champu

As far as being a direct source of tax revenue they already have moved. That's the issue. They chose to move on paper and stay physically located in the United States. Aside from the obvious problem that if you combined all the physical assets of every entity incorporated in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda you'd be hard pressed to fit all of it on those islands, there are reasons they stuck around. Your concern, which is something at least worth thinking about, is that if you figured out a viable way to stop these paper moves to places with little or no taxes then the companies would make actual moves to places with lower taxes than the U.S. As a result you'd see no change in direct revenues, a loss of jobs, and a loss of indirect revenue as a result of lost jobs. I'm not sure the tax benefit gained by actually moving somewhere that has room for you will always or even most times outweigh the disadvantage of actually having to go there, but as I said it's something worth thinking about. He's just trying to say you may not get as good a return on investment as you think you will by going after overseas tax havens.

It's a good thing for compsci professors that indent styles aren't protected. That's a religious debate if there ever was one. 1TBS for life.

And that makes you an antipragmatist? Huh, what? To be clear: I think two stupid things happened that lead to this story. 1) Professor actually believed homosexuality is inherently wrong based on Catholic teachings and felt the need to share this with his class (directly or indirectly, see my post about not having enough information.) People who disagree with this should simply recognize it as being invalid and move on with their lives because you can't and shouldn't police thought, and the professor made it clear his beliefs wouldn't affect students in any tangible way. 2) Student was offended over what was probably a forgettable comment because he or she has thin skin, resulting in the firing of a professor who apparently has the praise of other students and faculty. Complaints like this need to be met with a little more skepticism and little less CYA. If the comments were benign, then the student can get over himself or herself. In altercations like this, the only immediate conclusion one can make is that at least one side is wrong.

And the truly pragmatic learn to tolerate invalid views of others insofar as they can be marginalized.

Wouldn't making fun of his spelling be an example of playing the player and not the ball????? On the contrary, he was playing the balle.

The dynamics are not exactly the same, certainly. The ending configuration for the two situations are the same but the starts are different, so the dynamics can't be exactly the same. I'm just saying it doesn't matter. Returning to neutral before you pitch to get a good opening isn't about "slowing down" or returning to a straight down fall, it's about making sure your hips are into the relative wind. Your airspeed should already be fine. I'm commenting on the thread in general and replied to you because you had bumped the thread. I'm not disagreeing with what you wrote.

From that article (emphasis mine)... And from the article Kennedy posted... As others have stated it's hard to say what actually happened (because journalists are those who can neither do nor teach.) But I haven't read anything about this case that would tell me this guy should have been fired. A more general question that applies here: isn't choosing one's battles always a good decision? Or do some of you feel that certain things should be faught down to the last bitter technicality?

Holy blast-from-the-past Batman. Reading through this thread reminds me of rehmwa's "can 'experience' be bad" thread. Your canopy doesn't care what direction you're going (within reason, if you were somehow traveling up when you deployed it would likely not end well.) It cares about airspeed and body position to the relative wind.

No doubt there is at least one person out there, or maybe a group of people out there who could go do a jump with a person and make an accurate thumbs up/tumbs down evaluation on whether someone is ready for a camera, wingsuit, or particular canopy. Ideally, this would be preferable to jump number requirements. I'm extremely skeptical about our sport's ability to produce instructors/evaluators with that kind of clairvoyance on a scale that would make the complete elimination of jump number requirements practical. That's why I called your argument academic. Slight tangent: Anyone remember AD licenses? That was an example of objective decipline-specific skill evaluation, but that was a sign-off for freeflying in groups not freeflying at all.

Gee, that sounds great. And yours is entirely academic.

Strawman. Whether it's 10 jumps or 200 jumps to jump a wingsuit (or camera), NO first time wingsuiter or camera flier has any prior WS/camera experience to be evaluated. The evaluation is based on what they can do currently, which is testable whether they have 10 or 200 jumps. As you pointed out, at any given jump number there's going to be an average "readiness" to do something more advanced and there's going to be a standard deviation. You basically argued that we shouldn't set minimums higher than 3-sigma below the average because otherwise we wouldn't be accomodating to phenoms. You're entitled to that opinion, but that means Billvon's argument isn't really a strawman. Now you're also arguing that more jumps in and of themselves don't help prepare you to put a camera on your head or to put on a wingsuit, and I'm going to disagree. Another 50-100 jumps when you've got a couple thousand isn't going to help prepare you for wingsuiting or camera flying, but another 50-100 jumps (yes, in and of themselves) when you only have a hundred jumps is a big climb up the experience curve in terms of awareness both leading up to a jump and in the air regardless of how phenominal a jumper you are. Both of these are important for wingsuiting and camera flying. And as a side note, this whole argument presupposes that making another 50 jumps or whatever is some interminable death march of Bataan, which is ridiculous.

