I second that, indeed they are.

I'm a Chinese immigrant (to Canada) and I got a different kind of racist treatment from, er, the "majority".

But the theory is that, the best way to beat a racist is to be better than him/her - both in character & wealth. No matter what kind of unfair (in my POV) treatment the majority/society-at-large throw at me, the best way forward is make myself useful, bear the hardship to make my 2nd generation better off then I, have them pass on the same ideal to the next generation. Down the road, parity can be achieved, and my kids & grand-kids will be even better off then those racists.

My dad always said he hadn't much schooling (been at school for a total of 3 years), but through sheer determination he was very successful.
Rather than spoiling us he made sure he got us into good schools and we return the favor with good grades and focus.

What I'm saying is, those racists don't bother me, I'd rather do some good with my time than arguing with those ne'er-do-wells. This I think is rather typical thinking for most Asians immigrants.

As a Canadian I can answer the question on use of the term 'Eskimo', and it is absolutely considered offensive in many circles, Inuit being the proper language to use. You can learn more about all the lengths your language to be 'proper'(for now) here:
http://dragonflycanada.ca/resources/aboriginal-peoples-terminology/

As an added reference, I'm still surprised to here the repeated use of Indian to describe Native American peoples from US television talk shows and such. In Canada using 'Indian' that way is approaching parity with using the N word.

Yup the paygap thing is indeed murky ground.

Therein lies the difference between mindless ideology and critical consideration of ideas & solutions.

There is a clear trend over time towards parity, one which does not appear to be stopping and is lightyears ahead of any previous time in modern history.

But that is not to suggest perfection or a lack of rational means to help move closer towards it.

This is very different to exclaiming "mysogyny!" and disregarding the immense complexity of both problem and solution.

*ban
The Parity Check
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az_jv0rp6mM

And your first paragraph pretty much spells out why solar PV is a dud investment for small plant/home plant if it were completely unsupported by a plethora of mechanisms designed to make it viable financially (and that's before even considering whether the energy cost is significantly offset by the energy produced), not to mention trying to make time to do things when your PV production is high so that you're not wasting it.

I try to load shift as much as possible, even went so far as to have most of the array facing the west where we'll scrape out some extra power when we're actually going to use it (eg. in the afternoon, particularly for running air conditioners in summer), but without feed in tariffs that are 1:1 with energy purchase prices and government subsidies on the installation of the system, the sums (at least in Australia) just do not ever come close to making sense.

But as I said in the first paragraph, that is all financial dickering, it has nothing to do with actual energy used vs energy generated. There is no free energy, you have to spend energy to make energy. You have to buil a PV array, pay for the wages of the people who install it, transport costs etc etc. They all drain energy out of the system. And most people in places where feed in tariffs are either on parity with the cost of purchasing energy when your PV isn't producing align their solar arrays with the ideal direction for greatest generation of energy that they can get the best profit for, not for generation of energy when energy demands spike.

The consequences of this are that at midday, energy is coursing in to the grid and unless your electricity provider has some capacity for extended storage and load shifting (eg. pumped hydro, large scale battery arrays), it's underutilised. Come peak time in the afternoon when people get home, switch on cooling/heating, start cooking etc when PV's production is very low, the electricity company still has to cycle up gas turbines to provide the extra power to get over that peak demand, and solar does little to offset that.

So carbon still get's pissed away every day, but as long as PV owners get a cheaper bill, it's all seen to be working like a charm... ; )

The energy current efficiency panels return is only on an order of 2-3x the energy input, which is barely enough energy returned to support a subsistence agrarian lifestyle (forget education, art, industrialisation). There's a reason that far better utilisation of coal and oil via steam heralded the massive breakthrough of industrialisation, it's because coal has close to a 30 to 1 return on energy invested. Same with petrochemicals, incredibly high return on energy.

The biggest advances in human civilisation came with the ability to harness energy more effectively, or finding new energy sources which gave high amounts of energy in return for the effort of obtaining them and utilising them. Fire, water (eg. mills etc), carbon sources, nuclear and so on. Even if you manage to get 95% efficiency on the panels for 100% of their lifetime (currently incredibly unlikely), you're only turning that number in to 8-12x the energy invested compared to 25-30x for coal/petro, 50x+ for hydro and 75-100+x for gen IV nuke reactors.

