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| 2008/8/20-26 [Science/GlobalWarming] UID:50909 Activity:low |
8/19 Falling oil prices present mixed blessing for consumers - Yahoo!:
http://www.csua.org/u/m53
\_ 1) oil companies have yet to explore 80% of their leases that they
have already
2) drilling offshore will have an impact like 30 years from now
I'd say those are pretty good reasons by themselves. This whole
thing is just an elaborate scheme to fuck California.
\_ More precisely, to set the precedents for fucking CA later.
\_ This is why drilling offshore is such a mistake. It just delays
the inevitable and makes it worse when the day finally comes.
\- Venit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus.
\_ Sic transit gloria mundi
\_ Drilling offshore should be left until the very last moment
when our civilization is on the verge of collapse due to
energy scarcity. We can then use 100% of it to convert to a
\_ Utter bullshit. Besides plate tectonics, everything
on earth is being set in motion by Sun's radiation.
We just need to tap this energy. There is plenty of it.
I do think it's a good idea to save a few oil fields for
the post oil world in order to produce useful chemicals
or say for intercontinental air travel.
renewable energy paradigm. Use it now and it just gets burned
up in the gas tanks of Hummers.
\_ الله أَكْ! |
| 2008/8/20-26 [Reference/RealEstate] UID:50910 Activity:nil |
8/19 Quick landlord question. If I'm paying X interest per year to a
rental property, does that mean I can write off X from my income?
Or do I do a (home-value)/27.5 depreciation for Schedule D? Can
I do both?
\_ You can do both, but you add the rent as income. I think you
know this, but it's the value of the improvement (less land)
depreciated over 27.5 years and then you have more profit when
you sell because your cost basis is lower.
\_ So if I didn't make any improvement (it came as is and I spent
$0 on improvement), then I can't do depreciation? Damn!
\_ No, you can still depreciate the value of the building over
27 and 1/2 years. Whacky, I know, but this is how the tax
law works. You probably need an accountant.
\_ "Improvement" means improvement to the vacant land, the
best example of which is a building. If you buy an investment
property to rent out for $300K and the land value is $200K
then you can only depreciate the value of the building itself
($100K). You cannot depreciate the entire $300K.
\_ Funny the government defines "improvement" as anything
better than the baren land
\_ Why is that funny? If you bring power and sewer to
the lot you've also improved it. You can spend a
lot of money on these improvements.
\_ I will convert a land to dumpster where people
dump shit into it. Will that increase the value
of the land since I spent money digging and putting
up infrastructures for it?
\_ Yes, because that's an investment setup, where
the payoff is people paying you to dump there.
If you don't charge, that's your problem.
\_ That makes complete sense. For a condo, MOST of the value
is in the building and not the land.
\_ الله أَكْ! |
| 2008/8/20-26 [Politics/Domestic/Election] UID:50911 Activity:nil |
8/20 Get ready for President McCain!
\_ if dubya can be President, anyone can
\_ And reelected, at that!
\_ ugh i hope not.
\_ الله أَكْ! |
| 2008/8/20-26 [Computer/Companies/Google, Recreation/Stripclub] UID:50912 Activity:nil |
8/20 Is it my imagination or it seems like Gmail is getting slower
and slower by the day? Takes friggin' seconds to retrieve any mail.
\_ ObGoogleSucks - GOOG short $100 guy
\_ works fine for me, but my Inbox usually has < 20 e-mails
\_ 30,000 iPhones checking for mail every 15-30 minutes
\_ For some place like google that's not even noticable load.
\_ Except that, apparently, it is.
\_ No, really, if gmail is getting slower it isn't because
of 30k new users.
\_ It's getting faster. and We've Always Been At War With Eastasia. --oj
\_ It's getting faster. and We've Always Been At War With
Eastasia. --oj
\_ Tell us about STRIP CLUBS oj
\_ go to ONE strip club and you're marked for life! though
once a grim hollow looking oj walked right by me on Market
coming out of a strip club. I said hi but he was too lost in
deep contemplation of the human condition (either that or
totally high on horse) to respond.
