Pangloss

Ouch. That would seem to point toward building codes. Of course enforcing those codes is another matter, but then at least they have a chance. All of this seems to reinforce (with steel) the idea that it's an across-the-board problem with Haiti (or any other 3rd-world nation). Education, industry, government, all need work.

I guess that means you're not going to answer my question.

Presumably they do require input from the throttle, but since the input is electronic it can be perceived as being present when it's not. The override, if I'm not mistaken, is a separate system that cuts the throttle (regardless of input) whenever the brake is applied. A number of makers use this; Toyota apparently decided not to. This really points to the need for greater driver education. None of these accidents would have occurred had the drivers in each case simply moved the shifter from Drive to Neutral. I heard a stunning audio recording on the news yesterday of a call to emergency 911 from a family of four that was riding in a runaway Toyota. The call apparently goes on for a couple of minutes and ends with them screaming about an upcoming intersection. All four were killed. It seemed to me like the driver had the presence of mind and the time to put the car into neutral. Car & Driver has an interesting editorial on the subject which may be found here: http://www.caranddriver.com/news/car/10q1/toyota_recall_scandal_media_circus_and_stupid_drivers-editorial

Is it because of the cost of the metal used to reinforce the concrete? I wonder if there might be some alternative that could be used.

Who cares who loans it to us? The fact that loans are taken up by various lenders hardly seems relevant to the point that they're new loans. I didn't say that. I was talking about its initial cost.

Oh yeah I definitely agree with that. They don't always realize what they're getting. As if highways and safety regulations come built into the planet. I agree with the services just not the reasons for them. I think we should pay for those things because they're a smart investment in our future, not because they're a "right". But as long as we could agree that the right should not be abused (fraud, etc), we're in basically the same place. An interesting and thoughtful post.

You're right, and I should have acknowledged the point earlier, recalling that I argued against rescinding the tax cuts in previous discussions. Consider me appropriately rebuked. I agree that in general one of these strategies is better than the other. But we're still talking about taking out a trillion dollars in new loans from the Chinese in the hopes that we can pay them off in twenty years. Let me just say that again with a bit more information -- we're going to take out another trillion dollars in new loans from the Chinese to pay for 31 million Americans' health care for ten years, with the hopes that we'll be able to pay it back within twenty years based on savings we hope will be realized from getting them preventative care (instead of hospital emergency room care) and making the insurance companies ask for rate hikes, which they already do in something like like 20 states (and get the hikes anyway). I just think you're arguing about the shape of the door that stands open to an empty barn. You're saying we should use hemp ropes to tie down the Titanic when it returns from America. In my opinion, the reasoning you're talking about isn't just being used to justify past spending, it's being used to justify new spending -- spending we cannot afford. As of the extension a couple of weeks ago that figure is now up to 80%, up from 55% just a few months ago. And that's assuming GDP stays at the level it was at before the current economic collapse, which nobody thinks will be the case. (Bascule is using the 2008 chart. There've been, what, half a dozen extensions on the debt ceiling since then?)

Theodore Roosevelt wouldn't last ten seconds at a MoveOn.org convention. You aren't equating John McCain with the historical progressive movement, you are branding him with the hot iron of the modern progressive movement. I'm sure you feel you can tell the difference between left and right, and I'm sure you don't feel that partisanship is bad for the country. That's a standard Rush Limbaugh refrain as well, that the conflict is good for us. He's got a valid point, he just misses the part where you set that conflict aside because it's time to achieve a result. He's not interested in results, he's interested in the conflict itself, and the fact that he's convinced so many Americans to feel the same way is staggering in its implications. There are no historical precedents or founding-fathers truisms that can justify this. If anything the founding fathers, students of Roman history all, would have been goggle-eyed at our modern Satnurninii, and would have stood in line to pull the roof tiles off the Capitol building to cast them down upon Rush Limbaugh and his ilk. But I have no doubt that you feel you can tell the difference, and that you don't feel partisanship is bad for the country. That's your opinion and you certainly have every right to it. I myself feel that partisans have an important role to play in our democracy. It's just not generally the one that they think it is. Someone pointed out to me a couple of years ago (possibly here at SFN) that just because someone is partisan doesn't mean they aren't right. It's a bit like saying that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean everyone's not out to get you. But it's a perfectly legitimate point. And, after all, it takes all kinds to make up a political body. Diversity doesn't hurt is, in general it actually helps us, so I accept that. Of course all of this is just my two bits anyway. Maybe I'm wrong and the truth of the matter is that one group of partisans is correct and the other one is incorrect, and if we just turned over the country to the correct group of partisans everything would be fine.

No, you're right, John McCain is not progressive, and those on the far right who call him progressive (and may honestly not be able to tell the difference) are simply revealing the extremity of their bias. (Same thing happens on the left, btw. Joe Lieberman comes to mind, as well as some suggesting here last week that some Democrats are to the right of Republicans. These perceptions are not supported by the facts.) This is one of the reasons why (in my opinion) partisanship is hard to get rid of once it takes hold.

I agree that the tax cuts have to be rescinded at this point, I'm just pointing out that spending increases have vastly outpaced revenue. That's elementary math too, swansont. From the article Obama's plan would be paid for by a mix of Medicare cuts' date=' tax increases and new fees on health care industries[/indent'] Your quote does not contradict mine, and I've bolded mine to indicate why. That's elementary too, swansont. C'mon yourself. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged What I'm trying to say is that ultimately, in the final analysis, it doesn't matter why spending has increased beyond our means, it only matters that it has. I am increasingly of the opinion that we are like a fat person who just can't stay on a diet. Whether it's the left saying we need X, or the right saying we need Y, does it really matter if we can't afford X or Y? We have to stop saying that one type of spending is better than the other because of some ideological reasoning. All that's producing is more spending that we do not have the means for. As you say, swansont, it's elementary math.

Rescinding the Bush tax cuts does nothing about the debt' date=' because the proposed budget spends far more than it takes in. And having a new spending plan and doing nothing about its cost during your entire time in office is NOT better than no plan at all. It is [i']exactly the same[/i]. IMO you should break away from thinking that because Democrats propose a thing, it's better. These people are not better. They are exactly the same. They simply suit a different ideological outlook (in this case, yours) better. We're just popping back and forth between differently-shaded sets of ideological blinders, here. That is not improvement, in my opinion. Yes, and if a plan comes along that actually does something about health insurance costs somebody please let me know so I can stand up and cheer. There are some things to be optimistic about in the current plan, but for example I don't think a government panel to approve rate hikes (which is part of the current plan) is going to solve the problem. Many states (including mine) do this, and it doesn't seem to work -- companies just ask for twice what they need, they ask it every time whether they need it or not, and they put up justifications that cannot be verified, and the panel always approves them because to say no just means having to say yes next time. Outside panels can't look at actual reasons they can only look at what a company shows them. There are so many ways for us to lose in the current environment that I wonder if we may be reaching a point where we may not be able to solve it. Ultimately we may have to have socialized medicine just because we can't get anything else done.

Typical start in networking is working at a help desk or doing odd jobs in an IT department. You can try some of the certification "schools" but you should first try to do it on your own. Visit the certification support pages for the various corporations whose products you're interested in certifying in, read and understand the requirements, and then see if a couple of books and a little time at the computer will get you there. Worst case you're out an exam fee ($100) instead of potentially wasting 1-10 grand on training. Your bacherlor's may have taught you more than you may realize (I see that a lot). But certs are typically very specific to a corporation's product support needs (or what it perceives those needs to be, at any rate), so you have to learn really esoteric and detailed bits of information that can be very tedious to pick up (and difficult to remember for an exam). (But if you can do a Bachelor's degree then you can do any cert I've ever seen.)

What's a BCA? Can you tell us a bit more about what you'd like to do?

That plan wouldn't have passed PAYGO, bascule. PAYGO requires that expenses be offset by income NOW. Not some wild-a guess about something that may or may not happen twenty years down the line. So really you're just illustrating my point -- some people want a trillion dollar spending plan for this. Other people want a trillion dollar spending plan for that. Whatever the ideological preference of the moment, it needs to be assuaged by a trillion dollar spending plan. A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon we'll be talking about some real money.

Well that's a good point, and the US is obviously still a good investment. I think both political parties have taken advantage of that, playing on the apparent public assumption it will always be so and that we can just throw money at any problem and not worry about paying it back. That can surely only go so far, and yet here we are planning on doing more of the same for the foreseeable future. Whether it's a trillion dollar foreign war that may or may not save helpless victims or a trillion dollar health care plan that may or may not save sick people, does it really matter? They've become the new norm, and while they may make since in some rare cases, having them become the norm when we're already spending 50% over income seems like a recipe for disaster.

It's legitimate, just not as spectacular as the reporting suggests. They have installations at Google, Ebay and a number of other high-profile locations. They were featured this past week on 60 Minutes (the video can be found here). The report was pretty awful -- from the promotions and initial reporting (references to NASA and Mars) I thought it was some sort of cheap/small RTG device (Woohoo, I can put a nuclear power plant in my back yard! Where do I sign up for the beta?), and it was several minutes before I learned that it was a fuel cell. Media reporting can be such a dog when it comes to energy stories. I believe the primary innovations over competing fuel cell technology are adaptability to various fuel types and size (efficiency). Nothing earth-shattering, just some good engineering that will likely have an impact on future development. In other words, business as usual, but to Leslie Stahl, pure magic.