Shocking that one of the leading mouthpieces and corporate apologists for the diseased form of capitalism that is capsizing the former republic of the United States of America would be predicting that 'market forces' will maintain an environment where CEOs such as Dan Price, who are confused as to which side of the class war they are on, will be strongly discouraged from closing the historical chasm of income disparity with their workers via a complex and myriad assortment of carefully implemented internal structures, that have been embedded over several decades starting with Reagan, and will serve to doom any business to failure for not prizing profit, and the unequal distribution of profit, over all other considerations such as income parity.

The most interesting aspect of this experiment isn't whether it succeeds or fails in the long run but rather that it will someday be used as a prime example by people like Chris Hedges who argue that the form of crony capitalism plaguing the West cannot and should not be reformed but rather destroyed and replaced with a system that doesn't have as its main aim the impoverishment of workers for the sole benefit of an oligarchical aristocratic elite.

As you wrote " As has been mentioned above, you must simply have no idea what socialism is if you think America is even headed in that direction, we're headed the other way buddy" shows your lack of understanding of political systems.

You can 100% government control on 1 side and 0 government power at the other end

At the 100% you would have labels such as Communism
Socialism,Fascism and such. At 0 would be Anarchy


Our government is in the middle but sliding towards more and more government control and morphing into some for of Oligarchy by buying votes via socialist programs promised by the left.
Then the pudendum swing back and the republicans buy votes by promising to "undue" what the left has done.

Either way the people loose because nothing get totally undone. More and more government control ensues.



1 Yes I would like there to be ZERO dollars donations by corporations and people. Since the government owns public airways and grants them via FCC, hence ABC, CBS, NBC etc let these station allot public time for equal debate for ALL parties and persons. TAKE the money out of politics.

2 I do agree what you indicated by the Republicans and did this week was reprehensible. A passing a trillion + bill and and worse the extra "shit" to help banks and such. But to be fair to republicans , Democrats over screw corporations and republicans attempt to unscrew them.

3 school lunches - Government should not be in regulating school lunch- it should be a local thing. Republicans are just undoing Michelle Obama failed school lunch program. Just more finger pointing points for bloggers to use.

4 Federal government controls the laws in DC Its their little kingdom. They can re ban pot all day long.

Generally speaking there are 5 types of government:
Monarchy - rule by one - never truly exits
Oligarchy - ruled by few - most governments today
Democracy- rule by majority - Majority rule is a failed system.
Republic- rule by law - Law limits Government powers
Anarchy - every man for himself- Always short lived due to power vacuum.


You say " America is sliding away from socialism, and into corporatism" Well they are basically neighbors in the political spectrum which would be some form of Oligarchy. Neither necessary serve the people freely.


Both Democrats and Republicans are sliding headlong towards Oligarchy. One party is just trying to get there quicker than the other party.


Both parities have utterly failed its people. There is only 1 party that desires to steer this country back towards a Republic and that is the TEA party. They get stronger and stronger every time their party fail its constituents. Were not all right wing lynching nuts. That's just a myth promoted by left wing media to color you thinking to stay on the Democrat plantation.
Truth of the matter is that four in 10 Tea Party members are either Democrats or Independents. Go to a rally and see for you self.

The only good that comes from this is coming closer to parity between the poor and the rich. If this just results in the rich becoming richer again then it is pointless.

The flaw in this argument is that he is arguing from a non-existent present.

He argues that we can't curtail the second amendment until we reach cultural consensus, but depending on your interpretation, we either already have curtailed it, or never have.

There are basically two reasonable interpretations of the 2nd, either
A) it guarantees the rights as they were at the time: white landowning men can have muzzle-loaded un-rifled scatter guns.
or B) it guarantees weapon parity with foreign and domestic militaries: civilian nuke-ICBMs etc

Functionally nobody has a problem with A, and nobody endorses B. We are already on the continuum, it's pretty late to demand that we never get there. We are not having a debate of quality, only one of quantity.