\_ الله أَكْ! |
| 2008/8/20-26 [Transportation/Airplane] UID:50913 Activity:nil |
8/20 http://tinyurl.com/6cqtb2 (dailymail.co.uk) ~150 dead out of 173 in Spanish air disaster "The bodies were boiling. We burned ourselves just by touching them." \_ الله أَكْ! |
| 2008/8/20-26 [Politics] UID:50914 Activity:nil |
8/19 Why is Fedex called Federal Express when it has NOTHING to do with
the Federal Government? And why is UPS United Parcel Service with
a pseudo government official looking symbol when it has nothing to
do with United States or the government? Shouldn't there be a law
against private companies abusing government sounding names?
\_ First National Bank, National City Bank, B of A, United Airline,
NBC, ...... They are just names. Maybe the Fed can apply for
trademark protection.
\_ I heard that the National Bank of Nigeria offers a very
high interest rate.
\_ الله أَكْ! |
| 2008/8/20-26 [Reference/BayArea] UID:50915 Activity:nil |
8/20 this is pretty screwed up. who do i blame?
berkeley? oakland?
http://google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=jahton
\_ A little more information:
http://lupoleboucher.livejournal.com/80660.html
\_ They had no evidence. It's how our justice system works.
It sucks in this case, but on the whole we are better for it.
-knew one of the victims
\_ oh did you know the 90 year cosmic ray researcher?
\_ oh did you know the 900 year old guy?
anyway didnt the berkeley cops catch the dude paying his
bills with the credit card of the people who were beaten?
that sounds like some evidence to me
\_ It's evidence he had stolen property. It wasn't
evidence he did the beating. I bet he did time served
for the credit card thing. (Oh and yeah, he lived in
my building.)
\_ Blame GWB.
\_ What about the old guys testimony? Not accepted
because he died first? Please.
\_ Harry Callahan is not pleased. Punks.
\_ الله أَكْ! |
| 2008/8/20-26 [Politics/Foreign/Asia/China, Reference/Languages] UID:50916 Activity:moderate |
8/20 So is the correct pronunciation PeKING, Beijing, Pecking, etc?
I've seen it spelled as Peking, Beijing, and pronunciated like
PAY-jing, pay-JING, pay? Jing, etc. How do I say it?
\_ bay-jing is accurate. Mandarin is tonal and the tones are
hard to describe with English analogies, so you really just
have to listen to how a native speaker says it. If you learn
the four major tones, that will also make things clearer.
\- it seems like more TV people are learning to say Bei-Jing
instead of Bei-Zhing. Note also similar Nan-jing (southern
capital).
\_ I think they should not bother. They don't bother to
pronounce German or Russian names properly. Just use the
anglo names, fuck 'em.
\_ No matter how you say it, if you're a Westerner unaware of
tones, you'll say it wrong, no matter how many times you say
it. It drives me NUTS to hear dumbasses on NBC saying
"Now this is Lin-Lin. Did I say it right? Is it LIN lin? lin
LIN! LIN LIN! lin lin?"
Fucking dumb ass fucktard Westerners.
\_ Ling Ling FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT
\_ Maybe if Chinese had an alphabet like a civilized language.
This is a nation that doesn't even use forks. The Chinese
contributed a lot to the world. Language and writing are not
among the contributions.
\_ Peking was the old correct spelling which was pronounced Pe-King.
The current correct spelling Beijing was last adopted in 1949 by
the Chicom. (Insert Chicom troll here.)
\_ Text written in Chinese usually takes fewer bytes to store
(uncompressed Unicode) than the same text written in English.
\_ Text written in Chinese (Unicode) usually takes fewer bytes to
store than the same text written in English (ASCII).
\_ That's it, the motd must be in Chinese from now on!
\_ about 5 months. I highly respect anyone who can
read and write Chinese at above retard level and
is not a native speaker.
\_ Doesn't unicode use two bytes for each character, versus
one byte for each in ASCII? So what you are saying is
that written Chinese uses less than 50% as many
characters. Is that right?
\_ Yes, that's what I'm saying. -- PP
\_ How long does it take to write it?
\_ And fork usage is more civilized because ......
\_ I dunno, Hanzi has the big advantage that it's readable no
matter which dialect of Chinese you speak. Imagine if we
had a writing system that was readable by anyone who
speaks any european based language.
\_ I think having an alphabet of less than 90000000 characters
is a big win. Yes I know commonly people use a much
smaller alphabet, in the low thousands, but jesus christ
that's just too much.
