A pillar of modern "conservatism" is reflexive partisan contrarianism.

If youre a normal country you are always living on credit, if for no other reason, then because it is super easy and cheap to borrow. Also you have to, to make it to the next pay check (tax collection). First your subjects have to produce and sell, then you can collect taxes.

You dont base the value of the dollar on anything. You offer it as a commodity to the market. If your economy sucks or you print too much money the dollar goes down, which can help the economy. Printing money doesnt automatically help the economy though, it just creates space and time to make it possible for the economy to improve.

Improving the economy means creating more or better products and services that are in demand at a competitive cost. Governments in non-dictatorial countries cant really do that directly, they can only create the conditions for this to happen.

Moderate inflation hardly plays a part, except as a moderator (is that a pun?) of shocks. Deflation (and a strong gold standard in a developing economy IS deflation) is deadly, it makes the economy less flexible, less able to adjust.

If you never improve your ecomomy, all you will have left will be to bitch about inflation.

What is too much debt, too much inflation, too much intervention? I wish economics was a science.

Theoretically the economy can get to be so bad that the structure collapses, there are countries which have notoriously bad historical records, and yet every time they restart they have to borrow money to get things going again. Reserves in general are useless. Production, services and a functioning market, recursive production of valuable goods and services which freely and easily find customers is the only thing you can consider a reliable pillar of civilization. Currency is one of those goods and services.

If for any reason yor currency cant freely circulate (see China or the USSR errr... Russia) you can hardly be a superpower, at least not in the economic sense.

Adopting a gold standard so strong that it would destroy the international dollar standard has no advantage for the USofA or for any developed first world country. Even just having the Euro wreaks havoc in weaker European countries economies, but that is another can of worms.

A lot of what is wrong about the gold standard would apply if a country decided to adopt bitcoin as its sole currency btw.

Yeah, I initially was disturbed by the sinking, but one of the architects they spoke to about it said if it was uneven sinking it would be easily spotted by tenants due to the cracking of floors, walls, and ceilings. They are also saying it is a classic example of pillar failure, which the building rests on, but they can't be certain of what caused it. It could be poor quality concrete or spalling, if that is found it is definitely the builder's fault.

Aren't you going to crow about how presidential Trump is, working so hard even at the hospital? Come on, you have the pictures. I'm begging you, tell us all about it.

Aren't you going to point to his humanity of riding around the hospital to personally thank the crowd there for him?

No?!?

I know why....in his staged "look, I'm working" pictures, they were too stupid to check the meta data, those staged fake photos were under ten minutes apart, just enough time to redress Trump and switch rooms. He wasn't working. Need more proof? They're also so moronic they just gave him a blank piece of paper to be "working" on. You can see it in the picture with nothing but his signature.
I also know why you aren't talking about him going all out to thank those at the hospital....they were mostly PROUD BOYS. The vigil was actually organised by the proud boys founder, who was there. Pretty certain that was planned with Whitehouse approval, they sure as Fuck know who they are by now, and Trump put secret servicemen at high risk and a minimum of 14 days away from work and family to thank the proud boys again.

Then, to top it off, first thing he does back at the Whitehouse is remove his mask knowing full well he's highly infectious despite the medical cocktail of experimental drugs and steroids he received that no one else on the planet could possibly get, but not his precious hydroxy, even he's not stupid enough to take that poison, intentionally exposing every person in the room behind him, and there were many.

But wait...there's more! Because baby Loanspurs doesn't want to admit he wore a mask ever, he then reportedly took a camera crew outside to reshoot his reentry at the Whitehouse with no masks. That will be the official video now, not the real video with masks.

Pillar of honor and responsibility he is not.

You should check out PBS Space Time on YouTube then

I love Brian; he is a pillar of the physics community. However, in the interest of time, he only got into Hawkin's shuttlecock interpretation.

There are others such Paul Steinhardt Eternal Inflation, and the universe being born out of black/white hole as described in the Penrose diagrams.

General relativity math is solid, but no one really knows how to interpret the singularity (if there is such a thing).

I spent 25-30 years waiting, hoping, expecting those good cops to toss out the bad ones and be the upright pillars of our communities they take credit for being. I was sorely disappointed and decided I better change my assessment and expectations.

That doesn't mean all cops are bad people, many are outstanding people. It means they are part of a culture that puts even terrible workmates above the public and the law they enforce, and that, by their own definition, makes them as guilty as the known criminal cops they harbor.
I can only blame the police leadership and unions for protecting police criminals instead of the public, and the current fight about misconduct investigation records only highlights it's an ongoing and worsening issue. They should want total transparency so the public knows the police aren't harboring and protecting rapists and brutal thugs. That would make the job safer and easier too.

I don't think I'm giving the bad cops power, I'm recognizing the reality that the bad cops apparently run the show and make their own rules whenever possible, including investigating themselves in secret when they're caught breaking them.

Foolish test subject, that was a hologram of cake.

The dash cam is mounted in the center of the window so it has a much better view than the driver. The driver is sitting farther back and on the left side, and probably couldn't see the car until it was too late because there is a structural pillar and a mirror blocking the drivers view on the front left side where the car came from.

I don't know, they still need that anti-ram-your-truck-through-the-doors pillar out front.

We Canadians stop THAT sort of thing with traffic cones.

He definitely put years into it. I first tried reading it cold, with no prep. I read the first 3 pages over and over and gave up, it made no sense. A few years later I read a book about it which was a huge help. Then I found an entire section at the Connecticut College library dedicated to it.

I'm still finding "hidden tracks" in it after reading it and reading about it for 25 years. Like how the first 3 chapters parallel the last 3 chapters. How Bloom's path at a certain point in the city resembles a question mark. The barmaid Sirens, the drunken lout Cyclops character, and all the other Odyssey parallels.

I visited the Martello tower from Chapter one when i went to Dublin, that was so cool to be there. I never did find Nelson's Pillar though. ;-)

You act as if he knows who he is posting.
Anyone talking shit about Democrats is a truth telling pillar of society...until they turn on Republicans.
It's not about consistency or rationality, it's about thumbing your nose and sticking out your tongue at the other team.

I agree, our culture is barbaric, and getting more so. We're already discarding our culture's core pillar, that citizens have the right to believe in any religion they want....or none. I fully expect atheists to be the next targeted group, we're easy, a small (by comparison) group with little political power, and we're distrusted by the right, but not supported fully by the left, and we're an acceptable target for ridicule and distrust by almost all religious people. I ain't goin to no camp.

We (Americans) hold our prejudice tightly, and are worried about anyone different from ourselves, seemingly ignorant of the fact that we are (almost) al immigrants, and that our nation is built on the idea that different cultures together are stronger than any one.
We let Irish in while the IRA called for death to Brittan and tried to give it to them, without any extra vetting. What's different about these people....hmmmm? A different culture that, in your words, is barbaric? I guess you have an incredibly short memory, because until the mid 90's, terroristic barbarism was mostly reserved for Christians, yet no one suggested halting Christian immigration or extra vetting. Historically, Christian culture is far more barbaric and anti-intellectual.

huge uber congrats to a real dinky di pillar of the sift community never has anyone been so deserving!

Son.

Of.

A.

Bitch.

I knew this day would come. I didn't know when. I only knew it wouldn't be soon enough.

@eric3579 is probably definitely the most passionate sifter around. He's poured his heart and soul into this little place and we love him for it. If there's anyone who's ever deserved galaxy, it's Eric, and I know @dag and myself feel the same.

Congratulations Eric and thanks for all the many contributions and all your effort for the many years we've been together.

You are an enormous steaming pillar of sift. ♥

What did Jello ever do to you, huh? Poor guy... stealing his band's royalties and hiding it, then admitting in court he knew about it and just didn't know what to do about it, losing the rights to his own band and now having difficulty keeping Alternative Records afloat. But what do you expect from a dude who doesn't give a fuck about money?

Oh wait... jello, as in J-E-L-L-O and Fat Albert and the chicken heart and raping women -- what's his name...? OH -- Bill Cosby? Oh. Yeah, fuck that guy. Insipid comedian who criticized other black comedians and black culture in general, meanwhile he was raping women. Pillar of the community, that man. Family man.

Oh wait... this is about charter schools?! I'm only 2 minutes in and it's completely derailed me!!!

Many big, happy congratulations to you, you massive pillar of sift.

And I dump an endless Gatorade bucket of thanks over your head for the many years and so many contributions.