Re: Dead Body Theatre
At 06:33 PM 07/25/2003 -0700, Steve Schear wrote: At 16:33 2003-07-25 -0700, you wrote: On 24 Jul 2003 at 9:16, Eric Cordian wrote: Now that the new standard for pre-emptive war is to murder the legitimate leader of another sovereign nation and his entire family, an artist's rendering of Shrub reaping what he sows would surely be an excellent political statement. You are a moron. If today warfare means wiping out the family of the enemy ruler man woman and child and showing their horribly mangled bodies on TV, this is a big improvement on the old deal where the rulers had a gentlemen's agreement that only the common folk would get hurt, and the defeated ruler would get a luxurious retirment on some faraway island. Here, here! Steve, did you mean Hear, hear!? Or were you calling for it to happen here? :-) Back when we had a First Amendment, that was probably legal, but since Bush inherited the presidency, it might not be... Perhaps we may even become as smart as some Pacific Islanders whose wars were fought by surrogates, the logic being that the death of one man can serve as well as the death of many in determining the outcome of a disagreement between heads of tribes, states, etc. European feudalism did that also, though Europeans were less likely to eat the bodies of the losers. Trial by Combat was tossed out of British law in ~1850, but hadn't been used for a long time before that, though dueling was still around in the early 1800s.
Re: Dead Body Theatre
On Sunday, July 27, 2003, at 04:18 PM, James A. Donald wrote: -- On 27 Jul 2003 at 14:22, Tim May wrote: As for the standard of living issue, I _do_ think the standard of living has declined over the past 40 years, aside from some availability of high tech products and medical care. Most of my employed friends are working half again as many hours as my father worked, are spending twice as much time sitting in traffic, and are living in smaller houses than my parents and my family lived in. And they are paying several times the tax burden. If the wife works, which was rare in the 1950s and into the early 60s, and they have children, then they may be paying a further substantial hit on childcare and nannies. When Palo Alto was developed, it was for the most part where the poor people lived, while the rich people in San Francisco could no longer afford their parents houses. This is so untrue as to be ridiculously silly. I don't know for certain which decades you are referring to as when Palo Alto was developed, as it was developed from the decades when Stanford was being established, then when Varian and H-P were being established, then when Lockheed and Fairchild were going strong, then when the chip companies of the 60s and 70s were operating, and so on. However, since Palo Alto was essentially built out by the late 1960s, when the last of the Eichlers (*) were finished, I'll address several of these periods: (Eichlers are a style of house laid on a slab, with relatively little insulation, lots of glass, etc. These typically sold for about $20K during most of the late 50s, early to mid 60s.) * during the build up of Professorville and the other professional-oriented parts of PA, the houses were built by well-paid (for the time) professors. Numerous mansions along University Ave., for example. With lesser houses near Colorado, California, Embarcadero, etc. Even at this time relatively few of the residents were unable to afford San Francisco. * during the post-WWII employment by Varian, H-P, Fairchild, and others, a typical engineer made about $12K per year (varied over the years, of course) and the houses cost about $20K. Taxes were a very small fraction, maybe $1.5K per year, total, including federal, state, local, sales, energy, road, etc. * when I moved to the area in 1974, salaries were about $15K, averaged over educational status, and houses were about $30K. Taxes were dramatically higher, even for lowly-paid starting engineers. The welfare state was in full swing, with more and more people (of color) simply not working at all, or claiming disability, or hacking the system to extract more handouts for having more children, etc. Interestingly, at this time, in 1974, San Francisco was a much less expensive place to live in than Palo Alto or Los Altos or even Sunnyvale were. While there were probably some engineers living in Palo Alto whose parents lived in Pacific Heights (a wealthy area of SF) and who thus could not afford to live as there parents had, I saw maybe only one of these folks during my years at Intel. Palo Alto, even though built out, was like a lot of towns that had been built out. There is an appalling housing crisis here in Silicon valley, caused by the fact that most of the land is off limits to development. This is simply not so. Most of the steep hillsides in watershed areas are not developed, but this is common in many cities, in many countries. And the housing crisis is roughly comparable in many places I have lived in or spent time or visited. Examples include Portland the areas west of it (plenty of land, but very similar problems), San Antonio, Albuquerque, Northern Virginia, most of southern Florida, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, and nearly all of LA. And from reading news reports and talking to friends, things are much the same in many other parts of the country. In almost no place even remotely near a large city or suburban area can one buy a house for about 1.5 times a typical local salary for an engineer or comparable college graduate. A more important problem than all the land is off limits is every worker costs a lot plus every permit costs a lot. This is largely due to massive taxation at nearly every level. --Tim May
