>> ^brycewi19:

>> ^blahpook:
The amount of manual labor here was surprising.

Yet refreshing.


To each his own, but ... why?

I grew up on a large family farm for wheat and corn in Kansas. My father talks about how from the time he was born till the time I was born, the farm operations went from being handled by about 10-15 full-time family member workers plus maybe 60+ seasonal harvest workers to having roughly 4 full-time workers and an additional 8 or so harvest part-timers. 75 plus down to 12.

First they got tractors for tilling. Then planter attachments for the tractors. Then the first harvester machines, etc. etc. on down to today, where we've got 2 massive combines running during harvest, 1 or 2 tractors with grain hoppers (serve other purposes outside of harvest season), 4-6 semi trucks with grain hopper trailers, and a central location with a set of large grain storage bins.

With the machines, we get higher yields per acre and less loss due to human error mistakes. We harvest over twice as much land in significantly less time. In the past 60 years, grain prices have crept up at a rate way lower than inflation, while prices for labor-intensive crops like fruit actually outpace inflation.

I am most definitely a biased source, but from my perspective more mechanization equals more food to go around, and lower food prices for everyone. I'd say that is pretty refreshing too!

No offense meant, just a different perspective.

I wasn't around (or at least clued in) at the time, but my dad frequently talks about the days when candidates were determined in "smoke filled rooms by the party big-wigs", rather than in caucuses and primaries. His take on that is that it is sort of nice to have the democratic process included in that initial stage, but that in all honesty the finger-on-the-pulse party bigwigs probably chose better, more electable candidates than the current system does.

In my home state of Kansas, the religious right-wing-nuts show up in force for primaries while a lot of the more moderate republicans are at home waiting for the actual election. That tends to push the party candidate further and further to the right, and results in situations like when the Kansas state Board of Education got filled with enough nut-bars to try to keep evolution out of schools. Only after that fiasco did enough of the moderate republicans realize that their votes are important in the primaries, too.

Maybe the whole caucus and primary system needs to have some high visible major trainwrecks like this to draw some attention to its deficiencies. Maybe things have to get worse before they will get better. Small comfort to Ron Paul and his supporters (I'd count myself as one).

I'm pretty sure in Kansas, he'd lose his license. And I'm not really sure I even disagree with it.

Most people are dangerous enough behind the wheel when sober. So, unlike most jobs (where it's legally permissible to demand tests without probable cause), there is actual value in random alcohol/drug testing for drivers. Not to mention that waiting for "probable cause" for alcohol testing is, in many cases, too late. Your probable cause is someone having a wreck.

>> ^lsue:

It's a little more complicated then this - rules and access vary provincially. In Alberta, for example, good luck finding a clinic which will preform an abortion past 20 weeks.
"Who Performs Late Term Abortions:
Hospitals and some clinics in Canada perform abortions on request up to about 20 weeks, and a
few centres do abortions up to 22 or 23 weeks. However, most of the very small number of
abortions performed over 20 weeks gestation in Canada are done to protect the woman’s physical
health, or because of serious fetal abnormalities. Such problems cannot be discovered until an
amniocentesis test is done on the fetus later in pregnancy. Rare abortions after 22 or 23 weeks
gestation are also done in Canada for some cases of lethal fetal abnormalities, where the fetus
cannot survive after birth.
Since abortion services after 20 weeks are not always readily accessible in all parts of Canada,
women are sometimes referred to clinics in the United States (Kansas, Washington State, and
Colorado). Such procedures and associated expenses may be funded in full or part by some
provincial governments."
http://www.arcc-cdac.ca/postionpapers/22-Late-term-Abortions.PDF
>> ^bcglorf:
>> ^EMPIRE:
he mentions a woman possibly coming into the ER 7 months pregnant after having been raped. Is it even possible, legally, to get an abortion at such a late stage? At 7 months, that is pretty much a formed baby. I mean... there have been cases of premature babies with a lot less than 7 months of development.

In Canada it's legal right up until the very last second before birth. And heaven forbid anyone in our country discuss that might be too far, you'll be branded some woman hating neo-con trying to remove the rights of everyone who isn't a white male.




Criminal laws on/against abortion are a federal matter though. And Canada has for some time now very clearly established that there is NO LAW against abortions. Current Canadian federal law in ALL provinces and territories makes all abortion, even up to 9 months, perfectly and completely legal.

It's a little more complicated then this - rules and access vary provincially. In Alberta, for example, good luck finding a clinic which will preform an abortion past 20 weeks.

"Who Performs Late Term Abortions:

Hospitals and some clinics in Canada perform abortions on request up to about 20 weeks, and a
few centres do abortions up to 22 or 23 weeks. However, most of the very small number of
abortions performed over 20 weeks gestation in Canada are done to protect the woman’s physical
health, or because of serious fetal abnormalities. Such problems cannot be discovered until an
amniocentesis test is done on the fetus later in pregnancy. Rare abortions after 22 or 23 weeks
gestation are also done in Canada for some cases of lethal fetal abnormalities, where the fetus
cannot survive after birth.

Since abortion services after 20 weeks are not always readily accessible in all parts of Canada,
women are sometimes referred to clinics in the United States (Kansas, Washington State, and
Colorado). Such procedures and associated expenses may be funded in full or part by some
provincial governments."

http://www.arcc-cdac.ca/postionpapers/22-Late-term-Abortions.PDF

>> ^bcglorf:

>> ^EMPIRE:
he mentions a woman possibly coming into the ER 7 months pregnant after having been raped. Is it even possible, legally, to get an abortion at such a late stage? At 7 months, that is pretty much a formed baby. I mean... there have been cases of premature babies with a lot less than 7 months of development.

In Canada it's legal right up until the very last second before birth. And heaven forbid anyone in our country discuss that might be too far, you'll be branded some woman hating neo-con trying to remove the rights of everyone who isn't a white male.

Intelligent design is manifest in mathematics as well. Looks like the math curricula are about to change in Kansas, Georgia and Kentucky!

"You know, we're just better than people that don't live in The City." -- That's the most common one from New Yorkers that I know.

Oh, oh. And "Minnesota/Ohio/Wisconsin/Iowa/Kentucky/Indiana/Louisiana/Tennessee/Kansas/Idaho/Missouri? Is that near Chicago?"

I'm pretty wigged out by spiders, but I like snakes. So for me, I tried to mentally convert this video into a snake expert "handling" a cobra or something. The way I see it, sure, you can have an expertise level and skill level that would allow you to handle either sort of animal relatively safely. But even in that case, there aren't a whole lot of particularly practical reasons to put that into practice.

My hometown in Kansas has lots of bullsnakes. In my experience, large older bullsnakes are often pretty docile but the young juvenile ones are usually very defensive and will rear up, strike, and mimic rattlesnake sounds and actions. However, they are non-venomous and don't have "fangs", although they do have short teeth that can provide small, shallow puncture wounds if they get a good nip on you.

I like catching bullsnakes when I see them and handling them a bit before releasing them back into the wild. The docile ones are particularly fun, but even the juveniles that show some aggression can be fun to handle with some caution. I have never been bit myself, but I have seen people that have been. No lasting harm comes from that, and in most instances it wouldn't even draw blood -- the surprise of it is probably worse than the damage.

In spite of that, I have no interest whatsoever in handling something like a rattlesnake or other venomous snake. Looking at them, sure. But I don't see much practicality in handling them. In all likelihood, I could safely handle rattlers in the same way that I handle bullsnakes and avoid being bit. But the cost of failure would be higher (lots of pain and small possibility of death).

So at least for me personally, I don't think I'd be interested in handling black widows even if I was a spider person instead of a snake person. I'm not against the author of this video handling them, but I would stop short of the "you should try this at home" tag!

Mine are mostly in Oklahoma -- Kansas is just.... right.... there.

It is weird, isn't it, the disconnect between being "pro-life" and then being so all-fired quick to kill grown people? Maybe that is the crux of their problem -- clearly unreflective on even the most glaring inconsistencies in their thinking. Understand how they can be so blind to their obvious hypocrisy and you will understand their ability to be "evil."

Sorry. I don't believe in evil. Even Hitler had his demons from his childhood that he externalized rather than deal with.

In reply to this comment by Stormsinger:
In reply to this comment by bareboards2:
Do you know any conservatives personally? I am related to lot of folks like this. For the most part, they are fearful, boxed in people who look at the world with blinkers on. In my experience.

Not evil. Scared. And angry. And possessive about "their" stuff -- out of fear.

Conservatives talk about "me and mine." Liberals talk about "us and ours." In my experience.



In reply to this comment by Stormsinger:
Delusional, or sociopathic liar? I really have a hard time deciding.

It's hard to believe he could be this delusional and still be articulate... But it's almost as hard to believe anyone could be this evil intentionally.


I do know a few, if for no other reason than my sister lives in the Kansas boondocks, and they're incredibly common out there. And I'm constantly amazed by many of them. What they claim to believe and what they do is so completely out of sync that it's mind-boggling. Especially among the "social conservatives", i.e. the Christians. "Love thy neighbor", unless it's going to cost me a penny more. And "abortion is murder", but "we should just wipe out all the towelheads." I've seen both of those attitudes more times than I can count.

I still say Cantor is evil...holding millions ransom for the benefit of a few is flat-out evil (a word I've only recently come to accept as something that actually exists in the real world). The only possible defense that I can see is "not guilty by reason of insanity", such that he doesn't even see reality.

>> ^9547bis:

A few remarks:
Socialists are extreme-right in Europe. What? Where's that guy from? Kansas? He sure knows a lot about Europe I can tell.
"Fascists blah blah Colonels blah" --> In real life, an elected government.
"Nothing happens" when you repudiate your debt. Yeah right. On that topic: what Netrunner said.
The big difference with Iceland: this is not the first bailout for Greece, and some of that EU money comes from Central European countries. Countries that started lower than Greece when the Soviet bloc fell, countries that are for some still poorer than Greece, and countries that did not cheat and cook the books like Greece did.
So if the shit goes down, who do you think should pay, Greece, or smaller, poorer countries who played by the rules?
On a side-note: notice how "The Real news" have quickly become the shadow of their former selves. These guys used to send people across the globe, now they're reduced to having the CEO himself introduce the "topic" using "quotes" for words he "doesn't like" while interviewing Joe No-one, like a poor man's leftist Fox News.


If you look at history you'll see that countries have gone bankrupt hundreds of times. Some countries themselves over 20 times. Are any of those countries a smoldering ruin? Nope, life marches on. As for the rest of the shit you said...I don't care.

A few remarks:
* Socialists are extreme-right in Europe. What? Where's that guy from? Kansas? He sure knows a lot about Europe I can tell.
* "Fascists blah blah Colonels blah" --> In real life, an elected government.
* "Nothing happens" when you repudiate your debt. Yeah right. On that topic: what Netrunner said.
* The big difference with Iceland: this is not the first bailout for Greece, and some of that EU money comes from Central European countries. Countries that started lower than Greece when the Soviet bloc fell, countries that are for some still poorer than Greece, and countries that did not cheat and cook the books like Greece did.

So if the shit goes down, who do you think should pay, Greece, or smaller, poorer countries who played by the rules?

On a side-note: notice how "The Real news" have quickly become the shadow of their former selves. These guys used to send people across the globe, now they're reduced to having the CEO himself introduce the "topic" using "quotes" for words he "doesn't like" while interviewing Joe No-one, like a poor man's leftist Fox News.

To me this video represents liberalism in society... which is why I want to see what QM says about this. Without liberalism running rampant through the 60's I feel many of these topics would still be taboo. Through liberalism I feel as though consciousness has expanded on many fronts. Although, don't tell that too a business man - they're not supposed to be empathetic with humans who are below them in the hierarchy.

It seems like this video has a couple of things going on. It wants to talk about the evolution of consciousness & how it relates to being bi-polar in our modern world. But, mental illness for the masses in America is just a drug war. "Buy these, don't buy those". It's largely a fabricated industry & consciousness is another story.

As far as I can see on the topic of evolved consciousness - many, many, many more people in liberal cities have evolved. But, I think the internet is a great device so I think if someone is interested in certain aspects of reality they too can evolve their consciousness & thought processes from the middle of no-where in Kansas; if they really care to or know to. I mean we're constantly expanding QM's consciousness - he just doesn't know it yet he's afraid of it!

I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was a teenager by a psychologist... but I may as well have been diagnosed bi-polar. I was pissed off at the world even though I had it all and was fairly sheltered... and that was the problem. It was too peaceful & I knew the world was out there waiting for me to find out the truth. So, I'm not exactly sure if we could say that my affliction was/is the symptom of post-modern evolution of consciousness but just an annoyance of mundane life tangled up with general anxiety.

I definitely think many people could benefit from "alternative medicine". I know it has a new agey bad wrap. I was prescribed both ritalin (legalized speed) & zoloft (what the hell is it? I don't know!) which are obviously fairly potent. I've experimented with herbal shit like 5-HTP which helps produce more serotonin and it works. It's not as potent but if someone doesn't have a serious mental illness it can work for short-term use and is great for people who would rather not turn into a zombie/robot.

As far as weed... I'm not sure if pot is the greatest thing for someone who is "bi-polar" or super depressed... mushies are great for positive consciousness just don't take em when you're feeling low, lol!

Either way, no one can be happy all of the time. We're human after all. Even though I hate the (human capitalist pig waste) fucking world - I am happy & people always tell me I'm super positive hahaha!! They can never know the truth!



As always...

I would have no problem with these jokers advocating a no additional revenues approach, if they'd be honest with the voters about what their cuts would do. Maybe we should have a constitutional amendment that in order to get on the ballot, you have to present a budget for the next 4 years and let the CBO score it.

I'm not sure that information would change the minds of these folks though. They have their own media that would convince them that the dismantlement of social security and medicare is a good thing. If they decide that's what they want, I'm past trying to "save" them from themselves.

I live in a state that would probably institute these social programs itself if the feds dropped the ball. States built highways and funded research institutions before the federal government ever did. You jerks in Kansas want a voucher instead of medicare, go for it. You want to starve your education and infrastructure? Great, you'll just be cheaper labor for the entrepreneurs who graduate from our functioning schools.

@visionep I come from a farm family in Kansas, so I'm a bit biased, but I tend to disagree with you on a few things. So upvote for your comment starting the discussion but here's my rebuttal --

1. "Not much" has the potential to be pretty good, considering that sources of ethanol are much more renewable than oil. Plus, a lot of the energy balance reviews of ethanol that I've seen or heard of talk about the input cost to produce the first gallon of fuel, ie. they include construction, fermentation tanks, etc. etc. That is fair, but it is worth noting that over the long term those startup input costs become less and less of a factor because the infrastructure already exists. The cost to refine the first gallon of crude oil into gasoline was higher than the bazillionth, also.

2. Some of the food production competition will remain long-term, and some is temporary. Right now in the US, we mostly use corn (field corn) to produce ethanol. Field corn can be ground into corn flour, but at least where I come from the majority of it went to feed lots to be used as food for beef cows prior to introduction of ethanol plants. Now, the produced corn is split between going to beef production or into ethanol.

Competition between beef vs. ethanol industries raised the price of corn some (both industries want that corn) which makes farmers happy. That in turn raised the price of beef a bit, but it didn't do much to prices for human-consumption food other than that, because field corn isn't used for that very much.

The reason that we use corn for ethanol now is that corn is plentiful; it is the major crop in my neck of the woods with wheat being the second but lagging far behind. Ethanol producers need something that ferments, corn fits the bill and is available. Minor crops like milo work basically just as well as corn, so if some weather event damages a corn field and it can be replanted with milo later in the season that is great for farmers because they now have a buyer that is willing to take milo.

In the future, we could use non-food cellulose crops like switchgrass for ethanol production, and the processing will only be slightly different. Switchgrass could be grown and harvested on land that is unsuitable for corn (corn does best with a lot of water), but there isn't a large supply of it right now because there hasn't been any demand for it historically.

So yes, there will always be some competition between what crop people decide to produce on a given piece of farmland, and that can affect food prices. But I think that over the long term, ethanol production could provide useful fuel that has positive benefits that outweigh impacts from potentially slightly higher food prices. Maybe. But then again, I am a biased source!

I've got two perspectives on some of these comments and the video, and thought I'd chime in with some (hopefully not overly longwinded) history / anecdotes:

First, I grew up and attended public school K-12 in Kansas in the 80's and 90's. Overall I am very pleased with the quality of education I received and the teachers I had. From High School, I remember having 3-4 standout excellent teachers, a whole lot of adequate / no-complaints teachers, and 3-4 teachers that I thought were sub-par.

The excellent teachers stand out in my memory because they got me more interested in subjects that I already had some interest in, OR because they made me appreciate subjects that I was otherwise pretty ambivalent about. For example, my math teacher who I studied Geometry, Advanced Algebra, Trigonometry, and AP Calculus with was fantastic. When I was in his classes, I loved learning about math. When I went to University and studied Calc 2 in a lecture hall with 400 other students and teacher-student interaction only with TAs, suddenly math wasn't anywhere near as interesting.

Some of the adequate teachers that I had were probably the favorite teachers of students with other interests. Expecting every teacher to mesh perfectly with absolutely every last one of their hundreds of students per year is probably setting the bar a little unrealistically high. That being said, even though I wasn't completely enthralled with their classes, I think that I got good value from them.

The teachers that I remember as being poor fall into two categories. First are those that taught subjects that I wasn't at all interested in and who did nothing to prompt me to change my mind. I remember hating one of my English teachers because she wasn't impressed with my lack of effort on things like poetry assignments. Looking back, I think that says much more about what I was putting into the class than the quality of that teacher. The other category had teachers that seemed lazy and ineffective, or those whose classes were complete wastes of time -- similar to those that @blankfist described. Most of those teachers were teacher/coaches who, in my point of view, were just phoning-in their teaching duties and only actively interested in the coaching. I still have a bias against sports being included in public school activities due to that type of teacher.


And I also have a perspective from the teaching side of things. I've been living in Thailand for about 4.5 years now, teaching English as a second language. I got a bachelor's degree in Computer Science but struggled finding a job when I graduated (I think I was naively setting my sights too high and too narrow, but thats another story). So, I ended up working as a farmhand on my family farm. That was OK but not really something that I was very passionate about.

Eventually through a family connection, someone approached me about traveling abroad for a year and working as an ESL teacher. I thought that would be an interesting thing to do and a good way to challenge myself, so I flew to Thailand in 2007 and started teaching. The school I connected with put me in as the teacher for kindergarten, which was crazy but fun and rewarding and a good sink or swim introduction to teaching (which I had no prior experience with or education in).

I ended up liking it so much that what was originally just going to be a 1-year experience got extended. I taught kindergarten for 2 years and 1st grade for 1 year. Then there was a big shakeup / administrative disaster at my former school and I switched into teaching High School aged students. Another challenge and something different to get used to, but I am enjoying that as much or more as the younger students.

Being a foreign, native-English-speaking ESL teacher in Thailand is a bit weird. There are lots of really *terrible* foreign teachers that are here to purely to have ready access to cheap beer and prostitutes, and who have absolutely zero interest in the actual teaching; it is just a paycheck. The average salary of a native-English speaking teacher here is about $12,000 a year, which sounds terribly low but is actually a pretty upper-middle class income by Thai standards. For the shitty teachers, it translates into a lot of beer and hookers.

The schools here see foreigners are all fairly identical, easily replaceable cogs. Someone with a master's degree in Education and a real interest in being a good teacher can easily be replaced by a drunken loser that rarely shows up for classes if they don't fall in line with the Thai way of doing things or try to change up the status quo.

I hope that I do a decent job of teaching here. I am confident that I'm way better for my students than many of the drunken backpacker alternatives, but it is dangerous to set the bar that low and get complacent. I'm sure that to a lot of my roughly 800 students this year, I am merely adequate -- not all that memorable but at least not bad either. I know that some of them get a lot out of my classes and I can see them improving in English in leaps and bounds. And I know that there are some on the other side of the coin who are at best ambivalent about me and their English classes in general. My level of motivation prompts me to try my best, but I am too lazy and don't have enough time to throw a whole lot of extra effort at each and every one of my 800 students, most of whom I see for 1 hour a week total.

Anyway, my experiences here have made me appreciate all of my excellent former teachers that much more. Plus, I've learned that anyone that thinks that a teacher in the US is sub-par ought to be thankful that they probably aren't quite as bad as a sub-par "teacher" in Thailand...