Just as a side note, I've heard this from the left before, but I'm not sure I understand it. The point seems to be that conservatives, whom liberals often criticize as insufficiently intelligent, were too smart to be swayed by a sellout. It seems like a contradiction to me -- are they smart or are they stupid? Isn't it more likely that while he did move to the right on some issues, he did not move sufficiently to the right to persuade religious-right voters to turn out in numbers that might have made up for the lost moderates?

Still trying to figure out why Jennifer Government hasn't been made into a movie. George Clooney would be a perfect John Nike. Oh well.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well I understand what you meant to say here, but I think your slight gaff here illustrates an important point -- it's difficult to determine what a good source of information is. People who aren't experienced in seeking information are often mislead to accept bad sources, and that's true whether the recipient is liberal or conservative. The greater acceptance of technology by liberals (a premise I generally accept, but believe to be more attributable to age and parenthood) is a bit of an aid here, but I've seen liberals flock to some pretty stupid web sites too. We just need to work on getting everyone more objective information, that's all. And I think that's what we're actually doing right now, right here -- we talk about the issues, we blog and we Facebook and we talk to our friends. It makes a difference.

How can there be no case against someone who confesses to a crime? How does it make sense that the reason that the perpetrator states for committing the crime would be relevant to the determination of his or her guilt? Seems odd to me. You commit a crime, anything you say is surely suspect, but if you open your mouth and utter the words "I did it because they told me they wanted to die" and you walk away from police custody. It's like some kind of bizarre magic spell.

Hi Hobo. Yes, Networking is hot. I see you tapped into the state government's "hot jobs" list -- one of the sites I like to tell my students about. Three of the top 20 job titles listed there are in the field, and that one is #1 (numbers 2 and 20 are programming-related; usually there are a couple more on the list, such as network administrator, but not at the moment). And yet many IT schools around the state (like mine) are struggling to fill rosters. Go figure. All the better for you, though. That field is very different from programming. It's all about configuring hardware (routers and servers) and software (operating systems, applications and utilities) to do what they're supposed to do, fix them when they break, and plan their rollout and distribution according to need. It's a different kind of challenge, and it can be very interesting. That's also very different from your concentrations of database and security, and the employment opportunities those fields result in. There's a lot of emphasis these days on data mining and reporting -- pulling key info from a database and working it into the company's business plans. That's all about databases. Security is also a key field, and that's mainly about configuration of operating systems, setting user policies, and figuring out what happened after a problem. I also recommend considering a Masters degree and/or working on certifications, both of which may require additional schooling. These efforts, especially the Masters, will result in a higher salary, especially as you gain experience. So no, you should not end up making minimum wage. But it's a well-matured field, and it's generally run by professionals and heavily integrated with mainstream business, which means you're going to have to learn how to interview, dress to impress, and track your learning and experiential progress over time. The more proactive you are about your career, the better off you'll be over the long haul. Good luck!

In a sense, but it seems like you're throwing that like an insult, and I think it's actually just an observation of what's going on. It's not bad that they're less techno-savvy, or "living in the past". What's bad is that they're unfamiliar with the issues that are of greatest import. I don't care if they're so busy or focused on their kids that they buy an HDTV and forget to order HD service from Comcast. What I care about is that I need them to be up to speed on the issues that are paramount and that they can have an impact on, and not getting faulty information from sources that have their own agendas.

This would be almost a trillion dollars in new spending over ten years for the express purpose of covering about 31 million Americans. That should cost maybe half that much at best, and frankly I don't think it should be spent for that purpose at all until we know exactly why those people aren't covered. I'm fine with safety nets, but people who don't get health care because they're young and healthy and they "need" an Xbox are idiots and I shouldn't have to pay for that. The administration claims that it will reduce the deficit by more than its cost, but that's twenty years off. There's no guarantee of that, and in the meantime if we don't get spending under control within the next FEW years it's going to exceed GDP (it's already been cleared by last week's bill to fly all the way up to 80%, and that's only if GDP doesn't shrink, which nobody believes). The disconnect is beyond bizarre. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedBTW, $950 billion is $3,167 per person, and that's assuming every single person pays their share (which we know is impossible, otherwise we wouldn't be doing it). So basically double that, then divide by ten years, and that's something like $633 per person per year. Now add the interest we'll have to pay on the debt we'll have to acquire in order to pay for this. $700? $800? Per year. Not a pretty picture. And that's JUST to pay for the 31 million Americans who are not presently covered by a health care plan. All the rest of that stuff in the proposed plan could be done basically for free, or okay throw in ten billion a year in cost for managing new rules. Trivial. We need fix health care first, not create new entitlements we can't afford.

EVE is pretty awesome -- the large-scale capital ship battles are like nothing else in video gaming. I use EVE as an example a lot in the classroom because it makes such a nice contrast with WoW in terms of complexity and learning curves.

Yes it is. The study is evidence that supports your opinion, not unequivocal proof. You're also putting the cart before the horse -- it says that people select their ideologies based on their psychological dispositions, not that certain ideologies produce better dispositions.