Aileron

SeVeR POW Camp != Prison. One is for soldiers, the other is for criminals. How about instead of Charles Manson, we get behind the Weatherman Bomber like Obama has!! Bak, being patriotic and being blind are too entirely different things. Blindness can go with patriotism, true, but it can also go with anti-patriotic sentiment, support of a 'scientific' theory, political stance, religious support, economic stand, sports team preference, and even the desire to stay in the neutral moderate position. To sum it all up: any opinion under the Sun. Suffice to say one cannot be too patriotic; one can only be blind. I think the fault in the choice of topic has been established. Its impossible to be 46% arabic anyway, I think. You can only get intervals of 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, etc.

That's one opinion. I'm inclined to agree. Not to criticize those who claim to be compassionate, but they weren't. They were trying to earn 'pat on the back' points. The first step to solving the food problem in Africa is identifying it. I have some thoughts here, but ultimately I'd be exaggerating if I said I knew. Some simple possibilities: 1) The terrain cannot support the number of people on it. Possible in desert areas, though it probably isn't likely overall. Solution: people need to move out. 2) Some corrupt excuse for government is preventing it from happening. It isn't as far-fetched in third world areas, as starvation is and effective means of population control. Solution: Kill the ASSS. 3) Old traditional tribes are mandated by cultural belief to stay in the stone age. There are many tribes in which sons will inherit their profession and their tools from their father, a tradition which has been going on for thousands of years in some cases. Solution: They need to be persuaded to adopt a more modern culture. 4) There aren't enough people with enough training and property to start a farm. Solution: Train people to be farmers and give them investment capital. This is an unlikely problem, as if it were, the aid would have made a dent in it. Most of those solutions are things people wouldn't consider as nice things to do. The major paradox is that in order to be compassionate, one needs to be discomp!@#$%^&*ionate, but if one becomes too discomp!@#$%^&*ionate, one loses the point of being compassionate entirely.

pfft... I don't like how this event becomes a push to offer birth control pills to students. Obviously, whoever is proposing this decided what the answer is long ago and twist any event around to justify their rationalization. Such a program will have no effect on girls who want to get pregnant. The bright side is that if a solution to this situation comes up, a solution to the broader problem will be found. I will point out that a 17 year old getting pregnant is not that terrible. It shoots down the chances of the girl going to college, but she could probably support the child. Ofcourse, it would help if the father wasn't some bum she found off the street. The major problem is that you can't take the stupid out of the teenager. In ages past, it was solved with a 'respect your elders' mentality, where the young would pay attention to the advice of those more experienced than themselves. I guess the other problem is that we've created a culture of teenage rebellion, where every generation absolutely cannot respect those older than them and who've been around the block a time or two. If parents say 'don't jump off the bridge', teenagers feel they have to just for the sake of rebelling against authority. !@#$%^&*, I must be getting old...

The fundamental problem is that they view the universe as cyclic rather than entropic. There is no such thing as renewable energy.

Look, I'll be the first one in line to say that outward appearance means crap, but the reason I care about the lapel pin is because it is such a small step to showing patriotism. I mean, McCain has given up years of his life for our country in the Hanoi Hilton, while Obama isn't willing to sacrifice a spot on his suit for it. Still, rest !@#$%^&*ured that it is at the bottom of my list right above his genetic background. I just thought it was worth mentioning As suspected, my spelling was off. His name is William Ayers. Wikipedia It doesn't mention anything about bombing the Pentagon there admittingly, but if I'm wrong I wasn't far off the mark. The point being, he was a serial bomber, and Obama is his friend. Bak, McCain hasn't befriended the nuts you mention. My point is that Obama has nuts in his core social network. They won't hold any power, but the fact that he loves those people does say something about who he is. Naht, patriotism is a factor for the position of president. This isn't merely a job they are applying for. They need to be the face, voice, and will of the country, and they can't do that while hating it. And yes, I will only scoop up my side of the ice cream because this is a debate, not a monologue. I'm not trying to promote some unbiased neutral opinion - I'm trying to promote my opinion. I figure those on the other side will scoop up the other side of the ice cream themselves. Well, what I do like about McCain is that he isn't a lawyer. He's I don't know how many generations of military. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if the McCain family has been military since the days of William Wallace. I was watching the History channel one time, a show called 'Fire at Sea', about the same time where Hillary made her bogus claim to have dodged sniper fire, where they were discussing a disaster on the USS Onsk (spelling?), when McCain's fighter was shot by a runaway missile and the footage showed him climbing out of the burning airplane. He has also supposedly done a fair job in the skies before being shot down and spending years as a POW. Overall, he's a honest to God war hero. He has three sons in the military, one of which is a Marine Officer stationed in Iraq as we speak, so we know he isn't going to do anything stupid in the War on Terror as it is his sons' !@#$%^&*es on the line. Granted, I'm beginning to realize that the Marines are just the Navy's sad attempt to emulate the Army, but in a two party system I'll settle for a Navy family. And, as I said, he's not a lawyer. Thus he hasn't been trained to think like 2/3rds of the politicians in Congress. He has the potential to create major improvements, though I hold a reservation in that up to this point he hasn't shown the capacity to commit. Still, its a two party system, and Obama seems perfectly willing to commit to every stupid antagonistic 'change' which he dreams up in his lawyer head.

whoops...I put 'up' instead of 'down' there.

Technically a 3d engineering CAD diagram wouldn't need to be that pretty, though you have a point if you are talking marketing.

Quite, staff here is always responsamable. You know, it isn't that ironic that it was created by gaming chips. If you think about it, most of the need in PCs for more RAM, better processors, Video RAM, etc. came primarily to accommodate more graphic intensive PC games which needed to compete with consoles. I mean, can anyone think of a business application for a 128 MB Video RAM card?

Confess, that sucks, but overall energy is a supply-demand thing. If the supply is down, the greedy stingy sons of !@#$%^&*es have less power to screw people. Your problem is that for too long hippy environmentalists opposed any and all power generation until demand is barely below supply, allowing maximum 'screwing' capability to the suppliers. Leave it to a Baptist to take eight minutes before he can say 'IMF and the World Bank'. I mean, I believe him, but he needs to get to the point faster.

Well, one thing that is true is that generally a nation needs to share a common culture to obtain enough unity to survive, and with that comes a common language. There are plenty of examples from history - at the moment the Ottoman and Greek empires come to mind. Even if initially the cultures have an at!@#$%^&*ude of looking past their differences, it still won't stand the test of time. Multiculturalism generally leads to a slow death as the different groups slowly show less and less trust towards each other over time until eventually the 'empire' is just a name for a group of several different nations with no sense of unity. These people are the inevitable outcome of trying to have two languages in one country. Keep in mind that when the British allowed two language Canada to develop, they weren't looking to create a nation - they just wanted a colony to milk resources from. The situation is not dissimilar to New Orleans, which was initially built as a fur trading port, and turned into a waiting disaster as it developed into a metropolis. The only thing this group is wrong about is that they have it backwards. They should learn English. Face it, French sucks. They deserved to lose their language anyway for getting their !@#$%^&* kicked back in the colonial days.

Well, I don't mind his race, though I do mind him. For starters, note the sig. For reference, I was told that quote is somewhere in his book 'Audacity of Hope'. While it does not technically place him on the side of the enemy, a person running for the leadership of the country should be saying that he would stand by the United States no matter what the political situation. I mind his friendship with 'Reverend' Wright. Obama certainly knew what this man was preaching, and he befriended him for 20 years. If instead we take Obama at his word and assume that he infact didn't know what Wright was preaching for 20 years - it makes Obama a clueless blind fool. I mind his friend William Heirs (spelling?), who's life achievement is bombing the Pentagon and killing several of our soldiers and who's only regret is that he didn't get more. Anyone applying for a position responsible for leading our military should hate people who kill soldiers. (On a side note, the man is now a professor at some university. In my humble opinion, the man should have been shot for treason. He got off on a technicality, fine. That still doesn't mean he deserves a cushy job. What's he an expert in anyway? How to indoctrinate liberal arts fools into a radical left-wing mentality?) I mind the fact that his wife 'only now' likes the United States, a country which overall has been good to her - she's always had a roof over her head, food on her table, and enough opportunity to become a practicing lawyer. Her ingra!@#$%^&*ude makes her a spoiled !@#$%^&* in my book. I mind the fact that Obama refuses to wear an American flag lapel pin because it would show more patriotism than he has. I know, what someone wears is trivial, but come on! The President should be a man so patriotic he not only wears the lapel pin, but also dresses in red white and blue, has the 'Star Spangled Banner' as the ring tone for his cell phone, and wears American flag print boxer shorts. In short, the President should be one of the most patriotic people in the country and must not be afraid to show it. So, I don't mind how much Arabic blood flows through Obama's veins. I have plenty to hate him on already. Look, I know Obama has a D after his name and McCain has an R after his. Is there any other reason why an American would not prefer McCain?

