@ChaosEngine

lol.i just deleted a massive ramblomatic that broke down the entire history of the ACA.

figured i better just stick to basics.

many of the early protests you saw were partisan diehards who had been riled up by their favorite demagogue.

socalism!!
communism!!

but really the two great things from the ACA,and were provisions obama fought very hard for were:
pre-existing conditions
and while the ACA did not allow negotiating pharmaceutical prices,they DID put a cap on them.

and while the ACA was not perfect,far from it,those two provisions did a lot of good for people who suffered from long term illnesses.

but when anericans are asked pointed questions,without being directed for a specific goal,the majority support a single payer system.even republicans.

because you are right.it is a no-brainer.
americans already pay into a system:medicare/medicaid.
which operates on a 3% overhead.
and if basic,preventative care is offered early in peoples lives,the resulting savings totals into the 100's of billions.

and when presented to the american people like that,the majority are all for it.

*note( in the first three weeks of debating the ACA,the big 3 health insurance companies(blue cross,humana and cigna) spent a whopping 300 BILLION!

by the end it was almost a trillion they had spent to combat the passing of the ACA.

@worm
you do realize that you literally just made @Januari 's point...right?

and i get it...government spending BAD.
government can't do anything blah blah blah...gotcha.

but instead of using the VA as an example of government malfeasance and incompetence,why not use medicare/medicaid?

the VA is run by the DoD and considering that during rumsfelds tenure they lost over a trillion american dollars..POOF..where is that money? nope..can't find it.the pentagon is a mess.

medicare/medicaid is run by the dept of health,which runs on a 3% overhead,has the ability to negotiate with pharmacuticals,and is a system that is already in place AND we all already pay in to.

see,
i am not a fan of obamacare.
i think single payer is the way to go,and the only way to go.
people like to make the comparison of obamacare insurance with car insurance.
forgetting that driving is a privilege...
breathing is not.

so if we take the "profit motive" out of health care.then the majority of people NOT covered would not wait until something dire or life threatening was going down with them to head to the doctor.preventive care has been shown to reduce medical costs dramatically.
see:norway
see:denmark
see:france
see:britain

while i understand many liberals defense of obamacare,i see it only a half measure that can easily be remanded and/or gotten rid of all together.however unlikely that may be.the threat will be enough.

people forget that obamacare was basically written by the heritage foundation in 1992.a right wing think tank and not much was changed (though the pre-existing clause was a positive).

they forget that then Governor mitt romney implemented a similar health care system in massechusetts.which saw steady increases in premiums yearly.

and here is the thing that really eats at me.
it is mandatory.

so here is my prediction:
obamacare is not going anywhere.
while it may be used as apolitical football and health insurance companies will use (and already HAVE used) the threat of leaving due to little or no money (this is a lie) in order to force the government to raise their subsidies.

this is corporate welfare on a scale that over-shadows the bank bailouts of 2007.which at final tally was over 17 trillion.

so obamacare is going nowhere because it is the goose that lays the golden egg,and the gift that keeps on giving.

oh there will threats,and over-politicizing,and wringing of hands,and committee meetings.

but that will be just for show.
we put the fox in charge of the henhouse,and the fox is gonna make damn sure it is going nowhere.

The first time I saw this video, I was a first year law student, lamenting that I hadn't taken the road not traveled. For about a week straight, I would play this as soon as I woke up to get right and face the day. Sometimes it brought tears to my eyes. Right now, I am writing this message in my high school science lab, with the video playing up on the overhead. My students asked me why I became a high school science teacher when I have a license to practice law. This is my answer.

Gorgeous. I went there last summer. It is that stunning. I strongly suggest it as a vacation destination to anyone adventurous.

BUT.....

When you spend the time, energy, and exorbitant amounts of money to go see the unspoiled wilderness and nature, and some asshole ruins it by flying their drone overhead for a few hours, it's enraging.
That happened to us twice (maybe by the same group at different places, we aren't sure). I was ready to grab that drone and throw it in the berg filled lagoon, or the beautiful collimated basalt waterfall they were flying in front of. I had to wait over an hour at the waterfall for the assholes to move out of the picture....they had walked past the 'don't go past this sign' signs to get the shots they wanted right in front of the falls, and refused to move or get back on the trail.

If you own a drone, please be respectful of the rules and of others, or know that it's your fault when someone loses it and destroys your toy. Don't act like the world belongs to you, and other people's peaceful enjoyment of natural areas don't matter.
Your youtube views don't trump my right to peace and quiet in nature.
I feel like drones need to be regulated in public spaces for that reason. Not totally banned, but given specific days when it's allowed and make most parks and all natural parks off limits at all other times.
Drone footage is amazing, drones buzzing overhead are amazingly annoying.

Good questions. My family operates farms for wheat and corn, and I've been involved in that process, so I can take a stab at answering the last bit:

Corn stalks get quite tall -- 6 feet / 2 meters or so. Each stalk usually has 1 or 2 ears of corn. On our farm, the experience I had suggests that each plant needs quite a lot of healthy leaves for Photosynthesis as well as quite a lot of available ground water. Irrigated corn often produces 2-3 times as many bushels per acre as compared to "dryland" / non-irrigated corn.

So the issues I can see potentially clashing between corn production and vertical farming are:

1) You'd have a greater space requirement for layers of corn since you'd need probably 8-10 feet per layer, as compared to what looks like 2-3 feet per layer for leafy vegetables in the video. Approximately one story per layer wouldn't allow for the massive footprint savings like in leafy plants without getting extremely tall, which would be expensive for water pumping etc.

2) Corn root systems are pretty deep to support a tall and relatively bulky stalk. Getting that to bite into a thin layer of fabric / recycled plastic to provide structural support for the plant would be difficult. I think you'd need to have a thicker bottom layer *and* to manually place further support lines on the stalks as the plants grow, which would get very labor intensive and therefore expensive.

3) The vertical nature of a corn stalk suggests that the overhead motion of the sun might be pretty important for getting light exposure onto all of the leaves. Fixed overhead lights might mean that the top leaves get plenty of light but the ones lower on the stalk would be shaded by those above and get nothing -- which isn't a problem if the sun progresses through low angles at sunrise/set to overhead at noon throughout a day. So you might have to have lighting that hits from all sides to account for that with corn, which would again add expense.

4) To maximize the output, corn needs a LOT of water. Pumping that up the vertical expanse to get lots of levels could easily get problematic. Corn will grow without optimal / abundant watering, and their misting system would likely be more efficient than irrigating to add ground water, but the main benefit of vertical farming seems to be high output in a small land footprint on the ground. So without LOTS of water, you'd be limiting that benefit.


So basically, my guess is that vertical farms are a fantastic idea for squat, spread out plants like lettuce, but a lot of the advantages disappear when you're talking about something tall like corn. I could easily be wrong about any/all of that though.

Our country reeks of trees
Our yaks are really large
And they smell like rotting beef carcasses
And we have to clean up after them
And our saddle sores are the best
We proudly wear womens' clothing
And searing sand blows up our skirts
And the buzzards, they soar overhead
And poisonous snakes will devour us whole
Our bones will bleach in the sun
And we will probably go to HELL
And that is our great reward
For being the roy-oy-al Canadian Kilted Yaksmen

Here's an old ass song by The Offspring, a local socal band, with their not-so hit song titled "LAPD":

When cops are taking care of business I can understand
But the L.A. story's gone way out of hand
Their acts of aggression, they say they're justified
But it seems an obsession has started from the inside
They're shooting anyone who even tries to run
They're shooting little kids with toy guns
Take it to a jury but they don't give a damn
Because the one who tells the truth is always the policeman

Beat all the niggers
Beat whoever you see
Don't need a reason
(We're) L.A.P.D.

The city of L.A. feels like a prison
With helicopters overhead and bullets whizzing by
Martial law ain't no solution
Police brutality's just social pollution

Beat all the white trash
Beat whoever you see
Don't need a reason
(We're) L.A.P.D.

They say they're keeping the peace
But I'm not buying it because a billy club ain't much of a pacifier
"Protecting your freedom"
Now that's just a lie
It's an excuse for power that's more like an alibi
Law and order doesn't really matter
When you're the one getting bruisedand battered
You take it to a jury, they'll throw it in your face
Because justice in L.A. comes in a can of mace

Lol not everyone had a sound card back then. Saddly it does no look like anyone as done a video of the days of audio over the pc speaker. I mean it was mostly un exciting, but there were a few example of great engineering feets. Some games that used MOD music (usually if it was done on AMIGA first and ported to pc) mixed the digital music into a mono WAV form and used the interrupt heavy digital audio output over pc speaker method. I owned a game that I can no longer remember that had a custom audio track that was fairly simular, and rapidly alternated between 2-3 instrument tracks for a fairly convincing melodic background music without the huge performance overhead trying to do MOD music over pc speaker had.

If it isn't obvious, I was a huge audio fanboi back then. Started with my C64 and SID music (I even owned the external SID cartridge for 6 track stereo music), and when i got my first PC (486) I picked up a 2x cdrom and sound blaster PRO (had to have dat stereo sound) for my birthday.

They forgot the bit where everyone has oversized carry-ons and take up all the overhead space, so the stewardess puts your bag in a spot 10 rows behind you, and then when you're trying to deplane you have to move against the flow of traffic to reclaim your carry-on.

According to HyperCubeMD over on LL,

They are truck rails, most likely used in overhead or longshore cranes. Joints mean less smoothness in operation. Larger than regular train rails which indicates a very large load and so I would guess probably used for the latter.

Net neutrality is not bureaucracy, any more than "not allowing organised crime to extort people" is.

Obamacare obviously has some significant overhead to it, but as the system beds in, people will streamline it and make it more efficient.

The majority of the world has found that some bureaucracy is a reasonable price to pay for the benefits of socialised medicine. It's never perfect. The question is whether you throw the baby out with the bathwater.

No-one is arguing for "large, unwieldy debt-ridden monstrosities", if that is happening, then measures should be put in place to deal with that. But in a country of 320 million people, some bureaucracy is inevitable.

57.4 million subscribers x $7 month = $401,800,000 monthly.
Did I compute that right?

Consider that profit against no bricks and mortar stores, or front counter employees - making overhead and expenditures relatively small.

Burden or gridlock. Those are subjective terms that connote a desire to catch up. Catching up helps no one involved in law enforcement.

They terms you should look for are "Artifacts and metrics".

Every department must spend more than it did last year. This year's funding is what it is because of what was spent last year. Next year's funding depends on what will be spent this year.

A lack of funding leads to downsizing and furloughs. Best way to secure funding for next year is to spend this year.

Money has colours. You get different charge codes for different actions.
Some charge codes are considered low pri / overhead. Others are considered necessary. If you're charging mostly overhead, and very little necessary, you have bad metrics. If you charge mostly towards necessary and little to overhead, you have good metrics.

Police have to arrest/charge people to look productive. That generates metrics showing that police are needed. If they can make sure to spend at least as much money on enforcement this year as last year, their jobs are secured. A department that's mostly sitting around, is a department that is not critical, and can get a budgetary cut.
So long as police are employed, they will find people to arrest/charge/ticket/whatever. Even if they have to stretch for it.

The same situation applies in court. Prosecutors are looking to maximize their convictions metrics. Their job is to get people convicted. It's not that they /want/ to convict people. That's simply how they charge their time, and how they get good metrics.

Judges don't necessarily care how a case goes. They simply want to charge as much time to judging as possible.

Actually "catching up" serves the interests of no one. And it's not that people are sitting down saying "Hey, how can I make myself look necessary". Some people do, sure. But most people are simply thinking "I gotta stay/look busy".

The "system" takes care of getting things to run amok.
Everyone stays busy so they can charge productive looking time codes, so they don't get scolded by management or downsized.
Departments spend all their allocated money so they don't get under funded.
Analytically, it looks like they are saturated, so they get more funding, and bring on more people.
The new people need to stay busy, and the cycle repeats.
The beast grows.

In effect, burden and gridlock are the food that keeps the beast fed.

This isn't simply a law enforcement issue. It's how government works. Every program makes it a goal to spend all of their funding, and look as busy as possible. No one wants to be cut, and looking like you're not busy is an easy way to be 'it' when there is a cut.

Rememer : All money is spent on payroll.
You don't pay the earth for anything.
If you buy materials, that's simply paying the payroll for the material supplier.
The entire cost of anything, is the total cost of all employees.
The only way to ever reduce costs, is to reduce how much someone makes.
Either by cutting the amount paid, or by cutting jobs.
Every year there's talk of reigning in government spending.
That means that every year, there's talk of cutting jobs.

TBH, newtboy, I don't know your background, or how much experience you have around government crap. I donno if this all sounds like a joke, but it really is this stupid.

-scheherazade

After much research, I chose Private Internet Access. They never log anything so they can't be compelled to provide browsing/download histories. Check out: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/how-one-small-american-vpn-company-is-trying-to-stand-up-for-privacy/

Also, I have noticed that file locker services are throttled big time on Verizon Fios, but through a VPN they are super fast. There is probably 5-10% overhead for using a VPN, but it's still way better than a non-VPN connection.

Yeah, you think that shit's funny -- when Asiana crashed at SFO, the evacuation was slowed down by people grabbing their baggage from the overheads.