Pangloss

Because they're tired of kissing the hand of the false prophet, whose words never seem to quite work out to any kind of truth anyway.

Thanks. It's very funny, and even a touch brilliant, I must say, going after the humor side of the issue in trying to win over hearts and minds. (It's a shame they can't apply their boundless energy to something people actually deem valuable, and are therefore willing to pay them the fruits of their own labor for.)

Thanks for taking the time to write all that up. At risk of sounding trivial, do you happen to know if that's true about the inflatable rat? I don't mean to focus on something so minor, I just thought it was an interesting twist in the story. Just to give my own reaction to that, for the purposes of discussion, I guess it would be that I don't understand why anybody would think that it makes sense to pay people who are less valuable the same as people who are more valuable. You've got money coming in in some areas and not others. You spend your money where it makes you more money. If you don't like it, do something else. There's a reason why the classics are floundering, and it has nothing to do with how much money universities spend on GAs. I don't understand the mentality of someone who, say, persues a degree in Fine Arts, and then demands to be paid the same as a Chemical Engineer. Nobody was twisting their arm to go into finger painting. If you want to drive a BMW, earn the right to buy one. What's the problem? So I'm kinda disappointed to see that kind of socialist mentality seeping its way into how graduate assistants are paid, but I guess I'm not really surprised. The modern college campus is the last refuge of the teach-because-you-can't-do crowd, and no where is that more apparent than in the disparity between the intelligence level of people in fine arts versus engineering and applied sciences. In fact I would suggest that the reason the "well-paid" GAs from the sciences school aren't striking has little or nothing to do with the amount they're being paid. HOWEVER, all of that having been said, I admit that I don't have a complete enough picture to draw a final conclusion. I'm just giving my gut reaction here, and I'll keep an open mind about it. You mentioned side issues, and those have a way of undermining main issues sometimes.

I agree with your assessment. We might disagree slightly on the source of the problem (or we might not), but I think your post compliments mine, especially regarding Greenspan's comments. This is really another discussion, but I've kinda come full circle on the New Deal over the years. Dorothy Kearns Goodwin's excellent biography of FDR nudged me in that direction, and in spite of my libertarian leanings I've not seen anything to nudge me back the other way. I think it was the right move at the time, and I also agree with your contrast of the present vs the New Deal. But when all is said and done, I think it speaks *volumes* about the ideology and partisanship of the ABB crowd that the economy is as solid and strong as it is, and yet they refuse to acknowledge the point at all, and in fact claim that the opposite is the case, when it so clearly is not.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=1368518 http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Business/story?id=1364097 - Stock market at a 4-year high, approaching 11,000 mark - Energy prices down 30% (Gas down from avg $3.07 to $2.15) - Inflation under control - Fed may not raise interest rates again - Consumers spending like crazy - New home starts are somehow STILL up and running (and likely to grow more as we begin to rebuild the gulf coast) - 215,000 new jobs in November, back up from only 5-digit gains in Sept/Oct due to Katrina losses - Average hourly earnings up 3.2% (biggest rise since March 2003) - Overall growth at 4.3% (excellent) - Christmas start considered "promising" (I think the initial reports said it was down, but the later adjusted figures were better; I still haven't seen a good story on the details of Black Friday weekend based on later adjusted figures) A few conclusions on my part: - Yeah, it ain't perfect. What economy has ever been perfect? Even the Clinton bubble and the post-WW2 boom had their negatives. This is a GOOD economy. It *cannot* be characterized as a "bad" economy, no matter how badly Democrats and the Anybody-But-Bush crowd want to do so. It *cannot* logically be done. - If you can't make it in this economy, you can't make it in ANY economy. You are literally worthless. Do something about that instead of asking for a handout and/or b*ching about Bush. Get a job, get an education, do SOMETHING. - Democrats were wrong about the economy. Dead, flat-out wrong. Simply finger-wagglingly in-cor-rect. I voted for ya, John Kerry, but now I sure as shootin' can't figure out why. - The "Bush can't seem to fix gas prices" argument is as dead as those Thanksgiving leftovers in the fridge. No, Bush didn't fix it, but then that wasn't HIS argument, that was DEMOCRATS'. Bush's argument was "hang on and the market will fix itself", which is exactly what happened. So stable, strong and vibrant is the economy that our sole concern is now the long-term issue of deficit spending and the national debt. The question now becomes whether the worthless Republicans will stand by their word to reduce spending once the economy came under control. Or will it fall on the worthless Democrats, who more likely want to increase taxes so that even more money can be spent, and the debt continue to go untouched? This is a stunningly similar situation, by the way, to when Republicans had the audacity to complain about the Clinton economy (one of if not the most successful economies in the 20th century) during the 1999/2000 election cycle. And conservatives actually fell for that crap! Are we just going to go through the same nonsense again? I hope not!

Lawyers write positions for their clients based on what their clients want. Bascule, you yourself are a shining example of how people cannot be classified according to stereotypical political affiliations (as, I like to think, am I). So just because he was voluntarily working for Republicans when he wrote this memo should not, in your view, indicate his opinion on the subject. You are being inconsistent.

Forgive me for asking you to repeat something, but just to be clear, are you actually saying that striking workers sometimes indicate that they're on strike by inflating a gigantic balloon in the shape of a rat? That's really interesting and I've never heard it before, so I'm just asking for clarification. It never ceases to amaze the the tidbits of information I pick up on this forum! Yeah that's pretty ludicrous calling students "scabs". I don't even understand why grad students would need to be unionized in the first place. Are these grad students who have taken student teaching positions or something? On the larger subject, I wouldn't cross a picket line, but that's only because I don't want to DIE. I'd demand that the police break up the obtrusive demonstration because I live in a right-to-work state, which should be the rule, not the exception (it should be understood as "bizarro unionized states" vs "states", not "states" vs "right to work states"). Why some people find it not okay for their boss to tell them what to do, but okay for their union leaders to tell them what to do, is beyond me.