You know, I miss the good old days when politicians would simply lie to us and tell us they'll lower our taxes when they won't, rather than this whole 'demonize this group so we can raise taxes on them and get kudos for it' scheme.

I don't like the conclusion of the first article. They propose a 'solution' of requiring a judge to sign-off before using the system. That will make things worse. Ripa should simply be limited to misdemeanors, no judge required. The task of catching terrorists is something that legal experts are woefully incapable of handling. You know while in the UK they voted to put people in jail without charges, in the US the Supreme Court voted to give cons!@#$%^&*utional rights to detainees. In the leftist/rightist mentality there was one step in each direction, but I actually disagree with BOTH decisions! The reality is, terrorists are enemies, not criminals. The reason why the terrorist legal definition is dysfunctionally broad is because an enemy is typically someone who hasn't committed a crime, though it is not wrong to lock them up - it's war. Generally the mutual understanding in a relationship between enemies is that we'd kill them and they'd kill us if things were different. On the other, criminals are not terrorists. They deserve to have charges pressed.

I don't know why revenues are the same either. The article cited a different theory which made an explanation, but really all it did was show data which indicated it without explaining why. If there are too many farmers, then the extra ones are non-essential. They actually become 'rubber duck salesman' because the quan!@#$%^&*y of food is not needed. The problem in the real world a few years back was that it became economically correct in the short term for farmer to choose other professions, but if a farm goes under, it is replaced by a development - never to return to being a farm again, and over the long term the need for food is going to increase. If we left it alone, we would have problems trying to feed ourselves later. Otherwise, there wouldn't be much of a problem asking some farmers to switch professions. I mean, its not nice, but its life. I'll admit the fact that farms are so productive is most of the reason I think ethanol could work. I mean, it has problems, but can follow the laws of physics and economics.

Lol, on that note in the past week I've received five separate job offers from art sellers in the UK for me to accept payments for art they sell in the US, and transfer it to them. All I need to do is send out some personal info. You gotta admit that the bull!@#$%^&* these iden!@#$%^&*y thieves come up with is funny.

I don't think a true artificial intelligence is even possible Suicide. All computer programs need to be based upon algorithms, and it is impossible to create an algorithm capable of handling an infinite number of possible situations as exists in reality. Certainly one can create a computer program which can react inside a computerized, or any other unnatural finite environment, and one can also approximate the number of possibilities pretty good.

Thanks, I've applied to both positions.

Finland, if the article is true, the money is being effectively, but not actually destroyed. If the revenues are the same no matter how much you tax the rich, then taxing them extra will cause the rich to lose money, though total revenues remain the same, meaning the money goes nowhere and is *effectively* destroyed. It is anti-intuitive, though unlike matter, money can be created and destroyed, and not just at the mint. Para, if a job performs a needed good or service, it can't possibly pay low enough that someone can't afford to live on it, if the economy is healthy. Suppose a small village has three people in it. There is Adam, a farmer, Bob, a mechanic, and Charlie, a truck driver. Bob and Charlie need Adam's food. Adam and Charlie need Bob to fix their combine and their truck. Adam and Bob need Charlie to ship in needed goods from the outside world. If Adam's wage is so low that he can't afford Bob and Charlie's services, he'll have to leave the village. However, that would mean that Bob and Charlie would be without food and thus would be willing in increase Adam's price until he agrees to stay. Now, the national economy is a lot more complicated than the simple village, though the basic principle is the same. Also, note there is a major qualifier in that the economy has to be mostly healthy for this to work. If Charlie has 90% of the villages' money, he does have the power to !@#$%^&* up the system. Not completely - he still needs his food and his truck fixed, but he could reduce Adam and Bob's life to virtual servitude. Now, the other rub is, if you add a fourth person to the village, Dave, the rubber duck salesman, he isn't guaranteed a working salary. If Adam, Bob or Charlie have extra money, they might buy a rubber duck, but if they don't, Dave could be out of luck, because Dave isn't performing an essential function. Most jobs in a national economy are in the non-essential category ever since the dark ages. However, the reason people want more money in the first place is so they can eventually buy things with it, so on a national scale Dave wouldn't be screwed either provided people wanted rubber ducks. The point being, you aren't always wrong when you say some people can't find a job they can afford to live off of, but you are usually wrong, and you are only right when there is a seriously !@#$%^&*ed up economy, such as the feudal age economy where 5% of the people weren't in debt up to their ears, or for a more modern example during the Great Depression. You would have to prove that the economy is that !@#$%^&*ed up before making that claim, and at the moment we don't live in the third world so that's impossible to do. Veg, my degree is in Math. (Not education, the Science of Mathematics). Currently my major problem seems to be an anti-capitalistic force in the form of a flat GPA cap used by government jobs and most scientific companies. My grades weren't that good. Then, a group of HR !@#$%^&*!@#$%^&*s decide they won't look at someone with less than a 3.0 GPA, and suddenly a lot of recent science majors are out of work while the companies are now !@#$%^&*ing about how they don't have enough people who know science. Duh, if they lower their !@#$%^&*ing standards, they'll get people!! And no, getting bad marks in school doesn't make me lazy; the lazy people are the ones who either dropped out or changed their major to 'History of Philosophy' or something along those lines. The vast majority of science programs have 50% attrition rates, so just holding the degree places someone above average. Now, before the rest of you start acting like socialism is the answer, as I said this is a two sided problem brought on by the anti-capitalistic force of arrogant HR people, so the solution involves them getting rid of the stupid caps rather than rich people being taxed. Enough griping then. For starters, I certainly need to move out of my current geographical area. Now, I've been looking for science and engineering entry level jobs and internships accrossed the country for over a year, so forgive me, but I've given up there. I've also looked into graduate school (in something other than Math, such as Engineering Mechanics), but the largest problem among others is that my former professors won't back me up in that endeavor (though they will ask me to give them money). Plan A right now is to get a commission for the Army and pray Obama doesn't get elected. (You may think that Math would be more suited for the Air Force, but they happen to be one of the aforementioned !@#$%^&*!@#$%^&*s who decided to use a flat GPA cap.) I could also get a job in teaching, though I hated high school, and insurance sales, though I don't have the type of 'moral character' needed to talk an old lady into giving me her life savings. There seems to be a lot of people in insurance sales with a degree in a natural science. Still, if you can name a company willing to hire a Mathematician with a poor GPA, or in your case a company willing to pay 35k to someone without even a degree, I'd still be happy to send them a resume.

Closed for bumping.

Where exactly? I'm still looking for a decent job.

Well, my life experience has taught me that there is a major difference between 'effort' and 'work'. In Physics, the concept of 'Work' is a vector. It has a magnitude, but it also has a direction. For example, if a 2 ton block is moved a mile to the right, then a mile to the left, no work was done because the block is still where it started. Generally, if someone signs up for a low-wage job and tries to bust their !@#$%^&* at that job while lacking a long term career plan, he spends a lot of effort but does no work because of his lack of direction. True, it is impossible to be in a national state where most people have management jobs, but that's not the objective. The objective is for everyone to make enough money to meet their short term and long term needs, a state which is easy to obtain because everyone is both a worker and a consumer, but it could have two catches: The first is indeed that if too much wealth gets held up into the super-rich, it can cause radical poverty. A rich person has no more needs and relatively few more wants than anyone else, so if you have one person with the salary of a thousand, you have 999 salaries locked up. Currently, there just aren't enough rich people to do this yet. Now, if we go back to the topic, !@#$%^&*uming the article was correct, taxing that salary would take away some of the money and permanently locking it up by effectively destroying it. I know the jury is still out on its correctness, but if it is correct, it disproves socialism on the taxing end. Anyway, I'd rather we focus on preventing one person from making that kind of money in the first place, byp!@#$%^&*ing the socialism vs capitalism argument altogether. Generally, the weird thing about free market capitalism is that with money comes the power to take the 'free market' out of the free market system, so I'll admit we do need the government to balance out certain anti-capitalistic forces once in a while. There is certainly some anti-capitalistic force at work in the modern day, because there is no way Steve Job's talents have higher economic worth than that of a thousand mortals. It is the result of how the modern corporation is built, so the modern corporation needs to be restructured. There should be some laws written regarding corporate salaries and stock options. Maybe there should be a law stating that all jobs must pay in either cash or paid benefits, abolishing the concept of 'stock option'. The second problem is gas. It could very well be that people won't be able to afford to drive to work for a minimum wage job in a few years.

Astro, in response to your statement - huh? You aren't exactly attacking the theory. You are attacking an imaginary theory about a flat income tax being the solution to all problems. A better way to interpret if is to say you can increase taxes to a point, but that there is a natural cap to how much can be taxed after which point revenues are not increased. The other at!@#$%^&*ude is how 'the US is badly screwed'. The US still has the strongest economy in the world. The value of the US dollar is still higher than any other strictly uni-national currency. Yes, there are problems, but those problems are relatively small given the larger picture, and the solution to those problems should also be relatively small. I guess a good book on the subject is "Crazies to the Left of Me, Wimps to the Right" by Bernard Goldberg. He essentially states that the problem with the democrats is that long ago they stopped being the working man's party and became the party of unproven idealism, while the republicans have sold out principles in order to buy votes. He doesn't state a solution, but I will. The major problem is that there are large segments of working populations which will vote Democrat period end of story. For instance, the Democratic Party gets votes from the Unions. Because of that, they don't have to compete for the unions, and can afford to politically avoid the unions. Meanwhile, the Republicans won't bother to help the working man because its already a lost cause. The whole situation can be solved if a few unions cross over. If those votes became contested ground, politicians would fight over it.

Astro, obviously anything printed in a newspaper is going to be simplified. Overall, its a theory, meaning that now is the part where other economists test it. Finland, I agree with you about the existence of the problem. My viewpoint on the solution is what is different. I'll even agree that taxing the rich won't hurt! I just don't think it will help.

Jeez, anyone else want to state an opinion other than myself and the Komrade?

Back to the topic, I don't think it is a good idea. The purpose of insurance (in a perfect world, not the real world) is to distribute money to those who need it due to random disaster. It takes low probability high cost events and turns them into certain probability low cost events. It capitalistically corrects for dangerous high risk behaviors. Now, in the real world, lawyers dictate. Insurance is has essentially become a legalized way for lawyers to extort our money, so it is no surprise they want to insure whatever possible. The reason speeding ticket insurance is not a good idea is that a speeding ticket is a punishment for a crime. Insuring speeding tickets only means that the person who committed the crime's sentence is distributed among all those paying for the insurance. Suppose there was a 'convicted of a felony' insurance, and say 20 people signed up. One robs a bank, gets caught and sentenced to 20 years in jail. Due to the insurance, that 'cost' is spread among all the other users, and all twenty people, including the 19 innocent people, spend one year in jail. Speeding ticket insurance is the same thing, only we are talking money instead of time, and a misdemeanor instead of a felony. The only reason this idea isn't laughable is because people break the speed limit all the time, and getting caught resembles a random event. And that's the best case scenario 'perfect world' outcome. In real life, the people with the insurance will get screwed much more than this.