Alan C.
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Posts posted by Alan C.
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Having worked in IT for nearly two decades, I can tell you that some CEOs are paid too much and others are paid fairly. I've seen my share of inept, buffoonish CEOs who were paid lavishly and didn't deserve it. I've also known CEOs who were extremely astute, affable, perceptive, and practical.
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Liberian self-styled bishop plans mass exorcism to drive out Ebola "demons", using Vimto as cheap replacement for communion wine.
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American Workers Spend $1000 A Year On Coffee, $2000 A Year On Lunch
The workers who spent the most on both coffee and lunch were those aged 18-24.A surprising number of people I talk to spend $100/month on their smart phone plans.
I spend $100/year for a pay-as-you-go plan with a cheap T-Mobile flip phone, and I never come close to using all of my minutes.
I don't know what people generally pay for cable TV, but it's about $50/month for the basic package around here.
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Historical researcher Michael Paulkovich has claimed that Jesus of Nazareth was a ‘mythical character’ and never existed.The controversial discovery was apparently made after he found no verifiable mention of Christ from 126 writers during the ‘time of Jesus’ from the first to third centuries.He says he is a fictional character invented by followers of Christianity to create a figure to worship.. . .The 126 texts he studied were all written in the period during or soon after the supposed existence of Jesus, when Paulkovich says they would surely have heard of someone as famous as Jesus - but none mention him.'When I consider those 126 writers, all of whom should have heard of Jesus but did not - and Paul and Marcion and Athenagoras and Matthew with a tetralogy of opposing Christs, the silence from Qumram and Nazareth and Bethlehem, conflicting Bible stories, and so many other mysteries and omissions - I must conclude that Christ is a mythical character,’ he writes.‘"Jesus of Nazareth" was nothing more than urban (or desert) legend, likely an agglomeration of several evangelic and deluded rabbis who might have existed.’Of the writings he examined, written from the first to third centuries, he found only one book that contained a mention of Jesus - The Jewish Wars by the Roman historian Josephus Flavius written in 95 CE, but he claims it is fabricated.Paulkovich says the mentions of Jesus were added later by editors, not by Josephus.Even in the Bible Paulkovich says Paul, often credited with spreading what would become Christianity, never refers to Jesus as a real person.. . .‘The Jesus character is a phantom of a wisp of a personage who never wrote anything. So, add one more: 127.'
There is no evidence that the Jesus character in the Bible was a real person, let alone that he performed physics-defying acts of magic. Jesus is an anthropomorphized solar deity worshiped by throngs of credulous, feeble-minded followers. He's nothing more than a comic book character like Superman.
Search for Robert Price on YouTube.
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Selective memory and gaslighting are common traits among abusers.
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1 in 4 Americans 25-54 Not Working
"There are 124.5 million Americans in their prime working years (ages 25–54). Nearly one-quarter of this group—28.9 million people, or 23.2 percent of the total—is not currently employed. They either became so discouraged that they left the labor force entirely, or they are in the labor force but unemployed. This group of non-employed individuals is more than 3.5 million larger than before the recession began in 2007," writes the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee.
"Those attempting to minimize the startling figures about America’s vanishing workforce—workplace participation overall is near a four-decade low—will say an aging population is to blame. But in fact, while the workforce overall has shrunk nearly 10 million since 2009, the cohort of workers in the labor force ages 55 to 64 has actually increased over that same period, with many delaying retirement due to poor economic conditions.
"In fact, over two-thirds of all labor force dropouts since that time have been under the age of 55. These statistics illustrate that the problems in the American economy are deep, profound, and pervasive, afflicting the sector of the labor force that should be among the most productive."
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Libertopia 2014 will be in San Diego, CA from Nov 13-16.
Sadly, Stef isn't on the list of scheduled speakers this year.
I hope we can get some Freedomainers together.
A group of us went out to dinner at last year's Libertopia. You might recognize some familiar faces. From left to right are Craig (who I know from the Complete Liberty Meetup in San Diego), Jeff Maxim (interviewed by Jeff Berwick), me, Jake Desyllas (The Voluntary Life), Hannah Braime (Becoming Who You Are), and Stephanie Murphy (Porc Therapy).
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The man who made $50 million ditching Kickstarter
Since kicking off the campaign for "Star Citizen" nearly two years ago, Roberts, the designer of the classic "Wing Commander" series, has raised more than $52 million, and he's not done yet.
Perhaps most impressive, only $2.1 million of that $52 million came from a traditional crowdfunding site, Kickstarter. The rest was raised through a campaign Roberts runs himself, eliminating the fees that most entrepreneurs must pay to crowdfunding middlemen.
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Why does Christianity merit respect?You call yourself a philosopher and scientist. Where is the truth, logical argumentation, and demonstration of evidence in Christianity?Having an open mind doesn't mean one must entertain all manner of fatuous nonsense.
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...one reason that women friend zone guys is to have them as a backup in case that the person they are crushing on doesn't want to date them, specifically because they know that friend zoned guy is into them.
I found myself in that situation when I was young and naive. I didn't realize what was happening at the time but a woman I was "friends" with, and seeing regularly, let it slip out (probably unintentionally) that plans that she had made with another guy didn't materialize. I was basically the backup plan. Needless to say that it stung. We went out a few more times and it occurred to me that it was never going to go anywhere, so I moved on. To her credit, she paid for half of everything.
I don't allow myself to get friend-zoned anymore. I'll make some effort and go out on a few dates, and then move along.