I love Betty Bower's bighead on that teensy body of her's...bet she's fun at parities ~

>> ^maestro156:

>> ^packo:
take a look on index mundi
% of people below poverty line in hungary is 13.9%
for the US, its 15.1%

I looked on Index Mundi but I didn't see what they used for a definition of "Poverty Line". What I did see was that their reporting of Per Capita GDP (Purchasing Power Parity) was US 48,000 and Hungary 19,600. I suspect that the poor Hungarian would be ecstatic to be a poor American. And the poor American would probably be appalled at the living condition of their "equal" in Hungary.
To the original poster, I'm no Republican, but I fully support his freedom to buy this advertisement and speak his mind to whoever wishes to listen. I also support your right to speak _against_ his points. But I cannot support your desire to _silence_ him.


You seem to misunderstand me on a VERY specific issue. I DO NOT care if this man screams at the top of his lungs what he believes, that is his RIGHT to do so IN the U.S. of A.. However, the part I DO have a problem with is a little law that was passed by our buffoons in charge that deals with a little issue you may have heard of before called, "Citizens United". A group of individuals that used this law of unlimited money in campaign measures, that over time lead to this very ad and the fact that it could be produced, bought, and then given to outlets to run at a price by a single person, a BILLIONAIRE with a CAUSE.

His cause I CAN ASSURE you was not to let you know the perils and evils that socialism can lead things too. Hell, putting more money in history classes can teach us that socialism is at best a double-edged sword. Much like our "democracy". If he cared THAT much he would focus on education and children as they are our future and ultimately our next policy holders, decision makers, and our curse unless we find a "true" way out of all of these issues.


I will allow you to figure out what his endgame or true motive may be, in fact it MAY BE two things, but it certainly isn't what he so vividly talks of in his ad. Fear.

>> ^packo:

take a look on index mundi
% of people below poverty line in hungary is 13.9%
for the US, its 15.1%


I looked on Index Mundi but I didn't see what they used for a definition of "Poverty Line". What I did see was that their reporting of Per Capita GDP (Purchasing Power Parity) was US 48,000 and Hungary 19,600. I suspect that the poor Hungarian would be ecstatic to be a poor American. And the poor American would probably be appalled at the living condition of their "equal" in Hungary.

To the original poster, I'm no Republican, but I fully support his freedom to buy this advertisement and speak his mind to whoever wishes to listen. I also support your right to speak _against_ his points. But I cannot support your desire to _silence_ him.

It is like asking do you need Coke and Pepsi. If there is enough money and interest and both provide meaningful difference for those investors...then yes. There are many instances where a design parity is possible, where both science and commercial interest are being served. This isn't always the case, but the fact that they are working together means they can steal from each other when applicable. Here's hoping to a 2 planet species in our lifetime.

That abort system has to be the most interesting bit of rocketry engineering and execution I have seen, ever. Reminds me of how odd thrust vectoring looks in planes.

? Well, that wasn't my point so I still don't know why you wanna laugh @budzos.

My point was that, if you buy "nice" enough parts (like all parts of an Apple system are "nice"), you end up with a PC that costs about the same as a Mac.

Lol @ you.


>> ^jmzero:

I was gonna list my PC specs and their costs and then realized what a waste of time that is. Just for one example my case cost $400+, not $250. It's a big giant black hunk of brushed aluminum. It's bad-ass.

Meh, if you'd finished your price list, and assuming you went about "$400 case level" on all your components, I think what you would have demonstrated is how much more PC you can get for $2500 (just as I demonstrated how you can get that same hardware for much cheaper).
And I wasn't lol'ing at you for being a Mac fanboy or something. I was laughing at the idea that there's general price parity between Macs and PCs. There just isn't.
(Again, to avoid some pedantry, that doesn't mean people shouldn't get a Mac If you will be happier on a Mac, the price premium you pay on a model like this will almost certainly pay itself over the years.)

I was gonna list my PC specs and their costs and then realized what a waste of time that is. Just for one example my case cost $400+, not $250. It's a big giant black hunk of brushed aluminum. It's bad-ass.



Meh, if you'd finished your price list, and assuming you went about "$400 case level" on all your components, I think what you would have demonstrated is how much more PC you can get for $2500 (just as I demonstrated how you can get that same hardware for much cheaper).

And I wasn't lol'ing at you for being a Mac fanboy or something. I was laughing at the idea that there's general price parity between Macs and PCs. There just isn't.

(Again, to avoid some pedantry, that doesn't mean people shouldn't get a Mac If you will be happier on a Mac, the price premium you pay on a model like this will almost certainly pay itself over the years.)