You have to understand how deeply in the hole some of these countries are
Public debt as a percentage of GDP:
Japan: 208.2% (2011 est CIA)
USA 104.1% (2011 est CIA)
France: 86.5% (2011, est Eurostat).
(Similar figures from IMF).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_debt
So, some of these countries are in a pretty deep hole. Maybe not the ones you were thinking of.
I love the sould of Paulite heads exploding in the morning.
Oh yeah, I totally forgot about when France left NATO.
You probably forgot about it because it never happened.
France left the NATO military command, it never left NATO.
(And, for those of you not keeping up with events, it rejoined the military command some time ago).
What's your alternative "solution".
Society.
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
I'm not a global warming naysayer, but are humans solely to blame for this? How much of it would have happened anyway? (I'm thinking of the sun's 11-year cycle and the recent larger-than-normal volcano activity)
Um, maybe other people have already tried to answer those questions?
The answer is that the majority(*) of warming is due to human activity.
(As for the solar cycle - it's pretty obvious that an 11 year cycle can't make a 30 odd year trend).
(What "recent" larger than normal volcano activity? Also large volcanic events tend to reduce global temperatures.)
(* scientists tend not to say "all", there might be a little bit of warming coming from somewhere else).
If you are a dissident escaping from a tyranny like N. Korea or Cuba, then, yes, the US is the place to go.
You'd think so, wouldn't you.
Imagine you're running from Ghadaffi's Libya. The US would sound like a nice place to escape to. Imagine your supprise when you get waterboarded for two years then handed over to Ghadaffi's secret police for the real fun stuff.
What counts as a tyranny can change pretty fast.
Another source of the strong Swedophilia around the world, is that until a few years ago, the Swedish educational system was open to, and free of cost, to anyone applying from around the world, and accepted students purely based on academic merits. Unfortunately, this practise was not allowed within EU and discontinued some years after Sweden joined EU.
Uh?
Got some kind of source for this 'cos I can't imagine what rule would do that.
The EU insists that member states treat EU citizens no worse than citizens of the state. It says nothing about how non EU citizens are treated.
Sounds like a straight banana story to me.
The quantifiable costs and benefits are given in the IPCC report: according to the report, inaction means a possibility of losing a few percent of world GDP decades-to-a-century from now, and action means a certainty of losing a few percent of world GDP sooner than that.
Where do you see this in AR4?
Care to cite chapter and verse?
100% nuclear powered electricity generation
Unfortunately, there simply isn't enough Uranium for that.
So use thorium, dummy.
If I was in their position and saw what was happening around me, I'd be making friends with the side that seemed to be winning to find out the truth about what was going to happen next. if the parents chose not to, you can't blame God for that. They might not have known the specifics about what was going to happen next,
Al Qaeda told the US that it would be attacked if it didn't do what they said.
If America couldn't be bothered to listen it's not Al-Q's fault the twin towers fell.
Yup, giving in to terrorism is always the best policy.
> I wonder who you think the "terrorists" are.
The Muslim Brotherhood. They are the parent organization of pretty much every terrorist organization. If AQ if "The Base" then the MB is the "Mothership."
Uh, in the real world the MB hate AQ, who were explicitly formed in opposition to the MB.
And do you seriously believe that the MB were behind the LTTE, the IRA, ETA, the RAF, the Red Brigades, Asian Dawn...
"You should consciously seek opportunities to make friends with [intelligent, well-socialized blacks]. In addition to the ordinary pleasures of friendship, you will gain an amulet against potentially career-destroying accusations of prejudice."
Am I the only one that finds great irony in that statement? Maybe the "amulet" only works if you don't talk about it.
I suspect the "amulet" only works if you're not a racist fuckwad.
The guy is trying to say you should use the "I'm not a racist, look some of my best friends are black" argument. And he's supposed to be some kind of deep thinker.
You can see and calculate the numbers for yourself:[...]
Statistics fail.
Have you corrected for other variables?
(Struggling not to say C... != C......).
you are almost certainly smarter than any random black person you're going to meet
Hmm. Many slashdot posters are almost certainly smarter than any random black person they're going to meet.
Almost certainly smarter than any random white, yellow, purple or green person too. That's an unfortunate downside of being intelligent.
Wow. Where do you see evidence that "many" slashdot posters are intelligent.
Some, maybe.
But "many"?
He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion
