Pangloss

Actually, after I did further reading on the subject, I came to doubt my original premise of the thread, and I now view this as in error. Don't get me wrong, I still believe that it's both important and unfortunate that we're not saving more money and that we're going deeper into debt. This is a long-term problem that deserves the long-term focus of educational efforts as well as institutional changes and better social understanding. We've got to put a stop to the "keeping up with the Joneses" mentality. But the negative savings rate itself is probably just an artifact of our current lack of scope in assessing these things. It doesn't encompass enough variables.

The Supreme Court fell short today of the four votes it needed to bring this case before it, voting 6-3 to reject the appeal from the Federal Appeals court, which decided that it lacked jurisdiction. Justice Breyer, writing for the three justices who dissented, said that the case raised "questions [that] deserve this court's immediate attention.'' Story here.

I guess I was a bit too subtle; that's more or less what I was suggesting. The news isn't all bad if we go that route, and there are potential positive outcomes. It's just a question of whether we're willing to undertake the job of making it so. We're pretty good with ideas and recognition these days. Not so much with execution over the long term.

The right way apparently being apologizing for intruding into Iranian territorial waters and backing off from any threat of physical force. Yes, that's how they'll get out of it. Blair has already nudged in this direction by stating "regrets" for the incident. There may be a blame-the-US angle here as well. Bush has called them "Hostages" and is already getting blasted for both that and the exersizes conducted off the Iranian coast last week. That's good for Blair and his never-chain-Tehran approach as well. You'll get 'em back. And Tehran will have more ammunition to use against moderates (who won big in the last election, which is what this is really about). Everybody's happy. For now.

That's a bit disengenuous -- other goals have been clearly stated. Those goals, even if unrealistic, have meaning and cannot be easily dismissed by uttering the demogogic phrase "weapons of mass destruction" -- a phrase which related to our reasons for invading, not our reasons for staying. Be fair, please.

Right, but that's about political gumption more than anything else. It's notable that they didn't even choose to declare war on Afghanistan and the Taliban. This is putting the cart before the horse. I empathize with the sentiment, but a better example could have been selected. It also fails to acknowledge the point that people are responsible for their own behavior. But as I said, I empathize with the sentiment. We can do much better on this front, and it apears that we really have no choice but to do so, since we can't keep going on like this.

Well the simple (albeit unsatisfactory to many) answer to that question is "because it's bad for you". I think you're looking for a more detailed answer, though, but I'm not an expert and I can only suggest psychological impact as a motive here. (I.E. "Robbing the user of motivation.")

To me the most interesing thing about this question is how people who ostensibly fall into a specific ideological camp respond to it. It's one of those issues that divides partisans who are otherwise typically united. And as a result, it's one of those "thorny issues" that keep politicians up late at night. Elected officials from the Democratic party are particularly conflicted on this issue, being asked to support legalization of something that's bad for people while at the same time being constantly inundated with requests to ban things that are bad for people. But Republican politicians don't get it easy either, typically failing to recognize that many of their staunchest supporters, particularly in younger generations, support legalization of "victimless crimes", such as drug use and the age-old young-man's favorite, prostitution. And of course it's the support of libertarians and moderates that maintain the fiction of conservative bible-thumpers domination this country's politics. It's ALLLLMOST an issue of younger generations versus older generations.

Most Americans actually view the "metric issue" as old business. About the only time you hear it mentioned is in '70s and '80s retrospectives, along with disco dancing, the rise of the Hollywood "blockbuster", stagflation and the cold war.

And you're doing just fine -- that was an interesting post.

This is an excellent, and I think very overlooked point sometimes. It's also one of the things that our modern society has gotten right, in terms of funneling world opinion through the aparatus of the UN. That organization may be a dismal failure is many ways, but it has helped the world to produce an environment in which it can declare what is acceptable behavior from a nation. At the VERY LEAST we have a place where we can go and do that. Something that the world never had before prior to its creation. Ultimately that may be the most important thing that the 20th century is remembered for. I don't entirely agree with the rest of that post (Iraq was arresting terrorists? please, they were HARBORING terrorists!). But I absolutely agree with the above.

So true!

<moderator hat> Gypsy Cake, be sure and indicate to whom you are replying when you post a message, especially in a thread that's been out of circulation for a few weeks like this one. It's possible the person you're talking to may not realize that you're talking to them because when they click on the New Posts button for this thread it will jump straight to your post, obscuring the previous posts. </moderator hat>

That's the "oh spit they elected Reagan" theory, which was very common at the time, as I dimly recall. I don't know how fair that assessment is, but I also can't give much credit to the Carter administration for their release.

You know, the ones we keep finding in the back pockets of the workers down in Worker City! (obscure movie reference, nothing to see here, move along....)

I wouldn't really say that applicant testing is a new phenomenon -- the first job I ever applied for (>20 years ago) I had to take a typing test. (grin) Perhaps the real story there is the degree to which companies have come to rely on that information (or not, and if not why not, etc), if that makes sense. Not only how the tests are constructed, but how they are interpreted -- a completely different subject but still very interesting in its own right. I've become somewhat interested in the subject of testing lately for another reason -- I'm a new undergraduate teacher, struggling with finding the right balance between multiple-choice convenience and practical-exam accuracy (amongst other issues). I've been somewhat overwhelmed by the difficulties involved.

