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Comment Re:I never have understood (Score 1) 265

I never have understood the world's fetish with the US dollar.

1. Any currency (even gold) works on informed trust, a banknote is a promise, not a gaurentee.
2. The US is the last military superpower.
3. The US has never defaulted on a debt.
Result: US treasury bonds are considered "safer than gold" by international money markets.

Comment Re:I don't even... (Score 1) 323

"Talking" simply means telling the kid what they did was wrong before you punish them, if you haven't told them beforehand then don't punish them. The worst thing you can do as a parent is to be inconsistent, the kids will soon learn the rules are based on your mood and by the tender age of five will be playing you like a fiddle.

Comment Re:I don't even... (Score 0) 323

I'm a grandfather, when it comes to things like kicking the cat a 2yo has a pretty good grasp of right and wrong, what they don't understand is that sound travels when they are up to no good. Also I would, and have, encouraged a 2yo to play with woodworking tools and a piece of wood. Yes, they will bang their fingers and scratch their hands, but they will persist because they are hard wired to mimic adults, and if the nail stands up by itself in the wood they get a natural rush of reward chemicals. You certainly don't give a 2yo a nail gun but at the end of the day there isn't a tradesman on earth who hasn't hit himself with a hammer.

Comment Re:I don't even... (Score 3, Insightful) 323

I think what they really want are children who are so unruly that their parents can't control them, and they can't function in society. They make for perfect lemmings fully dependent on the government.

If you honestly think it's a government conspiracy then you are at least a little bit "broken, psychotic, or socially maladjusted".

Comment Re:Great observational skills (Score 3, Interesting) 99

[Animals are] FAR more accurate than any weather forecast I've seen.

You see ants moving eggs, maybe it will rain in the next day or two, but how much rain? How much wind? Any hail, tornados? King tide?

You see humans boarding up windows, sandbagging shops, anchoring boats away from the dock, etc, you know a destructive storm is on it's way.

Weather forecasts are pretty accurate to 5 days out even here in Melbourne which (like NYC) is notoriously fickle, but you don't need doppler radar and a supercomputer to match the forecasting skill of ants. With a bit of practice mentally tracking wind direction, looking at clouds and feeling/smelling the (fresh) air will give you a fair idea of tomorrow's weather.

Natural disasters happen to both species, by all reasonable standards humans are much better at predicting severe weather than animals since (at worst) we have the capacity to simultaneously observe many diverse species to make a statistically combined animal/plant forecast. Having said that, even the humble ants will have buried their dead and rebuilt their city in under a week.

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