs. 20-28%). Thus, the "housing ATM" was born, and it was exacerbated by "Easy Al" Greenspan's reductions in fed funds rates over the late 90's and early 80's. This, in turn with the introduction of no-money-down mortgages and adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs), let many people into the credit market who had no business being there.
Now this has recently led to a "repricing" (nice euphemism there!) of credit risk, which has caused a bunch of hedge funds to close, many others to lose massive amounts of their customers' investments, and the delay or cancellation of a number of bond issues intended to take public companies private. However, there has been no massive exit from the stock markets; in fact, for the first six months of 2007, the net flow of funds into the US markets was positive.
The spiral continues until many of the jobs have been outsourced to cheap foreign labour (since the locals are demanding higher wages which businesses can't/won't provide - especially when they face the threat of having their share price go down). Desperate politicians resort to pork-barrel spending and random wars to prop up the economy, but the inflation these actions cause hurts the middle and lower classes more than it helps the businesses that sustain them, forcing them further into debt.
Um, Russia, Argentina and Weimar Germany all experienced massive increases in credit and money supply in the 1920's, and subsequent hyperinflation but none started any "random" wars. Nor did they start "exporting" jobs to lower cost jurisdictions; in fact, they generally erected tariff barriers to maintain domestic employment (as did the US, Britain, and France). Global free trade is a relatively new phenomenon.
A few generations go by. People forget all about the crash of 'whenever. The cycle repeats.
This point I do agree with; it's summed up in the old proverb "From rags to rags in three generations".
Well, this is certainly a unique perspective. I think most people rooted in reality would believe that the increasing education and emancipation of women, combined with the dramatic reduction of both death in childbirth and infant mortality, the increased availability of reliable contraception and the elimination of societal taboos against sex outside of marriage, and the establishment of a social safety net that transferred care of the aged from their families to the state, are responsible for non-immigrant first world women choosing to have fewer babies and choosing to have them later in life. But you are definitely free to indulge your fantasy of rich women staying up until the wee small hours, poring over spreadsheets calculating their net worth, while their semi-impotent husbands ponder the choice between butterfly-spread option strategies and the yen-carry trade.
I've read pretty much everything written by both authors, and love them both, but this is not a comparison I would have made. I would be sincerely interested if you would elaborate.
My dad was a big sci-fi fan, and I read his back copies of "Analog" and "Astounding" pulps in the early 60's. My mom worked as a librarian, and so we got advanced access to all the new, good SF as it came out. I especially enjoyed Judith Merrill's "The Year's Best SF" anthologies, which introduced me to authors such as Fred Pohl, Philip K. Dick, and Fritz Leiber. (I was also lucky to attend the engineering school at the University of Toronto; directly across from the engineering building was Merrill's "Spaced Out Library", which was the most complete selection of SF works I had ever seen. Many a happy lunch hour was spent there!)
I like Gibson, not because he's some techno-visionary, but because he's an exquisite writer. Fritz Leiber's "Gonna Roll Some Bones" is about a boy whose co-ordination is so good, he can throw rock chips back into place in the rock - there's some serious suspension of disbelief required here! - but the beauty of the story is in Leiber's prose, not the premise. Virtually everything Philip K. Dick wrote seemed completely implausible 40 years ago, but the stories were still fascinating reads. (When you consider that "Blade Runner", "Total Recall" and "Minority Report" were all based on Dick's works, it appears that Hollywood can better transform his stories to the screen than those of other SF writers. I offer the movie versions of "Neuromancer" and "Starship Troopers" as evidence.)
I also find it interesting that Neal Stephenson has also gone back in time, with the "Diamond Age", and his "Baroque Cycle" (which I'm plowing through at the moment; Mom's passed away, and I'm too cheap to buy the hardcovers). I'm half expecting him to do some novels based on the Renaissance next.
I prefer Timbuk3's "Future's so bright, I gotta wear shades"
Now, where can I find 82.644 Deloreans?
I bet most California politicians of any stripe (Repub/Dem/Moonbat) disliked the idea of a cap on property taxes but somehow, that got on the ballot, and became law. What happened to citizen-sponsored referenda or propositions?
And I agree with other posters on this and other threads who wonder why the first Tuesday in November is the only day you vote. Here in Canada, we vote on different days for our federal, provincial, and municipal candidates. The municipal one is normally the most complicated, as you are often voting for mayor, ward councillor, school trustee (and we used to vote for hydro trustees as well, although I think that's gone now.)
At any rate, I still want someone to tell me why my concept of an electronic machine that prints a copy of your ballot, which you, after reviewing it, then put into a sealed box at the polling station, doesn't meet the criteria of a swift count with a tamper-proof backup system.
I bought an "e-bike" this week. It's a 7-speed bicycle with a 700W motor assist. It uses a sealed lead-acid battery for power storage. Now, the motor is great for going up steep hills and long grades (I'm a 51-year old geezer, and I'm not courting a heart attack), and on the downhills, I don't need the motor at all. But on the flats - the battery, which must weigh 30 lbs at least (and it feels like more), really does slow you down. My old beater (which is a 7 speed without any motor) is a lot easier to ride on level services; it requires less effort to get up to speed, and to maintain speed.
So I'm eagerly awaiting lighter power sources as well!