\_ You mean like the Latin alphabet we use?
\_ Wow, you don't speak french, german, or spanish, yet you
can read and understand anything written in those
languages just because it uses the same alphabet?
That's a neat trick.
\_ Yes, you can read it. You might not understand it.
What's the big deal about being able to read
Chinese no matter which dialect of Chinese you
speak? That's true of all languages. Southerners
can read English as well as Yankees. What's
limiting about Chinese is that people in other
nations have no idea what something says or how
to pronounce it. Not so with French vs. German
vs. Spanish vs. Tagalog vs. Hungarian. These are
not just simple "dialects".
\_ Apparently you can't read _and_ understand
English either. I sure wouldn't trust you on
Tagalog. Understanding is the point here, not
being able to guess at phonetics.
not just simple "dialects". PS Jackie Johnson
is totally hot and Asian women are all flat!
\_ Please take a language anthro class and come
back when your brain power is higher.
\_ Is that class going to teach me why
logograms are better than an alphabet,
chicom troll?
"If we consider Sinitic languages as a group of
the great Sino-Tibetan family, we may further
divide them into at least the following
mutually unintelligible tongues: Mandarin, Wu,
Cantonese, Hunan, Hakka, Gan, Southern Min, and
Northern Min. These are roughtly parallel to
English, Dutch, Swedish, and so on among the
Germanic group of the Indo-European language
family." - Mair, Victor H. (1991). "What Is a
Chinese "Dialect/Topolect"? Reflections on
Some Key Sino-English Linguistic Terms. --
Well, guess what? English, Dutch, and German
all share an alphabet, too. Nothing unique
about Chinese there. Further, so do farther
removed languages like the Romance languages,
Baltic languages, and Finno-Ugric languages.
\_ The point here, bone-head, is that the
differing chinese dialects can read _and_
UNDERSTAND each other's writing. The
average English speaker can (sort of) read,
but cannot understand German, Dutch,
Swedish, etc. This is why Chinese TV shows
are all subtitled in Chinese. And no, I'm
not Chicom. Nice try.
\_ Peking was a previous official spelling which was pronounced
Pi-King. (Cf. Peking Duck.) The current official spelling Beijing
was last adopted in 1949 by the Communist Party of China.
\_ الله أَكْ! |
| 2008/8/20-26 [Reference/History/WW2/Germany, Politics/Foreign/Europe] UID:50917 Activity:nil |
8/20 Germany wins a bunch of equestrian medals. Are Germans richer
than Americans? Expensive sports man.
\_ Germany has three luxury automotive brands. US has zero.
\_ الله أَكْ!
\_ Cadillac qualifies. Possibly so does Lincoln. However,
Germany has 4: BMW, MB, Audi, Porsche. Ford owns Volvo and
GM owns Saab. I don't know how you count those.
\_ Oh, I forgot about Audi. I personally still think of Volvo
and Saab as Swedish brands. -- PP |
| 2008/8/20-26 [Finance/Banking] UID:50918 Activity:nil |
8/20 1985 savings rate = 10%
2008 savinngs rate = 0.7%
<DEAD>retirementplans.vanguard.com/VGApp/pe/pubnews/WhyAmericansDontSave.jsf?SelectedSegment=BuildingWealth<DEAD>
\_ more consumption is better! Savings don't create jobs!
\_ Trickle down economy works! The rich spends while the
poor profits from trickled down money! And if the poor
gets poorer, it is totally their fault.
\_ poor people want to be poor!
\_ 0.7%? A couple months ago I read on Yahoo News that the rate was
negative 0.x percent.
\_ الله أَكْ! |
| 2008/8/20-26 [Recreation/Dating, Health/Women] UID:50919 Activity:nil |
8/20 blonde women. so attractive. so bitchy.
\_ I heard they're extincting. Blonde men are marrying Asian
women while blonde women are marrying black sports stars.
\- you may enjoy reading about WAGs:
not to confused with Sloan Rangers but possibly
overlapping with Chavs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAGs
\_ Wow, there's a lot more sports stars out there than I thought.
\_ Not really. Each of them is just fucking a lot of blonde
women. Look at Wilt Chamberlin.
\_ الله أَكْ!
\_ Wilt Chamberlin wasn't a mormon was he? |
| 11/22 |