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Sorry, but I won't be able to make it. I'll be in San Diego that day.
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D.C. is the Wild West when enforcing tickets for traffic violators, audit finds
In Washington, D.C., where issuing traffic citations is a $179 million-a-year business, drivers get speeding tickets for violations they don’t commit and for vehicles they’ve never owned.Those are among the findings in a 115-page audit of the three city agencies that issued nearly 2.5 million parking and traffic tickets in fiscal 2013, according to a withering report issued Monday by the D.C. inspector general.The report portrays the District as the Wild West of traffic enforcement when compared with neighboring jurisdictions and the states, with a shortage of regulations, a legion of ticket writers often confused about the rules, “arbitrary” decision-making about who gets some speed-camera tickets and parking-meter monitors who get called on the carpet if they don’t write enough tickets.. . .In addition to the police department (745,875 tickets in 2013), which operates the speed and red-light cameras, tickets also are issued by parking-meter minders from the Department of Public Works (1,731,861 tickets) and traffic-control officers from the District Department of Transportation (3,389 tickets).“Ticket writing in Washington, D.C., proper has become a capricious, arbitrary and draconian money-making undertaking,” said John B. Townsend II of AAA Mid-Atlantic. “Unfortunately, it has also become a quarter-billion- dollar annual enterprise based upon 3 million tickets in the city that merely pays lip service to traffic safety.” -
It's best to plan meetups on the weekends. Some of us have very little free time during the week and traffic on the freeways in SoCal is horrendous.
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A search for material on female obesity reveals two recurring trends: 1) a correlation between obesity and sexual abuse and, 2) obesity as a deterrent against unwanted sexual advances.
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Fitch downgrades N.J. debt, saying Christie is repudiating his pension reform
Wall Street analysts at Fitch Ratings today downgraded New Jersey's bond rating for the second time this year, citing the state's poor economic performance, Gov. Chris Christie's rosy revenue forecasts — which failed to materialize — and his decision to plug the resulting budget gap by cutting $2.4 billion from payments scheduled for the state's strained pension system.
Fitch said Christie's decision to cut the pension payments this year marked a "repudiation" of a bipartisan plan he signed to fix the beleaguered pension system, which is underfunded by nearly $40 billion, according to state estimates.
N.J. Rating Cut by S&P as Christie Gets Record Downgrade
New Jersey had its credit rating cut one step by Standard & Poor’s, handing Chris Christie his eighth downgrade, the most ever for a Garden State governor. -
Don't be so hard on Ben Afflick. He has been in some stinkers, but he's not that bad. I was never impressed with him until I saw Hollywoodland (which is an underrated movie in my opinion). I especially appreciated it having grown up watching The Adventures of Superman.
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South Korean soldier's beating death forces investigation of military
The military says Private Yoon died from choking on food, unable to explain the extensive injuries to his body. The next day, they admit he was beaten while eating. But it was months before a military human rights group revealed the true extent of his abuse.“This wasn't just one time,” she said. “It happened over 30 days, continual abuse, sexual harassment, making him lick phlegm from the floor, eat his own vomit - the military didn't tell us about any of that.”The military denies a cover-up, but does acknowledge systematic abuse by some of Yoon's peers – abuse that was not picked up by superiors. Bullying in South Korea's military has been a problem for decades, the spokesman says it's a knock-on from school.. . .According to the Human Rights group, a witness in the same barracks says Yoon was told his family was at risk if he spoke up. The same witness reported the abuse to a superior, but nothing was done.. . ....an Army survey carried out in April as part of this investigation found almost 4,000 previously unreported cases of abuse, suggesting a problem the military thought they had a grip on may be far more widespread than feared. -
Florida police chief suspended from ticket-writing scandal
A tiny Florida town located between Jacksonville and Gainesville with a national reputation as a speed trap is under fire for a ticket-writing scandal, after police said they were ordered by their chief to write 12 tickets per 12-hour shift, or face punishment.Waldo City Council suspended two police supervisors, Cpt. Kenneth Smith and Police Chief Mike Szabo, after learning of the allegations...Mr. Szabo was the chief accused by police of ordering the traffic ticket quotas. After he was suspended, Mr. Smith was put into his position — but then officers complained he mishandled evidence, AP reported. The City Council then suspended Mr. Smith.Waldo has long held a reputation as a massive speed trap. In one small portion of the highway that runs through Waldo, the speed limit starts at 65 miles per hour, then drops to 55, then falls to 45, then goes back to 55, then back down to 45, then to 55 again and finally, to 35, AP reported.AAA labels the town as one of only two around the nation known as pure “traffic traps,” AP reported. The group even took out ad space on a billboard leading into town to warn motorists of the potential for tickets.In 2013, the seven-member police force in Waldo issued 11,603 traffic citations, the Gainesville Sun reported.Gainesville, meanwhile, with its 300 officers and 128,000 residents — many of whom are college students — only issued 25,461 tickets during that same year. Waldo obtained about half of its $1 million in revenues for 2013 from “court fines” from issued tickets...
A household with income under $13,000 spends about 9 percent of income on lottery.
in Libertarianism, Anarchism and Economics
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In case anybody is interested, T-Mobile has changed their pay-as-you-go model. I had to recharge my minutes recently because they were about to expire for the year. Instead of paying the usual $100 for 1,000 minutes, I only had to pay $10 to add 100 minutes and my remaining unused minutes rolled over for another year, so I'm good for another year for only $10.