Cthulhu D

Club game, scoring IMPs, sitting North, Holding: S: AKJ H: KJ96 D: 72 C: J832 You're playing 2/1 GF with transfer responses and a short club. Auction: E - S - W - N (P) - 1D - (P) - 1H (P) - 3D - (P) - ?? Now here I made some unwise decisions (I bid 3S, partner rebid 3NT and I bid 4NT), but what is the approach to making a slam try here?

It's a new edition after some people played groove is in the heart. Discussion here: http://ebulaws.blogspot.com.au/2009/10/they-shouldnt-be-allowed-to-play-that.html

I thought the Republican replacement Refs strategy was well documented.

Of course, the lesson from Syria, Iraq, Bosnia etc is that high explosives and shoulder launched anti tank and anti aircraft missles are critical for effective insurgencies. Tanks and Helicopters are key parts of the infrastructure of oppression and they cannot be dealt with with a hunting rifle, and high explosives - particularly mortars, but also mines, plastic explosives and artillery shells - are critical for fighting asymetric warfare and conducting bombing campaigns. Missiles and explosives are much more important than guns and much harder to acquire - because they are so tightly controlled. For example, the Syrian resistance is currently desperately trying to acquire missles on the open market. Anyone who seriously believes that the purpose of gun ownership is to enable the populace to resist government oppression should be advocating for the purchase of shoulder launched missles and plastic explosives for the general populace. But no-one is going to seriously argue for that because it's stupid. Once you understand that there is a trade-off to be made, it's obvious that the public health benefits outweigh the intangible FIGHT THE POWER stuff which is ridiculous.

There are a bunch of right wing lunatic economists that believe government intervention, particularly deficit spending, is the only cause of recessions. They also reject the use of models, statistics and maths when testing economic theories, so I leave it up to you what to make of that. However this represents a significant body of economic thought used by the republican party, leading to these NO DEFICITS EVER positions.

It's actually an American invention from Euchre, but was supplanted in America by Auction and Contract Bridge. It was brought to Australia and held on here. Lots of people know how to play, though it's dying out a bit, but of a random selection of 28 year olds, probably 1/3rd will have played before.

It's pretty clear from the fortune magazine report is that it was impossible to stop the gun runners because nothing they did was demonstrably illegal due to a lack of monitoring systems - why arn't gun sales tracked? - and permissive purchase and resale laws. Why isn't there even a law against arms tracking? What the hell?

Why are you assuming that I'd answer the question yes? I think it's immoral to kill the homeless guy. However, we're talking about the objectivist system of ethics - in the objectivist system of ethics, considering the impact on the homeless guy is immoral. The leading objectivist thinking specifically held up as their ideal man someone who was unburned by their concious regards to their impact on others. You're not taking away the point of this thought experiment: Lots of people when presented with the oppotunity to gain $100 million dollars risk free are going to act in an immoral way. The point is, does the system of ethics judge that the act is moral or immoral? Objectivistim judges the only moral act to be killing the man for personal profit. Anything else is unethical! Please point out the incorrect component. Yes, privately owned road networks have historically been unable to deliver the sort of footprint to manage distribution to regional and suburban centres. The trucking company would not be able to effectively operate in such an environment. There is no particular reason to assume this would change, and the reason why it is the case is well understood - the positive externalities generated by the system are impossible to capture. Let's look at a real tangible example that is much the same: Fire Departments! Privatised Fire Departments have been tried extensively globally. I'm very familiar with the Australian examples, but the problems are universal. Australia had many of them, and after a number of incidents they were universally abolished and replaced with government owned agencies. The issue is if you run Fire Departments as a competitive service is that it doesn't work out for anyone on the ground due to the large negative externalities generated by a fire, particularly in urban or rural areas! If no-one makes an effort to contain the fire before it spreads or takes hold, you have bigger issues. Privatised fire departments failed spectularly at this and lead to a major fire in Sydney for example. So yeah, in summary the private sector has an extensive track record of shitting the bed in some areas. It's important to understand how government and business can work together for the general good of society. Both are essential parts of a functional society.

Listing some more unusual choices, I'm going to skip over Chuck Berry, anything by Who, James Brown, Johnny Cash, Master of Puppets by Metallica and Iron Maiden to mix it up a bit. Bad Religion - Grey Race Bad Religion - Process of Belief Bad Religion - Suffer One of the best punk bands ever. Why yes I am a massive fan. Note: Suffer has awful production values as it was recorded for $2 dollars in a dumpster, so it might be wise to start with Grey Race or Process of Belief which has slick production and excellent song writing. Motorhead - Ace of Spades - Great british heavy metal band. Probably one of their best albums, Bomber is good to. Finntroll - Jaktens Tid - Swedish band doing a hybrid of traditional finnish folk music and death metal. Ulver - Kveldssanger - An entirely acoustics album that is impossible to sum up. Let me leave it to a professional to try "Vocals tend towards an obscure hymnal, almost Gregorian warble, though under-utilized, they're richly textured and melodiously delivered, complemented by an amalgamation of layered guitars, flutes, and cellos. There are literally zero modern equivalents to this pensive mood-setting oddity [...] A somber and skillfully executed alternative to the norm; the entire affair just reeks of class." Source: ssmt-reviews.com Ulver - Perdition City - Okay as you might have guessed the guy behind ulver is insane, and this is some sort of electronic accoustic.. thing. It's really good. NOFX - White Trash, Two Heebs & A Bean - NOFX defines pop punk and this or Ribbed defines NOFX. Your pick. "I heard they suck live" is the best live album ever by anyone as well, if you like that sort of thing.

Yes, you stand alone if you are an objectivist, because of your answer to this dilemma: You are running late for an event. If you make the event you will receive $100 million dollars. If you are late for the event you will not get any money. You have an opportunity to make the event on time by ducking down a side alley. Taking any other route will result in you being late for the event. However, blocking the alley is a homeless man with no social or economic ties. If you kill him, no-one will do anything about it or think less of you in any way. In your position you have a disintegration ray that will remove the man as an obstruction. Do you A) Shoot the man B) Be late for the event? You'll get much wriggling on this, but the Objectivist answer is A, shoot the man. The objectivist philosophy explicitly states that the only consideration in ethical questions is the costs an benefits to yourself. Here the cost is nothing and the benefits are large. Therefore there can only be one answer - murder. Also, if my second statement is demonstrably false, please find a single road network in the world (note: Not toll road, full road network), built without public funding, serving an urban area with say, ~600,000 people at a minimum. Just one is fine.

What do you think the main point is?

The funniest part about that was the right wing cartoonist hacks who just set out to make Obama's point for him: like the one in which he's chewing out a little girl running a lemonade stand because she didn't build that.. because she got the wood off her dad and the lemons off her mum. Which was the point - no-one stands alone in some Galtian ideal, everyone else contributes as well. No trucking company could succeed without the highway system built by the government.

No, it's not. The current proposal is a once a year standised test with no socioeconomic controls and fire teachers who don't get good results out of their classes. This is functionally identical to implementing this process: "Do you teach at a poor inner city school? If so, you're fired" Given that will shortly make it impossible to get people to teach at poor black schools, rather than merely very difficult, obviously that is worse than the status quo. There are a number of reasonable arguments in this thread, but none of them are the argument actually being advanced by the employer.

Contactless + pin or insert smart card and pin.

No-one has successfully developed metrics that separate good teachers from bad ones in a way that can be usefully administered on a large scale that are not overwhelmed by the socioeconomic background of the students and random noise from sample sizes. Additionally, no-one has managed to successfully show that coaching that improves your scores on standised tests results in improved employment outcomes which is the actual objective. The problem here is that all the metrics are poor. To use a baseball analogy we're still ascribing walks to the pitcher and using RBIs not wRC+, and we're only measuring players over 30 plate appearances rather than 300. Additionally, some guys are making their 30 plate appearances against Walter Johnson, and some guys are appearing with A. J. Burnett on the mound, and this isn't being controlled for. The teacher's union might be okay with good metrics, but the metrics actually proposed don't control for socioeconomic factors, let alone anything else.

Why doesn't the US implement some sort of prefences system for presidential elections? I think you guys call the concept Instant Runoff Voting.

http://bridge.mgoetze.net/bbf.html Has good resources.

Also: A) This is bad B) We should probably do something about it.

Victims is the wrong word. It just turns out that while everyone is equal in America, whites are more equal than blacks. Having richer parents gives you such a host of advantages - just as one tiny example, access to dental care makes a big difference - that it's the primary driver of educational outcomes. Demonstrating that this is racial takes two seconds: http://www.epi.org/page/-/old/webfeatures/econindicators/income_20080826_figure6_600.gif I'm sure you could find more recent data for 2008-2012 if you wish, I only had 2 seconds. That is not a small gap. Ultimately the adults are probably lost to you, not sure you can solve it, but to fix it for the kids.. well, that's going to require a massive effort. There are no easy solutions, but it's certainly a problem.

The problems are socio-economic caused by the legacy of racism, the rigid class structure in America and the denial by politicians of all stripes of point 1 and 2. The upshot is that black kids are more likely to need help than white kids - but it's because black kids are more likely to be from poor backgrounds.

Err, that's a pretty myopic view of the world - you're totally wrong. For example, the English follow Cricket, Football and Rugby Union very heavily. In Australia Australian Rules, Rugby Union, Cricket and Rugby League have massive footprints.

Remember, one of the things that the Teacher's union is pushing for is that classes have their textbooks available on day one. They are certainly gunning for things to improve outcomes here to.

From my reading they are not proposing multiple tests a year or socio economic controls. What other explanation is there? As it stands, the proposal is 'if you teach poor black kids, you are going to get fired, have fun!' I'd be on strike too.

Yeah, except this is almost entirely predicated on the parents as well - the environment the kid spends the summer holidays in effects retention. If you test a school kid at the end of the school year, that kid goes backwards between 2-3 and 8 months by the start of the next year, predicted by socio-economic status. You need to test multiple times in a school year to get meaningful results. Of course, the actual tests as proposed don't even control for socio-economic status of the kids, so it's obvious that Chicago is just trying to ***** the teachers.

Indeed, isn't this just marginally above long term inflation? like, 0.5%. Half a percentage point a year in real terms is pretty small actually. This is just designed to punish teachers who teach in poor areas. The biggest determinant of standardised testing scores is the background of the parents. Teachers don't have any control over this, so why measure them on something they cannot control? As Mike777 points out, those teachers are the most underpaid already.