|
Post by Retrograde on May 29, 2008 23:06:51 GMT -4
No need to apologize Are you sure it can't be used either way? I suppose I could be mistaken on this, but I have never heard "risk adverse," except for a seemingly endless stream of occurrences I just saw by someone who meant "risk averse," and who on at least one occasion (mis)quoted me. What would "risk adverse" mean? Aversion refers to preference - if I am risk averse, that means I don't like risk, and am willing to make a certain level of sacrifice to avoid it. In economics, the two alternatives to "risk averse" are "risk neutral" and "risk loving." Risk adverse sounds like it would mean not conducive to the existence of risk, which would be a property of a situation or an environment rather than a person. I suppose maybe we could consider a person "risk adverse" if they are the leader of an organization and squash any risk-takers within that organization But when we are talking about people disliking risk, I think "risk averse" is what we want to say. I suppose I could go back and change all my uses of the phrase to "adverse to risk" which would be more proper. Or I could just use other phrases. Please don't change anything on my account. But I would say "averse to risk" rather than "adverse to risk." Bugger, I am supposed to be a believer in descriptive rather than prescriptive grammar, now I have compromised my principles
|
|
|
Post by Retrograde on May 29, 2008 3:33:57 GMT -4
Sorry to flame out like that. I just recently read this long document, that did that. After the first few dozen instances, it was obvious what was to come. Like watching a car crash, totally unable to prevent it I suppose I will become less sensitive to this one with passing of time. It's just that that particular nerve was badly inflamed already when I read this thread
|
|
|
Post by Retrograde on May 28, 2008 21:46:03 GMT -4
Risk adverse? In what way. Aren't wars risky? There are many of them happening right now. Men still work in dangerous occupations. Volunteers are still, well, volunteering in dangerous places all over the world. I would agree that more people are comfortable than ever before, especially here in the West. And more detached too, because it seems all the bad stuff happens 'over there'. In our society, if you can find even a low paying job, you can live a life of leisure compared with most of the world. So maybe things have indeed become, too easy? You've got what I'm getting at - that the West is more risk-adverse than it used to be. Other parts of the world are more willing to engage in more dangerous behavior in pursuit of opportunity than your typical American or European. Stop it guys. Stop it. Stop it. I recently had a bad experience reading something that must have used the non-term "risk adverse" about a thousand times. It's "risk averse." Not "risk adverse." Risk averse. Averse, averse, averse. No adverse. Averse. Sorry, it was a really bad experience.
|
|
|
Post by Retrograde on May 28, 2008 10:27:57 GMT -4
In the "Ethical reasons for having faked it," Jason posted this: I didn't want to swamp that interesting thread with a completely different argument, so I thought I'd see if anyone would want to join it here. I guess what I'd want first is for a better explanation of this idea from Jason. I personally find it preposterous. Atheists don't have dreams? Atheists don't want to protect the country? Atheists don't believe in personal sacrifice? Is that really what you are getting at? I don't see where he says anything about atheists; he says something about society being irreligious. In any event, I don't agree with that part of the statement. Every society I've ever come across seems to have a collective shared belief system. They just aren't necessarily traditional religions.
|
|
|
Post by Retrograde on May 28, 2008 10:23:24 GMT -4
BTW, did you know that in german the equivalent to the Sunny16 rule is "Wenn die Sonne lacht, Blende 8". As my camera is much smarter than I am, and I just let it decide what to do, I need a little help understanding the "Blende 8" part
|
|
|
Post by Retrograde on May 8, 2008 20:43:41 GMT -4
مـﺎﻳﺎ, do you live in Beirut?
|
|
|
Post by Retrograde on May 8, 2008 20:26:41 GMT -4
BTW, happy birthday Ginnie!
|
|
|
Post by Retrograde on May 8, 2008 20:24:41 GMT -4
I'm hoping for the day when the devices that use electricity become so efficient that they require a lot less. We have flourescent bulbs now, (ahem, with the mercury), and our washer uses a quarter of the wattage of our old one. I want to see 10 watt power supplys in our computers, but each generation is using more, not less. Thus a 286 needed 150 watts, and a new computer today uses 400 plus. In fact, I want to see wind up cars - just hand crank it for a minute and it will do 50 kilometres. Well, if you want those things, I would root for high energy prices. If energy prices are low, I don't think any of these things will happen. On the other hand, if energy prices are really low, I don't know why we would care much about these things. Apart from the environmental impact, that is, and there are ways to deal with those problems, even though they are usually opposed by environmentalists WWI really hurt the Newfoundland economy. With the outbreak of World War I, enthusiasm for the British cause ran high, and the island undertook obligations far in excess of its ability. The national debt, which before 1914 was becoming high for the island's small and poor population, increased substantially. In the years following the armistice every government found it necessary to borrow, until, with the onslaught of the depression, the government found itself in the unenviable position of being unable to borrow more moneyOK, so it doesn't say what those obligations were, but it sounds like Newfoundland did itself in by spending boat loads of money on things that didn't provide much benefit to the people of Newfoundland. I'd say it's pretty much the same for the Iraq war (apart from the scale - an economy the size of the US can easily afford such a war). The money spent on the war could have been spent on something else. Either you feel the war provides benefits that are greater than the benefits of any alternative use of the money, or you don't. So WWI hurt us, and WWII benefited us. Now I'm talking about economically of course. We lost many great men in both wars. War is bad - period. But I guess it is sometimes necessary. Well, one could surrender whenever threatened, which seems like it would avoid war under all circumstances. But I think most people would feel, at least some of the time, that this strategy is not better than one that does occasionally lead to a war.