Re: Dead Body Theatre
On Sunday, July 27, 2003, at 11:20 AM, James A. Donald wrote: This is the same moron marxism as expressed in the word sweatshop: To a naive and ignorant socialist it seems that if each man selfishly pursues his own desire, the result will necessarily be chaos and hardship, that one person's plan will naturally harm those that are not part of it, hence such phrases and concepts as sweatshop which presuppose that one man producing a plan to create value and another man providing equipment to implement that plan, has somehow magically made the workers in a poor country worse off, that saving, investment and entrepeneurship is unproductive, that investment, particularly investment by rich people creating the means of production in poor countries, is a plot to swindle the poor, a scam, a transfer from poor to rich. \ The move to boycott stores selling sweatshop products is gathering steam, so to speak. Stores like The Gap, Old Navy, Target, etc. are making plans to stop buying from so-called sweatshops. Of course, when this happens all those employed in these sweatshops in Bangladesh, Malaysia, etc. will be unemployed. What, do people think shutting down the garment factories means the workers will get jobs at Intel and Microsoft? Or that somehow their wages will be increased to economically-unsupported levels for their country/ Duh. I'll chortle as yuppies and GenXers may more for inferior clothing while millions in Bangladesh and Malaysia starve to death over this save the poor people! scam. As for the standard of living issue, I _do_ think the standard of living has declined over the past 40 years, aside from some availability of high tech products and medical care. Most of my employed friends are working half again as many hours as my father worked, are spending twice as much time sitting in traffic, and are living in smaller houses than my parents and my family lived in. And they are paying several times the tax burden. If the wife works, which was rare in the 1950s and into the early 60s, and they have children, then they may be paying a further substantial hit on childcare and nannies. I would not want interference to stop free transaction in jobs, but it's disingenuous to ignore the fact that many today are working two jobs, or very, very long hours, to maintain a house that is generally smaller than in years past. (Yeah, there are are a lot of McMansions. But many engineers in their 30s are still living in crappy apartments. And working 50-hour weeks, at minimum, with hours per day spent sitting in traffic. And on call with cellphones and laptops. And taking work home. And checking their e-mail every night and weekend. And paying 50% or more of what they make in federal income taxes, state income taxes, passed-on property taxes, sales taxes, energy taxes, highway taxes, and Socialist Security taxes. And what they earn in investments, after paying taxes on income, is taxed a second time, even if the alleged investment gains are mostly due to monetary devaluation.) You often let your intense hatred of Marxism blind you to the very horrific situation we now face. --Tim May
Re: Dead Body Theatre
On Saturday, July 26, 2003, at 01:10 AM, Sarad AV wrote: I wouldn't like to see american soldiers killed either.How ever I talked to an american citizen a few days before the second iraq war and he supported the war saying that-If one is an american,where do you think all the money,power and previlage for american people will come from? That sounds very logical. I retaliated saying that the previlages,power will come with the death of thousands of iraqi men,women and children. He wouldn't budge any way. This is a silly, naive view of things. First, the concept of privilege is one of those lefty, cockeyed notions the liberals use to vaguely imply that success in life is due to privilege. Second, though I strongly disagree with the Second Iraq War, nothing that happens there has anything substantive to do with economic success and money, power for anyone I know. Our money, power comes from work, investments, high tech, etc. I have no idea if you are really the Third World mutant you usually come off as being, but you really need to get out more. --Tim May
Re: Dead Body Theatre
At 06:00 PM 7/24/03 +0100, Dave Howe wrote: the new standard, I suspect a suicide bombing of the white house (killing all the staff and the shrub) would now be ok provided they shouted 'surrender or die' first, yes? Dude, if Julius Caesar had magnetometers we might all be speaking Italian now. The one with the bigger guns makes the rules. Which is why those with smaller guns don't play by those rules. Just because the UN fnord hasn't been given the paperwork or Congress hasn't made the required fnord legal declaration, don't think there isn't a war on. Or several.
Re: Dead Body Theatre
On Thu, 24 Jul 2003, Dave Howe wrote: However, if strafeing an occupied house with helecopter gunships, rocket launchers and heavy machine guns after a cursory surrender or die is ignored, based on military intel (which as the WMD fiasco shows is worthless if the PR spin department are demanding raw access to unfiltered intel and filtering, not on reliability but on closeness of match to the desired outcome) is to be the new standard, I suspect a suicide bombing of the white house (killing all the staff and the shrub) would now be ok provided they shouted 'surrender or die' first, yes? Hell, this has been the norm for a very long time. The rest of the world knows this as an American No-Knock Drug Warrant. -- Yours, J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] Every living thing dies alone. Donnie Darko
