Comment Re:Rome 2.0 (Score 1) 818
Right this way sir... here's some bread, we hope you enjoy the circus.
Right this way sir... here's some bread, we hope you enjoy the circus.
This study defines "rich people" as those making around $146000/year.
If you think about it, there's no control for expenses there, so it's not a very effective definition (I'm always kind of a amazed at the mindset in the US that tries to simplify things by drawing a numeric line in the sand, as if there were no other issues. And people put up with it. We need better schools.
I define "rich" as: wealthy enough to be living in a manner comfortable in every material way to the individual or family, and able to survive indefinitely in that state, or in an increasingly wealthy state without relying on income from, or charity of, others. Regardless of if one actually chooses to exist in that state, or not.
Not trying to force that definition on anyone else, but that's how I see it personally.
I recommend antibiotics.
The transition was from a flawed, but still readily identifiable constitutional republic (not a democracy), to a corporate oligarchy.
This has never been a democracy, and furthermore, the constitution insists that the federal government guarantee each state a republican form of government, as in, a republic -- not a democracy. That's in article 4, section 4.
This is why representatives decide the actual matters, and voters don't, in the basic design.
Of course, now even the representatives don't decide -- nor judges -- if the legislation deals in any significant way with business interests. The only way the old system still operates even remotely the way it was designed to is when the issue(s) at hand a purely social ones. Even then, the bill of rights seems to be at the very bottom of any legislator's or judge's list of concerns.
Can't see any of this changing, though. The public is too uninformed, and short of completely revamping the school curriculums, they're going to remain that way.
Guess I should have been a little more explicit. I meant, as distinguished from one that required another object impact. Just an original ring system.
...a collapsed ring system?
Everyone has noticed there are a lot of very pro-Russian people popping up on websites and I can't really understand them. The facts seem very apparent that Russia has done some extremely objectionable things, and threatens to do even more objectionable things, and the justifications for those actions seem extraordinarily weak.
Maybe some of the commenters are paid by Russia (I think that's been documented with some blogs), but a lot of them seem to be sincere westerners and I can't figure them out. Do they have Russian ancestry that makes them pro-Russia? Are they just really counter-cultural and suspicious of Western interference in the East?
Personally I'm fairly pro-West, anti-authoritarian, and have Ukrainian ancestry so I have strong feelings on the subject, but I still think I make a fairly impartial assessment of the situation. I just can't figure out the ideology that drives the Russian supporters.
I don't think Heartbleed says anything fundamental about open source security, but it might alter the discussion of how certain low level packages are managed. By any measure OpenSSL is a very important package, but it's also a bit generic. It has a very defined role that everyone needs, but I'm not sure how many people really have a motive to work on it in specific. It might be that the community needs to find a way to devote more resources to maintaining and auditing those packages.
stuff that matters? This is a trivial detail,
Yes, when it comes to borders legitimacy is everything.
and in due time all websites will list it under Russia.
Says you.
If the rate is less than 1% more cancers than normal, then you just proven my point.
You misunderstand.
Cancer is poised to become the worlds leading cause of death as worlds average population ages with at least 1 out of 5 of everyone dying from it regardless.
Assume an effected area has a population of 1 million.
20% of 1M peeps = 200,000 dead peeps
1% of 1M peeps = 10,000 dead peeps
0.1% of 1M peeps = 1,000 dead peeps
Even 1% is a LOT of dead peeps yet in relative terms next to 20% quite small.
In the real world pool of victims is likely to be orders greater than 1M as contamination is distributed to nearby densely populated cities yet the percentage of cancer deaths much lower than 1%.
Even very small percentages of increased risk are still to borrow from Biden a "big fucking deal" they still translate to hundreds or thousands of real peeps dying that would have never happened anyway but vanishingly difficult to see with confidence using statistical methods because the 20% represents such a huge noise floor.
Waving your hands saying there are no confirmed radiation caused cancers is disingenuous and this is my only point. As mentioned earlier I am not against nuclear power especially inherently safe designs requiring no active components to prevent meltdowns all sounds quite reasonable to me. Fukushima was shit design - would be a mistake to use it as the poster child to prevent forward progress.
Dumping it into the ocean has been suggested, and investigations conclude that it is a perfectly safe option. However, no one in their right mind would do that, as disposing of valuable resources is frowned upon. Existing "waste" contains enough energy to power our planet for centuries.
Reprocessing = plutonium = high proliferation risk. Not 1940's anymore must assume modern technology has significantly lowered barrier to successful implosion design.
With such a dense energy source and short lived fission products, the true waste is easily managed. Even if our planet derived 100% of its power from nuclear energy, the steady state waste inventory would be minuscule and easily fit onto the site of a single coal ash pile.
The problem with nuclear fairy tales they sound great except for that one aspect you failed to consider that throws a wrench in the whole thing.
Personally would rather see solar + energy storage + conservation win out in the end but Nuclear is far better than nothing (e.g. Coal)
And nuclear is not the boogeyman your environmentalist friends have convinced you it is. Zero Fukushima deaths, zero confirmed radiation related cancers.
While I happen to think Nuclear on balance is a good deal this "no confirmed cancers" argument is garbage.
Humanity lacks capability to "confirm" cause of radiation caused cancers.
Determinations were hardly even possible in the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Only by use of statistics was anyone able to observe cancers at a rate some very small percentage ~1% above background.
In any scenario like Fukushima even statistics fail as radiation caused deaths sink well below any practically discernible noise floor.
Russia doesn't want to establish a moon base, but they're obligated to step up and protect all the Russian speakers on the moon. Moreover the moon is historically Russian, not only did a recent referendum establish that 98.3% of the moon wants to join Russia, but the moon is so close that on a clear night you can actually see it from Moscow!!
System going down in 5 minutes.