Exactly. Like I said, the presumption and the focus today are on the government. We don't sit around worrying about external threats "the reds" or "fascist Germany". Nobody in this country is actively, daily worried about "terrorists" -- not with the kind of immediate hysteria that simple government actions can produce, anyway. No, what we worry about are secret government plots and conspiracies. They're always there, lurking right around the corner, just so long as people "don't accept the official line" and "are careful to read between the lines". Of course, they have to be reading between the RIGHT lines. The ones they should be reading between. Not those other lines. Ew, no, not those! But hey, we agree on one thing. By all means, read between the lines. ALL the lines.

Heh. Dude. Hang on a sec. You do spend a lot of time characterizing the left, ParanoiA, and overgeneralizing when you do so. It's just a personal observation, not meant as an attack. The first post of this thread is a pretty good example. There's nothing wrong with you having that opinion, but you should expect negative reactions to it from any kind of open-minded people, regardless of their affiliations. How would you feel if someone made a characterization like that about the right? My personal opinion is that ideological partisanship will always lead people to this kind of wasted-time impass. But I'm smart enough to know that that's just another kind of ideology. (grin) (Edit: We cross-posted, but this was in response to #46. Thanks for the reply above.)

It's pretty unfortunate that the modern media has painted a portrait in which "pushing the bomb" utterly equates in today's young peoples' minds with "the end of the world". It's even more unfortunate that people think those bombs were built for no reason at all, that they would never have been used under any circumstances, and that the whole thing was a farce. But those sentiments are certainly not uncommon. Too little critical thinking is done by too many in the current generation, which is more focused on how the government MUST be screwing them over than in how (as we were) the rest of the world is out to get what they have.

Not to mention just having to deal with case-sensitivity. (grin) I've never quite understood why having a language be case-sensitive is supposed to be an advantage. But that seems to be how the C and Java folks see it.

The more I use it the more I like it. The layout is much more compressed, which is really handy, and it's different without being TOO different, which makes it trendy and modern.

LOL! Ok, I tell you what, Bascule, I'll make you a deal: I won't accuse you of trying to bail out everyone who ever takes a loss on their home if you won't accuse me of saying that anything short of Laissez-Faire capitalism makes us not free. Fair enough? Common ground the hard way.... (chuckle)

Of course -- and anybody who works in C++ is going to have that opinion, because that's just not what VB is designed to do (anymore, if it ever was). It's just not a system programming language. All the emphasis in VB today is placed on whipping out database clients under the .NET Framework. Anybody who tries to do *anything* else in VB is just begging for trouble. For what it's worth, it's possible we may finally see the death of VB through by unexpected and unpredicted means: C# is rapidly becoming the language of preference for ASP.NET development. Most new ASP.NET books are written in C#, and most of the online discussion has shifted from VB to C#. That's a bit of a surprise given that under the .NET Framework C# and VB crank out the same intermediary code for just-in-time recompilation at execution time, begging the question of why anyone would bother to convert. What that suggests to me is that more people are switching from PHP, CF and JSP to ASP, and they will logically prefer C# to VB because of the syntax and structure similarities. There's probably also an upswell of "serious" ASP developers who want to make their work seem more legitimate. Anyway, the point being that those of us in education (I teach "applied" programming and database courses at a small university) are starting to think about changing our curriculums over from VB to C#. It'll make it very slightly harder to teach the syntax to the newbies (perhaps -- that's the concern that some of the professors have but I'm not sure that I agree with it), but it will also mean that our "database programmers" will have a functional capability to go on to greater things if they wish (i.e. system programming). It is possible, after all, for someone to become a system programmer after being a client/server/managed-code programmer. It's just harder if you have to also learn a new syntax.

Keep reading.

Yes. Faith is faith, regardless of the subject. That's not even debatable -- it's a simple matter of dictionary definitions. Note that I'm not the one condemning faith. Faith in my view can very much be a positive, whether it's faith in relgion or faith in science or faith in one's self or faith in anything. It's only when it's not balanced with reason that it becomes a problem. But children don't have that capacity -- that ability to balance doing what they're told with doing what makes sense. They lack the experience. So if they're surrounded by people with ulterior motives, who don't mind (or realize) they're damaging their progeny in the process, then they're really up a creek without a paddle. And there can hardly be any debate about whether that happens outside of religious circles. Just turn on the news (and grab on to something tight). Anyway, remove the word "Jesus" from every scene in that movie and insert the word "Darwin" and the effect on the child and the meaning/value of that child's act would be exactly the same. The fact that there are fewer (if any) people who run around training their children to pray to Charles Darwin is fortunate, but that doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of other obstacles around of a similar nature that have nothing to do with religious zealots. Case in point: The infamous "Country Walk" child abuse cases that made Janet Reno's career, in which children were coerced into repeating allegations of abuse by two "research scientists" complete with PhDs. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/fuster/frank/summary.html http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/terror/ And after reading that, if you want to read something REALLY scary, take a look at what two names are listed about halfway down this page, which carries a 2007 copyright: http://www.growingchild.com/team.html