dusqi

I recently read the answer to this in a book by Richard Dawkins, called The Ancestor's Tale. The book begins with humans, and then goes back in time, looking at where humans split from other species - so at first apes, then monkeys, etc. - all the way back to single celled organisms. If I'm honest though, I don't remember the answer, only that I was satisfied with it at the time! I recommend the book, it was published in 2005 so is quite recent, and is written in an entertaining style. If you haven't heard of Richard Dawkins though, he's not a fan of religion - especially creationism, so there are some quips in there that might offend you. Here is also an argument for evolution that I thought was quite irrefutable when I researched it for the last evolution debate that tip.it had:

So is the theory of gravity. Go jump off of a building to test it =;

I recently read on New Scientist that new nanotubes should make desalination a lot more energy efficient. Unfortunately the full article is for Premium users only, but here's a quote http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/mg19125586.100

Where're your facts? Despite telling lots of people not to say things without backing them up, you've just ignored the people who have backed up their opinions. For example, IceNomad made a very interesting post: I'd like to see you argue against the findings of the IPCC, using facts of course ;)

I'm a big fan of Gordon Brown, even though I wouldn't vote Labour, so I'd like to see him come in. He is a smart man, seems to be hard working, and has led the British economy well. Not 100% sure how he'd fare on other issues, outside of the maths of the Treasury, though.

http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsAr ... 7821-1.xml (emphasis added) Good riddance :) In addition, I don't like this talk of Rooney "stamping" on Carvalho's groin. I saw many replays, and yes he stepped on it, but I didn't see any intentional hard pressure as in a stamp. Not only this, but Carvalho wasn't injured was he? If someone steps on that area with a studded boot, surely there would have been some pain? This is how I saw the sending off. Rooney was battling for the ball, and was fouled a few times by the 2 hounding Portugese players. One Portugese player falls over, and Rooney is entangled and loses his balance, and then steps on Carvalho's groin while trying to regain it. Obviously it wasn't a 'stamp', or even hard pressure, because Carvalho was fine. So then the ref blows for a foul because of the general entanglement (and even so he hadn't even seen the stepping incident). Ronaldo runs 40m across the pitch, having already been provoking Rooney, and remonstrates about the foul. Rooney pushes Ronaldo, and the ref gives a red card that should never have been. Ronaldo is pleased with himself and walks off, giving his bench a roguish wink as he goes. And this is why referees should clearly be allowed to use video replays, so that they can stop this pathetic unsportsmanlike play.

I think this is a good point. So many people I hear talking about "working towards" their goals, or complaining about spending hours and hours clicking to get to a certain level. In fact, a lot of Runescape speech is the same kind of speech that would be used in a working environment. Especially talk about experience per hour and wanting to use time efficiently, and the people who don't want to "waste their time" doing quests or doing activities that aren't rewarding in terms of experience or gp. If you want a job, I suggest getting one in "real life". It pays more. To clarify, I'm not saying that everyone is playing RS as if it is a job, just that people need to step back and make sure that they're not one of them.

It's interesting, a lot of people are complaining about the ID number, but I still remember mine, even though I haven't used ICQ for perhaps 4 years. My ICQ number is 8 digits, and I remember being awed by a friend of mine whose number was only 7 digits. He was clearly such an elite early adopter! :D

I used to like its free text messaging feature, but then that stopped working.

So on your last day, you'd like to post on tip.it? :P:P

I'd like to go outside and play a grand piano in a thunderstorm.

I don't know enough about climate change to make an informed decision. Fortunately these people seem to: http://www.ipcc.ch/ - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change It produced a thousand page document on the evidence for and against climate change in 2001... it's probably the greatest collaboration by scientists across the globe ever... and it has continued to produce reports since then. I am lead to believe that respected scientists all expect irreversible climate change to occur in the next 20-30 years, due to man. However, it's become a political issue, and since politicians are answerable to lay-people, the issue won't be officially recognised until it is too late. Of course, it is the poor countries that will be affected the most. A case of the selfishness of man!