|
|
|
Post by Retrograde on May 8, 2008 19:59:16 GMT -4
I saw a "Zero Gravity Lounge Chair" at a local department store. Does that mean it has no mass? ;D I suspect that if most of the moon was sold iron, it's gravitational force would be much greater than on earth? Let's say its core started just 10 km from its surface - because of the increase in density, it's mass would be huge and you'd be much closer to its core than on earth. Remember, I am a simple man. Not bothering to look up exact numbers, but if the earth's radius were four times the moon's radius, then the density of the moon would have to be four times as large as the density of the earth for them to have the same surface gravity. A uniform spherical object can be treated as having all the mass at a point at the center. So with one fourth of earth's radius, the moon would have 1/64th of the earth's volume, and with four times the density, it would have 1/16th of the mass. Then standing on the surface of the moon, you would be four times closer to the center of mass than you would be on the surface of the earth, so the gravity would be 16 times stronger, per unit of mass, than it would be on the earth. So 16 times as much gravity per unit of mass, times 1/16th as much mass, means the same surface gravity. But remember, "That's just a hypothesis, with a bit of guesswork." I'm not sure how dense earth is, but for the moon to have four times the density of earth, I'm not sure iron would do it. Maybe uranium
|
|
|
Post by Retrograde on May 8, 2008 19:53:17 GMT -4
OK, thanks, but I would just as soon not be brought to the attention of someone who says a smaller planet should have higher surface gravity, and then says that Newton's law of gravitation is "just a hypothesis, with a bit of guesswork."
|
|
|
Post by Retrograde on May 8, 2008 19:46:04 GMT -4
I'd be interested in that reason. Would it be that technology hasn't progressed enough in that area, or maybe you can only get so much juice from the sun? Well, I'd say yes to both. Or more specifically, apart from some niche applications, it isn't cost-effective. If the price of fossil fuels keeps going up, it will become cost-effective in more and more areas, and I would expect to see more implementation, and quite possibly more research and development of improved technologies. I don't really follow solar, but it wouldn't surprise me if firms were already out there improving solar technologies, that they think will earn them big bucks with oil at $124 a barrel, that they wouldn't touch when oil was $11 a barrel. If people using fossil fuels had to pay for the pollution created by those fuels, then more alternative energy sources would be cost-effective for more applications. Although to some extent, people do pay for the pollution somewhat - fossil fuels are heavily taxed in some countries. In others (Iran, Indonesia), consumption of fossil fuels is heavily subsidized
|
|
|
Post by Retrograde on May 8, 2008 19:39:07 GMT -4
Oh, I'm not suggesting that a War in Iraq is a good way to spend a trillion dollars. I understood that, and didn't mean to suggest that you were. I was just pointing out that at least some of that money goes back into the economy. Well, really, all of it does, but that happens if they spend the money on anything at all. Does anyone have any stats on how the war has hurt the U.S. economy? I bet a lot a few hundred people got rich on it, while thousands or millions suffered. My impression is that lots of people are making lots of money. For one, civilian workers by and large won't go to work there unless you pay them far more than they get back home. But I think we need some metric of what is good or bad for the economy. If your measure is production, it doesn't hurt at all. People are in Iraq running around with guns and driving armored vehicles, doing this that and the other thing. If they weren't there, many of them would be back in the US working at some other job, producing something else. So stuff is definitely getting produced. The question is, does the stuff that is getting produced actually improve the lives of people? For example, during the second world war, the economy of the United States expanded enormously. Factories were running day and night, producing guns, ammunition, tanks, fighter planes, ships, and so on. I would not necessarily argue, though, that American's lives were so much better because they had all these guns, ammunition, etc. that they didn't have before. So, I think it depends on whether you feel the Iraq war was a worthwhile venture or not. If you don't, then the money spent invading and occupying a country could have been spent doing something else that would have had greater benefit on people's lives.
|
|
|
Post by Retrograde on May 8, 2008 18:06:57 GMT -4
And I disagree with your disagreement So who is consistantly more generous than America? Oh, I don't know. I think they are pretty much the same as people everywhere. They say all these nice flowery things about what great people they are, but mostly they look after themselves. With respect to the resource issue, I haven't seen anything that convinces me that they would not consume vast quantities of resources, were it not costly to do so. I see evidence that pretty much everyone does that. Pointing out false predictions is a way of establishing that the current alarmism of people like Ted Turner predicting global warming will make us all be cannibals in 10 years is nothing new or remarkable, and therefore despite the bigger and flashier presentation it's still the pronouncements of a person with an agenda rather than facts. And there is a certain entertainment value to pointing out the ridiculousness. Like the man who believed Nessie had been killed by global warming. Well, if it is just for entertainment value, with no particular relevance towards any current policy debate, that's not a problem by me. You could even make fun of the people who are making goofy statements now. Well, I was getting the impression you were. Are you?
|
|
|
Post by Retrograde on May 8, 2008 18:02:29 GMT -4
Isn't it awful that solar technology has been around almost fifty years yet is still in its infant stage? There's a reason for that.
|
|
|
Post by Retrograde on May 8, 2008 18:01:23 GMT -4
If I had a trillion dollars I wouldn't mind paying the vast majority of it towards freeing an oppressed people from a bloody tyrant. I hope you would not make such a pig's breakfast of it that in surveys after this liberation, a majority of people say that their lives were better when they lived in one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world
|
|