Are you actually interested in the truth, or merely contriving a set of circumstances in order to convince others that you're right and they're wrong?

As exemplified by Peak Oil Man's signature: And low, though ye walk through the valley of the shadow of death.... And don't forget to buy a poster!

I've been a student of Roman history for many years, and continue to find their history fascinating. I'm not an expert, but if memory serves the Romans were overrun and Rome itself was sacked in 390 BC. Most of the records were destroyed and most of what we know about Rome before that time is based on documents that were written after that sacking. After that time, gallic peoples settled all over northern Italy. Over time it completely rewrote the genetic makeup of all Italians. During the time of Caesar (two centuries later) people were still recognizably gallic or non-gallic. People who looked gallic were ostracized in various ways (to a degree of severity which it is difficult to fully determine). Anyway, what I was getting to is that about THAT time, during the time of Gaius Marius, when Caesar was just a boy, there was a massive German migration that took place. At one point something like 100,000 Roman men were wiped out at the Battle of Arausio (modern Orange), when they were simply overrun by a reported two million migratory Germans. Rome had to undergo yet another transformation to deal with that crisis, which involved breaking some traditions and letting Marius be consul more than once, and Marius solved the problem of lack of land-owning men by creating the first paid army, comprised of lower class citizens, to go out and fight the Germans. This was the time in which the legionary standards (the "eagles") were created. (The same eagles that Augustus had to buy back from the Parthians later to begin the Pax Romana, an act which is depicted on the famous statue of Augustus that you always see in documentaries and such, with his finger pointing off at the horizon.) But I digress. Anyway, the point is that migratory waves were not uncommon up to that point in Roman history, and were much of the reason why Rome felt it necessary to expand and control the world around it. The gallic and german "boogey men" were quite real, and they had little choice in the matter. Though I suppose if they'd taken the time to ask the Chinese, they might have thought of anther solution. At any rate, the constant German threat to the east is an underlying premise throughout Caesar's commentaries on the Gallic campaigns. His general position seems to be that he's putting Gaul in order in part because it will help to keep the Germans at bay. Getting back to the original question, all of this suggests (to me at any rate) that Northern Italians owe more of a racial influence to France, rather than Germany. But of course I've stopped at a point 2,000 years ago, and much has happened since then.

Hehe, I knew you guys would like this story.

Isn't it interesting, by the way, that the same people who consider power lines a health hazaard will run to the nearest store to buy magnets to strap to their hips and legs in order to lose weight and gain vitality? (chuckle)

This is one of those stories that just makes you shake your head in wonder over the idiocy of people. http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/florida/orl-busgps3005nov30,0,267024.story?coll=sfla-news-florida So, in a nutshell, to their credit, the Education Logistics people aren't complaining about GPS (which is a completely passive system) per se. They're complaining about the system used to report the location of the GPS-equipped bus to the central office. Which is based on radio. So what is it that Education Logistics' system uses to report the location of the bus to the central office? Oh no, it's not that horrible radio -- sounds so much like "radioactive", doesn't it? Heaven forfend! No, their system uses cellular! Oh gosh, that's so much different from radio! No radiation there, right? Our children will surely be safer! Unbelievable.

Oh my... American women being imported to China as mail order brides... talk about startling reality checks.....

Interesting points. By the way, two excellent sources the relative degree of informity of the Bush administration can be found in Bob Woodward's "Plan of Attack", and in a more general sense in the surprisingly objective and insightful "All the President's Spin" by Nyhan et al.

Your caveat proves my point. The peak oil argument is based on assumptions which may or may not turn out to be the case. Raising concerns about peak oil is a matter of science. Pounding the pulpit demanding that it's real, and stating that the world as we know it is going to end by a specific date, that is a matter of faith.

I agree with Bascule on this. It's like arguing about matters of faith like creationism. What's the point?

Interesting point. You know what this discussion reminds me of, by the way? That old axiom: "An armed society is a polite society." Only this way you don't need the "arms".

Your point is still valid, Basc. A country that large with even a 1.06 ratio is in for serious, serious problems over the long haul. You're talking about potentially hundreds of thousands of men without partners.

I agree. We're haggling over details but general progress since WW2 is forward not backward. A good indicator that we're on the right general track.

I think Phi's point addresses the issue of which is more accurate/useful, but it may not fully address the issue of why we're more comfortable with policemen vs cameras. I think it might be a little deeper (or perhaps a little more superficial) than that.

Sometimes it's just a matter of "what's in a name". "Producing a quota for the state", after all, is not substantially different from "all my income going to taxes until turnaround day". That having been said, however, there is one key, critical difference: Choice. And while that may not matter much in terms of realistic goals for one's life (e.g. you can't expect to get far in this society if you're not productive), it does matter. It's not just a matter of whether I'll be able to buy a BMW instead of a Ford. It's also a matter of incentive. Am I working for myself, or "the state"? And of course there's always the issue of slackers who won't produce regardless of whether society "states norms" or "requires quotas". The very people in society who are most productive are the same ones who are least interested in paying for people who have constructed a cultural environment that fosters and supports victimization instead of proactive achievement and success.

80%? Is that right? I've heard it's bad but that sounds a little extreme to me. I vaguely recall a PBS show stating 60%, but I've not heard that number before. Could be India I'm thinking of.

The original poster has been banned for unrelated reasons, but I think there's an interesting question here and you guys are welcome to tackle it if you wish. I think he poses some interesting caveats and this strikes me as one of those things we should ponder even if only to avoid repeating the lessons of history.