Stop thinking about it.

I only finished it with instructions also :oops:

Your site is covered with adverts (well done for name dropping it by the way). This amuses me: Your site is on a free host, has free forums, and uses a free domain forwarding service. Seriously, this guy just wants money. He's making a mockery of this forum's no advertising policy.

Sorry, I think this is complete rubbish. My Mum does online surveys (for quite a few hours every day, and has done for some years), and I can tell you now that firstly the chances of making $130 in one month are extremely slim.. but what is slimmer are the chances of them actually sending you your cheque in a timely manner. Survey sites take ages and ages and ages to send you the money, if they ever do - we're literally talking 6 months here. Not only this, but the 'good' ones usually would rather send you vouchers for Amazon or similar rather than money. I think that this guy is just trying to get people to ask for the link via PM so that he can sign them up and get referral credit. If anyone wants money, I suggest doing 'real' work. Online is far far far more trouble than it's worth.

I know you as a Seal Clubber :D Hmph! Click the button to save the seals!! Btw, I love your sig.. when I first saw it.. I thought that it was some pretty awful earrings.. but I get it now :oops:

I was recently called "proficient" by an online friend, so I guess that's my reputation, which i'm pretty happy with 8-)

Good to see that tip.it is the third item down (on google) when you search for Runescape also :) just after runescape.com and miniclip.com

Give someone all of your 100m gp.. then they'll realise that rs is boring when you're rich, and will quit.. in turn giving all of their money to someone else.. who will then quit.. and the cycle will continue until everyone realises, like you did, that rs is stealing their life and they could be doing better things :D Really though.. people don't need free stuff.. it just makes it boring for them.. the challenge is the only thing that rs has.

Yup, you're right, Communism is flawed. I wasn't advocating Communism. As far as I remember, no one has posted to say that everyone should get paid the same, no matter what they do. Progressive taxation is about taxing people what they can pay. It's "fair" in that it's based on what people need to use.. since the less you earn, the greater percentage you need to spend on necessities. You seem to recognise that this applies to the poorest people, since you say taxing 20% for someone so poor would be too much and they could be excused... but this also applies for the incentives to earn at every level of income. This is why in the UK, the tax bands are as low as 10% to up to 40%. Another way to consider it, is to consider the effort that has to go into earning more money. For someone to earn an additional ̣̉20,000 per year, when they are currently earning ̣̉10,000 per year, involves a lot of effort and success. For someone to earn an additional ̣̉20,000 per year when they are currently earning ̣̉100,000, isn't anywhere near as hard. This is another way of considering why the additional ̣̉20,000 on ̣̉10,000 should be taxed at a low rate (to reward the large effort put in), compared to the additional ̣̉20,000 on ̣̉100,000 (to decrease the reward of the smaller amount of effort put in). Concerning your suggestion that those who cannot pay income tax should not be able to vote, apart from the criticism from Anesthesia, which was that it would create an underclass without representation, and thus ignored by politicians.. I would like to add that everyone pays tax anyway, from driving taxes, through to VAT on purchases. My point about high income earners is thus: - Firstly, as you concede, to say that they got there through merit is flawed, since if they came from a poor background, it's unlikely they would be earning so much. Many of them just happened to be born to well off parents, who gave them the best opportunities they could. - Secondly, many of the high wages are the result of market failure. For example, lawyers don't really need to spend 6 years learning law before they can do divorce settlements for example. Law has unnecessarily high "barriers to entry" - the long years of training that discourage other people from getting into the profession. If ice cream men had a trade union monopoly which said that you had to train for 6 years before you could make ice creams, then they'd probably be able to earn $100,000 per year also. - Thirdly, and related to the point about market failure above, your doctor friends would probably still work as doctors if they were paid $50,000 per year. This is the evidence of market failure. In a fully functioning market, the wage rate for workers is just enough, so that if it dropped, then the workers would go into another profession. You can imagine, if the wage rate for burger flipping fell to $1 per hour, then the burger flippers would leave and become shelf stackers, and earn $4 per hour. That wouldn't happen with doctors. It's a similar idea with professional footballers. David Beckham gets paid ̣̉50,000 per week or something, but he'd still do it if he got paid ̣̉1,000 per week. It's just a peculiar quirk in the market that footballers get paid a lot, whereas rugby players don't. And although partly, the high wages are a result of hard work and success... in a real free market system, they wouldn't get paid as much.. so they're not actually "worth" as much as they get paid. This is why it's "fair" to tax them a higher percentage of their earnings.

