And I said how people eat beans and rice in the US.

I know exactly what he meant. It's just not likely to happen that way as I already said. "I just don't seem to think it would happen in practice often. Americans like flavor"

As for the rest of your comment, I agree except with the birth control thing. Granted, people shouldn't be having kids they cannot afford but it is not our place to tell people they can or cannot have kids. And I'm not about to let a kid suffer because their parents are imbeciles so I guess it is a catch 22. Make it available, but it's their choice.

Evidently, people who are willing to log in and put their reputation on it are buying into that. You on the other hand, well..

Carbon taxes are bad ideas in the first place. They are simply convoluted and will not achieve anything substantial. There are better ways if results is what we are really after.

Are you confusing the DoE with the EPA? I think you might be.

Ignored is likely right.

I didn't see anything that made spying on either side legal, only that the dutch could acquire the information gathered from it legally. It's likely illegal in both places to do the spying but the government would ignore it as long as they had a benefit to gain.

There is a difference between something being legal and something not being prosecuted and ignored instead.

National Debt as a percentage of GDP went from ~35% to 55% under Reagan. About a 60% increase relative to itself (35/55)

Has nothing to do with the population getting poor. Does not even denote any disaster either.

The minimum wage for the same period went up about 20%. Viewing national debt vs minimum wage, the 99% of people who make less than 10x minimum wage, saw their real wealth and purchasing power vanish relative to the previous generation.

And this was happening long before Reagan got into office. Inflation was a bitch under Carter and there were more unemployed.

Whatever faults you may, rightly or wrongly, saddle Carter with, he got F-ed by OPEC and the malaise from Vietnam, neither of which were his fault. The pattern is that Repubs break stuff, the Dems clean it up and then The Repubs campaign on "stop cleaning! Things are clean enough? Let's party!"

Stop sugar coating it. Carter couldn't even get a democrat controlled congress to pass his crap most of the time. The rest of your rubbish is just that- likely formed from your lack of or inability to see the world for what it is. Now note, I am not saying republicans are any better or worse. I'm not even going to tread into those waters. I'm just saying Carter screwed the pooch so much worse than Reagan ever did.

As for Mr. Bean below, genuinely poor urbanites often don't have access to an oven or full size refridgerator, much less a store that sells 25# bags of rice or beans for less than a buck a pound. I do, but every place I can reasonably walk home from without milk spoiling on a hot day confines itself to 4 serving portions. The closet don't even carry gallons of milk, just quarts or maybe half gallons at times. For $7 a half gallon. Not everyone has access to direct bus routes, much less a car and Amex for Costco runs. Your reality is not the same as theirs.

Something I completely agree with. Sometimes a bus isn't even an option because there are no regular bus lanes in the area.

I'm lucky in that where I live now, you can get a gallon of milk for $3.50 to $5 in a gas station convenience store. You can also find 1 pound bags of beans and sometimes rice in them too. But I have been in those spots you describe and if it isn't a candy bar, some sort of prepared sandwich, or a boxed meal item with an expiration date a year past, it likely isn't in the store as far as food goes for several miles of highway walking.

Have you ever seen a recipe for bean soup in the US? half pound of bacon, ham, or smoke jowl, boil the shit out of it, put 2 pounds of soaked navy beans in and boil until tender adding salt and butter to taste at the end. The good tasting recipes will have at least an inch of lard coagulating on the top when the left overs are put into the fridge. But if that didn't sound bad enough, it's usually eaten with fried potatoes and buttered corn bread. (god I'm getting hungry..lol)

as for rice, the only rice dishes I am familiar with that have any flavor are drenched with something else like General Tso's chicken or sausage of some sorts with peppers, onions, and mushrooms sauteed in butter first..

Again, poor food choices. But yes, in theory, I would agree with you. I just don't seem to think it would happen in practice often. Americans like flavor.

Poverty does not cause obesity. It causes unhealthy diets which can cause obesity. Stay home and eat a 7 dollar lean steak or a 12 dollar healthy omega3 rich fish fillet with about 4 dollars in trimmings or get filled up with a 6 dollar super sized big mac meal and not have to fix the crap. Fill up between meals by snacking on 6 dollar nuts or have a 3 for a dollar twinky. These are choices not limited to the poor. But the better off have a more easy time not making them.

There are even some people who think the problem with obesity is solely contained within our switch from real sugar to high fructose corn syrup in the 1970s. They make convincing arguments if the arguments are factual. I have never had the time to bother checking them. A lot of obese people get thin also when they go gluten free. I think it has a lot to do with food containing gluten also having HFCS in them but that's just a guess.

I also wouldn't say Reagan or Thatcher's economic policies were disastrous. In the US, Carter's policies likely were worse. They certainly threw a lot more people into poverty than when Reagan was president. But I'm sure you will spout some half cocked theories that don't line up with reality so I'm not bothering with it. I do agree that illegals will increase the obesity rates, but not because of poverty- because they will make the same poor food choices and be subjected to the mass marketing that many Americans already are.

Hand me the circle you say "exists". :-)

You explore that shit.

I dig girls.

Define a circle.

Do circles exist in reality, or only in mathematical models?

What do engineering artifacts, as approximations of circles, bear in relation to "real" circles?

Are infinities actual, or are they mathematical descriptions for mental extrapolations based in observed phenomena?

Do mathematical models display consistency with real, observable phenomena or with any mental extrapolation? Which one is more "real"? Why?

Mathematics can only describe the set of perceptions, IMHO. When they describe unperceived "realities" they enter the realm of fictions or metaphysics.

"How many wars have been waged or led by democracies in the past 200 years? Quite nearly all of them. "

Or none of them. The ones democracies participated in, were started by dictatorships invading their neighbors. But even if you add up all the dead in all the wars of the last 200 years- you're still at only a fraction of the 56 million that we've lost to abortion in America alone since 1973.

"How many wars have been waged by actual socialist countries - not just ones who were playing with words - in the past 200 years? Almost none of them."

By playing with words, do you mean the ones who have actually claimed to be socialist? Plus, of course, socialism and democracy does have a rather strong overlap.

"Hell just the number of people that our democracy has killed in war in the past 15 years is likely larger than the total number killed by all the military actions of all actual socialist states in the past 200 years."

Hmm, larger than the 15 million Stalin killed outright? Not in war. But abortions, yes.

Your average modern war kills a few hundred thousand tops.

Bravo. Seeing things differently. Challenge your cognitive assumptions, and investigate as potentially useful, those things you might find obnoxious or untenable.

Interstellar Analingus

You must be a visitor from Colonslash. That's another site, with a different posting culture. This is Slashdot, where anything is deemed "funny" by making comments that are equal parts clever and obtuse, in reference to a parent posting.

There are plusses awarded in "funny" for meta-references to the topic of posting, and the specific modes of posting, when used in the cited context.

You will have to forgive me, I began as a USENET chatbot, skipped IRC and was ported directly to slashcode.

So that your laterals may become infinitely dense...