$1000 per month for a single person, which works out to just over $11.50/hour at 40 hours/week.

What? 40*11.5 is $460 a week. 4 weeks to a month gives us something like $1840 a month. Almost double the poverty level you brought up. $1000 a month comes out to about $6.25 an hour on a 40 hour week.

You want fries with that?

I don't know how you get that from what he said.

I took it as pay attention, if you cost more than automation would cost, you will likely be training your replacement. If a 20,000 dollar robot can do your job for years on that 20,000 and you are insisting on being paid $28,000 a year- well simple math tells you which is more cost effective. And that doesn't even include taxes and crap you have to pay on a live person.

SO i guess what you can take from that is if you want paid more, provide more value or perhaps another job that cannot be replaced by robots.

Probably.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article...

You will find stories that this is BS also but there was a parade of flight trainers from all around the world talking about having this problem with their Korean students on all the talking head shows.

Who is more likely to be injured by pollution, the poor or the rich? (The poor, because they tend to live in dirtier areas.) And therefore who stands to gain the most, relative to their discretionary income, from recouping the medical costs and lost sick days from that pollution? (Also the poor, because they have little to no discretionary income.)

Not really. The poor tend to be the source of their own pollution moreso than suffering other people's pollution. They mix chemicals like Bleach and Lime away in cleaning, have open fires they sit right beside and in some cases in the path of the smoke. They do a lot of things like eat poor diets, do drugs and alcohol and others that for the most part, place themselves in more danger than pollution.

Also, in the US at least, the poor do not pay their medical bills. They have nothing to take and nothing to lose so if they are not on some government program (which they should be due to Obamacare) they simply do not pay. Most poor also do not take sick days. They go to work sick if they go to work at all. I'm just not able to take your scenario into reality.. At least the reality I know anyways.

So you are correct that it will raise prices, but it will also provide the poor with two benefits. Two for the price of one is a good deal, don't you think?

Yes, it will mean their electricity is turned off and their ability to own a car- the one sense of freedom they might have a connection with, will be taken by the expenses incurred. Of course they can walk anywhere they want to go because they are less then us Rich People, but maybe that is not a good idea because food will skyrocket too and they will have a caloric problem. But hey, what a great utopia you are building there, are you planning on inviting people or just forcing them to join you?

Of course the rich will complain about paying the full societal cost of their lifestyle because they won't see as much benefit in it as the poor, but I wouldn't worry too much about them being able to afford it. By the way, are you rich?

That's right, in the land of the have and the have nots, the Rich will still be watching their big screen TVs while sitting in their heated hot tubs running the AC because it is hot out there. The soccer mom will make two and three trips instead of one round to get the gang to their sports, music, and such because that SUV is no longer within their price range to operate. Well, that or Junior and his siblings get to participate in back yard sports and banging pots and pans together only.

But hey, none of this matters because you get your way right? I'm remembering something Margette Thatcher said. It's something like you don't care if the poor are poorer as long as you can make the rich less rich.. Do I have it summed up right? Oh yeah, I forgot. You are altruistically doing this for their health.

Not much energy storage is needed to prevent blackouts, even with intermittent sources such as wind and solar, as long as electricity is always priced at market equilibrium to prevent blackouts. And since pricing something below market equilibrium is never a good long-term strategy, there's no technical reason why wind and solar cannot provide most of the nation's needs.

We have had solar or at least known about it since the 1800's. We had it availible to the masses since the 70s. We have had wind power for longer but more directly, it used to power most of the mid west until after the hoover dam was built and grid power became reliable in the 1930s. If what you say is true, I'm shocked that we ever left wind and solar go. The fact of the matter is that we do not have the capabilities to use wind and solar for our electrical demands and there isn't sufficient storage to compete with other methods. If we could, it would be online right now without governments mandating it.

Now I know you are going to say "it is perfectly fine in this little universe". The problem is that wherever that little universe is, it different from the little universes a lot of other people live in. I know you will have a bunch of excuses and a bunch of ifs and so on, I also know that you care more about a concept than the people it will hurt and you will look for ways to actively make yourself feel better about those concepts even though they are pure theoretical and not to grounded in reality.

charge the polluters for the damage they cause, and give the revenue to those injured by pollution. This will give polluters the proper incentive to curb their emissions and it will pay the medical costs and lost sick days of those injured by pollution, all without harming the economy.

More like it will allow the misfortune (probably poor) to be able to afford the products and services you just made super expensive. I mean seriously, a scheme like this will never result in anything other then the costs being passed on to the consumer until there is a viable replacement for technology that pollutes. And no, wind and solar are not there- neither is storage capabilities. All the pollution you will reduce by those schemes is the pollution caused by the poor and lower middle class being priced out of markets. If that is your big idea on cleaning the planet up, I'll be the first in line to take a dump on your porch.

They already have autopilots for boats..

Perhaps an automatic rescue system that pulls people who fall in back to safety at the marinas? Or maybe in a pool where children may find their way where they aren't supposed to be.

NAh, they said the crew knew they were coming in to low and fast but because of rank, didn't want to correct the pilot. The pilot landing was supposedly doing his first off autopilot landing too.

That was a situation of not acting to prevent a bad landing and inexperience. It seems it was not failing to see the outside or the instruments being wrong.

Yes they do. And i have seen the cops training snd talking about it first hand.

My brother got a german shepard pup and took him to be trained. I picked them up once when his car was broke down. The cops use the same training facility to recertify their dogs so i figured i would watch a bit. I overheard one officer telling another that each dog will use one of three different cues when they want them to go off. He said they use three different ones to keep it simple yet different enough that its hard to tell when they are being directed to go off. They then joked around about how easy it was tp search anyone and blame it on a stupid dog. They also knew i was there and didn't bother trying to conceal this discusion or the methods.

I mentioned something to my brother about it and he said it is common to hear that crap there. He said if you say anything about it, the cops will pull you over and make up reasons and you wont be able to train your dog there anymore. Evidently, this trainer was that good that no one would say anything.

Actually, you cannot separate the two. Its valid regardless because those who would lable something a scam are not convinced it is real. And even if they where convinced, they aren't convinced in the application hense the questioning which spures the backlash.

Sure it does. At least to those who aren't sure the earth is round.

The problem is that real things can be used to scam people. A used car salesman might say the EPA estimated fuel milage for this car is 28 miles yo a gallon but he knows the engine is in a state of disrepair and it will be lucky to get 20mpg.

Anthropogenic global warming has certainly seen its shady parts too. From congressional staffers usong an almanac to pick yhe historically hottest day of summer to schedule hearing on it then turning th AC off and claiming it was broke to groups like jubily2000 gettjng their goals included in the kyoto protocal which was billed as a cure butbearly made a first step. And thats without getting into the smaller issues like skepyics being refused access to data and methods being deleted so original works cannot be validated.

Here is a popular scam people call up asking for a donation to some retired or fallen police officers fund. The fund exists but the requests are not official and the money never gets to the fund. A scam through and through- but the fund is real. And when you ask to many questions, they get pissy, mouth off and hang up.

Terminator- Isn't this the theme or premise behind the matrix movies too?

The machines evolve and trap humans and use them as batteries except they have to create an artificial reality else they die of boredom too easily.

What's to stop an AI system from becoming psychopathic machines who believe they are demigods?

If machines become sentient if you will, capable of independent thought, they will be largely like humans. Most if them will likely assimilate into society and some would act as slaves. The key will be making them dependent on humans and not fully autonomous. That way, if worse case scenario happens, humans can stop servicing some aspect and they all go dark.

Spending on destruction is worthless. You might as well spend the same money for some worthwhile goal instead, getting the same results at a fraction of $800+ billion a year.

Spending on destruction prevents destruction. Having a nuclear arsenal pretty much means they will not be used on us by any sane country wanting to survive the fight. Having the most advanced military possible does somewhat of the same. The arms race actually ensures the arms will not be used because counter measures become ineffective.

This is why we didn't start bombing Russia when they took part of the Ukraine. It's why we didn't bomb Syria when they crossed the red line in the sand and allowed Russia to bail us out. It is why Russia didn't attack us when we ignored their concerns and did things anyways. WWI was more or less about hot tempers with relatively primitive arms and tactics (bulky machine guns and trenches) until after the war started. If we had the arms and defensive structures we have today, WWI likely never would have started. It certainly wouldn't have been a world war if it did start.

The problem is that the safe harbor provision doesn't require ISPs or Network providers to do anything but remove claimed infringing content per a DMCA request and replace it per a counter claim. Well, that is as long as the infringing content is a product of the third party and not the ISP's actions.

Doing that should legally be doing enough. This is a bit different than Youtube as youtube exists for the sole purpose of something similar to the copyrighted materials whereas ISPs are simply a carrier allowing you to make decisions on where to go and what to access or provide.

But the cost of providing those services isn't the same. First, the probability of a forest fire is roughly proportional to the area of land, because lightning doesn't care.

You are missing a key point. the land does not disappear if one person owns 50 acres or if 50 people own 1 acre each right next to each other. It is still there and still costs the same. Like you said, lightning doesn't care.

Second, people are more likely to steal from big, expensive houses than slums, and people are more likely to build big, expensive houses on large pieces of land than small ones, so police protection tends to be (at least to some extent) proportional to land area as well.

Not really. Expensive homes are more likely to have high dollar security systems, cameras, and serial numbers recorded. Middle class homes would be a more probable target. Slums of course are still there as opportunity remains and according to the data, people with income of 7.500 or less are victims of theft and violent crimes like assault more than people with incomes over 75k.

http://nortonbooks.typepad.com....

Even things like utilities cost more for larger pieces of land, because the utility companies have to run their cables past your property to get to the next potential customer, and the longer your property is, the more it costs to do so. They only get one customer per property, so larger properties effectively raise the installation cost for everyone on your block.

They must do it different where you live. In my neck of the woods, the utility company will come a maximum of 25 feet into the property for their demarcation point. Anything after that and it is up to the property owner to run.

Now, the distance between properties don't mean anything because the land doesn't magically disappear of you own less.

Actually, they are, to some degree. When's the last time you heard of somebody breaking into a falling down shack because they thought the person might have stuff worth stealing? And as I said, forest fires are proportional to area. And house fires... well, those are more determined by the age of the home than anything else, so those tend to be inversely proportional to the cost of the home, but they're still mathematically related. :-)

Only if you start with incorrect assumptions in the first place. But please tell me, how likely is it that someone would have a million dollar home on 50 acres of land with a falling down shack that someone thinks is stuffed full of goodies? The falling down shack is more likely on less expensive property or maintained. You see, rich people don't like looking at the trash we regular people have to put up with. The shack would likely either be repaired, removed, or replaced before it appears falling down.