1. I gave 5 reasons in support of redistributing income. These reasons are given at the macro level. Perhaps the rich person doesn't want his earnings taken away "forcefully"... but society as a whole benefits when it happens. Just like, I don't want to pay for streetlights, but I love it when everyone else pays for them. And understand, it isn't about making everyone have the same flat income, with no incentives for success.. it's about making people contribute what they can afford to contribute and using the money to give people a minimum standard of living. As I mentioned earlier, to a poor person earning $10,000 - 10% is a lot because they spend all of their income anyway just living, whereas to a rich person earning $1,000,000, 40% isn't that much, because they would probably have just put it in the bank. Do the rich deserve their income anyway? Most of the jobs that pay extremely high salaries are the result of market failure or irregularities, rather than of "success". That is, markets not conforming to free competition... e.g. the "screen actors guild" which is practically a catch 22, with membership required before one can get an acting job, but requiring an acting job before membership is granted. Similarly, as outlined in my post above, earning potential is highly determined by how rich your parents are (luck), rather than anything to do with success. 2. Like you, I don't know the percentage of tax that gets to recipients, and how much of that is defrauded. However, I do have the following arguments, other than my "theoretical" one, which was that charities have special interests and are not impartial, and which I believe is still sound. Firstly, charities would not be able to deal with welfare on such a grand scale. If they did have to deal with it on a grand scale, they'd end up becoming ineffecient and corrupt like the government. Secondly, I argue from history. In the UK, alms from Churches used to be the way that the poor could receive money to live. That system ended. Presumably because it wasn't working.

I'm not even going to try answering the length of that post right now. I'm just going to say you're wrong. You have heavily confused Equal Opportunity with Equal Outcome. I have answered about every point you have made in my other post, which you then blithley ignored. You appear to have read niether of the works i propposed, and come across very much like, although slightly less intelegntly than, most of my friends at debating soceity. It is, however, impossible to shift a socialist though arguments, as I have reapeatedly found out. They either go out and make money and change thier views, or they go out, don't make money, and become poor socialists with nothing to live on, which in turn makes them more ardently socialist. People will not work if you pay them the same for not working. Why bother taking responsibility if you get payed the same for not taking it. What reward is there for working hard if you get payed the same if u don't. Socialism relies on humans naturlay getting together and heloing each other as much as they help themeselves. This does not happen. Read my sig. 1. I searched for "income mobility" on Google. This refers to the chances that a person will end up in a certain earnings quintile, based on the earnings quintile of their parents. Assuming a pure meritocracy, then no matter what earnings quintile your parents or grandparents are in, you are equally likely to be on the top as the bottom quintile. The reality is different. Fortunately, the NYTimes website has a happy interactive graphic to illustrate the subject with some facts: http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/na ... ex_03.html 40% of people stay in the same quintle as their parents. Not the 20% that would be expected in a meritocracy. 2. Are you familiar with the ideas of John Maynard Keynes [Wikipedia.org]? 3. You must be very old, wise and experienced to have seen so many socialists either go and make money and reform their ways, or else die in poverty.