Evidently that what you believe, yes. Given the evidence, I'm sure you believe that letting a criminal pick their own judge and jury members is impartial, as well. I've been an independent reviewer for design reviews on other projects within my own company. Sometimes the person chairing the review is someone I've worked with in the past. I've also been the one under review by people I know. In my experience these reviewers end up being more discriminating than our customers. (I've been told I am)

...because department colleagues were already developing thesis on whether or not bears shit in the woods. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/11/how_facts_backfire/?page=1

That actually brings up a good point for any company or organization stressing "strong ethics and avoiding even the perception of unethical behavior due to conflicts of interest." The best way to ensure that is to mandate, "you know what, just don't have any friends... in fact... don't look at anyone either. Live at your desk."

Well sure, for catalytics converters, airbags, and many other things that's a silly bar to set. (although I'm glad to hear they finally got bread worked out.) Or is your complaint strictly with the word "all"?

Again, your complaints and your [historically] proposed solutions are incongruous. ...The conclusion that the growth of inequality contributed to the borrowing spree and the crisis is endorsed by Raghuram Rajan, a distinguished Chicago-based economist not known as a "leftie"... (even henry ford understood the concept) My "marxist ramblings" remark was in response to your other post. But my other comment applies to both. To be clear, minimum wage increases are a simple and wrong response to the complaints you have. Also, you should read some of Rajan's articles to get a better idea of what he endorses and what the Guardian apparently meant by "contributed".

So, an argument both ways on this... On one hand, the few scheduling considerations [swimming, sex ed, and exams] could probably be taken into account without too much hassle, and as long as at the end of the year the content hasn't changed it doesn't really affect other students. On the other hand, if your religion involves practices that legitimately do put you at a disadvantage (like believing in creationism, etc.) then society owes it to you to make these disadvantages apparent.

Again, your complaints and your [historically] proposed solutions are incongruous.

Gross 50k, AGI (adjusted Gross income) ~40k, then taxed on that, will keep less depending upon writeoffs. That makes more sense. Your intial statement was confusing because AGI has nothing to do with "keeping" anything. As an aside, I would argue that a 40k AGI is nearer the bottom than the middle of what I'd call "middle class", but then I live in California. If you're in the typical 50k gross brkt, as many people are, a tax cut will barely be noticeable since your brkt doesn't pay taxes that are very significant. If you are top 10% then a tax cut will be massively significant. If you're in that AGI percentile then it is true that you and your "peers" don't pay taxes that are very significant to the country, but again that doesn't translate one way or the other to whether the taxes you pay are significant to you. You're whole argument for cranking up the top bracket, in fact for progressive taxes in general, relies on this decoupling of significance between the taxer and the taxee. If a tax cut or tax increase isn't felt across the board then the tax brackets are broken. One other thing that I want to point out is you're doing that classic slimy thing where you start out talking about "the rich" (oh those greedy multi-millionaires that are so easy to loathe) and now suddenly you're talking about the top 10% (half of whom make ~115-160k which, especially if you live in a city, sure as hell ain't "rich") People walk around claiming they want to "stick it to the rich" and wonder how anyone would argue with them and then they go off and vote for polices that start making things pear-shaped at six figures.

That's why I use bar soap, Yardley's to be exact. I've found body wash to feel like it never gets washed off completely. Same with certain kinds of bar soap like Olay. Guess I don't like the whole moisturizer thing with soap. I'd rather use lotion instead. But it is liquid soap at the bathroom and kitchen sink. It depends on the water too. When I visit my parents in the midwest with their well water and water softener [pulverizer] I tend towards bar soap or else, yea, you can't rinse it off. Out here I don't have that problem.

I haven't fine-tooth combed the constitution from that angle either. It gets even trickier if you repeal the 13th and leave the 14th because of the person/citizen distinction.

This is similar to how it works in Illinois, the parent/guardian has to co-sign the application. It's also why it's so silly to make a big deal out of this. I think I was 13 when I got my FOID card, but that doesn't mean I had a gun rack on my bicycle.

I switched to body wash because bar soap leaves residue all over and I had to clean the shower more frequently. Also, don't buy the axe version of the poofy thing. I gave one a shot because it looked like it would hold up better, but they don't lather well at all.

First, what do you mean when you say if they make 50k and keep 40k then 40k is their AGI? Second, please explain what a group's overall contribution to the federal government's tax receipts has to do with what a tax cut means to that group. /edited to fix ambiguous "them".

Stepping back to this post, for just a minute, in what way do you feel the Russians are "taking the lead" in manned space flight? Does the US throwing them a few bucks to keep them building Soyuz, Progress, and DOS modules (which they've been doing in a largely unchanged fashion for 40 years) because it's convenient for our budget really constitute them "taking the lead"?