If you wanted to complicate it a bit more, you could consider how much money is actually 'active' in rs... because many people have quit, and leave bank accounts with gp in them idle... and their money plays no part in buying and thus valuing items. Presumably part of the reason that rares have become so much more expensive, is because there are a lot of extra players, with a lot of active gp. If people started quitting, then their gp might remain, but it would be inactive, and the price of rares would fall. Similarly (reading your thread about the effect of construction), even though construction might take money out of circulation and thus you'd expect the price of rares to grow slower, construction might inspire more people to play, and there would thus be more 'active' money. So slower growth in the price of rares will be offset by this. Of course, then you have the problem of estimating how many people in RS have quit. You could get an index of how active RS is by looking at the number of P2P accounts, or perhaps by considering how many people are playing at any particular time.

Firstly, an example of how the "free market system" isn't the panacea that some of you are making it out to be. The quote below compares the American free market version of healthcare with the UK national health service: The state can intervene to improve welfare, and can intervene effectively. Of course, if you're one of the 16% of Americans that don't have health insurance, you probably already know this. ~~~ So, why welfare? 1. It is moral. A decent society should protect its poor. There should be a minimum standard of living that should be guaranteed to all citizens. 2. The number of people who are living in "luxury" from welfare is vastly overestimated. The media loves reporting cases of people who have told the state they have a broken leg, who then go out and do a marathon or something, and that over-reporting makes it seem like there are a lot of them. But are there really? What's statistically more likely to kill you... a shark, or falling aeroplane parts? The media hypes up shark attacks, but falling aeroplane parts are much more deadly. 3. No one chooses to live on welfare. I know that in the UK, I'd have a massive problem trying to live on the amount that welfare pays. In addition, we have a scheme whereby if you are out of work for a year, then the government will give you a choice of either taking a job, or undertaking further education. If you do neither, then your benefits will stop. In the US, I believe that welfare payments are even lower. I think I read some years ago that they are actually below the US's own set minimum poverty line. People don't choose to "be lazy" and live on welfare. If they do, it's because they don't know about other opportunities. 4. It provides a buffer zone for risk and bad luck. Entrepreneurs might be less likely to risk it all if they know that they'll be practically starving if they fail. Similarly, if you lose your job even through no fault of your own, it probably takes a while for you to find a new one, and the state helps you out in the mean time. 5. Having a massive underclass of poor people doesn't help the rich. Underclasses steal, rebel, strike. They are easy to bribe. Why shouldn't charities be responsible for welfare? 1.They're unfair. They tend to have special interests: either religious, cultural, gender, etc. The government is more impartial. Why redistribute income? 1. It is fair. The fact is, the statistical likelihood is that you will stay in the same earning decile that your parents were in, or maybe go up or down one decile. Is this because the children of dustmen have something in their genes that says they are only fit to become dustmen, or hotel cleaners? Nope, it's because their parents can't/don't provide the same opportunities. The fact is, we all like to think that we rise and fall upon our own merits, but statistically, it doesn't happen. 2. Taxes are not a barrier to success. No one ever thinks "I won't bother earning another million, because it'll be taxed so highly". 3. The opposite is actually the case. If people get too rich, they just retire early. Slowing the earnings of the richest people actually encourages them to do more work. 4. 40% from ̣̉100,00 has the same impact as 10% from 10,000. The reason that there are income tax bands, is that 10% from an annual income of ̣̉5,000 will be noticed a lot more than 10% from an annual income of ̣̉500,000. The poorest people have to spend all of their money just to live. Things like food, water, electricity cost a similar amount for poor people as rich people. Hence why the top rate of income tax is 40% in the UK. 5. Wealth will not be redistributed by a free market system. The argument that when the country gets richer in absolute terms, some of it will trickle down to the poorest people, is a fallacy. Many countries have a rich elite class, that doesn't help any of its people. ~~~ Concerning Atlas Shrugged, I was recently reading articles about it, though I confess that I haven't read it yet. This article is mainly in support of Ayn Rand's novel, however it has an interesting quote: