well, i'm not particularly convinced that collusion is not taking place, but i got the refill....

when i got there, he told me it wasn't in yet. so i yelled and screamed for a few minutes, providing the ultimatum to provide me a refund or get on the phone and call around to get it in right away. the owner just coincidentally happened to be in the back, and she took care of it - the refill was there in about twenty minutes. that's how you have to deal with shit like that...

the excuse they gave me was they thought they gave me seven days (but i take them twice daily, so they gave me 3.5). it's a bad excuse, either way, because they told me it would be in by monday....

so, i dunno. all the information to conclude incompetence is there, but it's not really sitting right with me. for the immediate moment, it's sort of irrelevant.

you know, i still think this whole argument is missing the major underlying factor, which is demographics.

put all this stuff about lending and bubbles aside for a moment, and you're left with a boomer generation that was told to invest in housing to fuel their retirement. now, contrast that with stagnant wages since the 1970s. if you have housing rising faster than inflation and wages rising slower than inflation it's eventually going to crash when the boomers go to cash in their investment, and there's nothing that can be really done to stop that. this is the consequence of building a society on spiralling debt: in the end, the investment turns out to be worthless. what's going to burst is the boomers' retirement plans.

it gets a little worse when you consider the fact that they're all going to sell at the same time. they're still a demographic bubble. so, if they all decide to retire at the same time and all put their houses up at the same time they're going to crash the price through over-supply.

now, the banks could react to this by reducing supply, but it creates a headache in itself.

at the end of it, what you're left with is the understanding that the bubble is the collective entitlement of the boomer generation, and that it will disappear along with them - likely in the benefit of their children and grandchildren, who will see prices adjust downwards to their earning potential.

http://business.financialpost.com/2014/04/17/canada-housing-correction-could-trigger-another-recession-bmo-report-says/

even if the banks go full asshole and leave the houses abandoned (and i can't see that happening here), in the end they're going to have to sell for a song - provided the buyers are willing to repair them.

this idea of infinitely building houses into never ending suburbia doesn't take into account the fact that people die and the population growth rate is pretty low here....

i mean, for the last 20-30 years, you had a pretty stable situation where boomers could sell houses to each other based on their mutual levels of inflated equity. the whole thing just kept spiralling out, and the banks just kept making money. it's all on paper, though. the younger generation simply doesn't have 20 years of inflated equity to cash in. they're not going to buy a bungalow for $600,000 on a $50,000/yr salary - which, to us, is a quarter of what it was to them. it's an impossibility. the price of that bungalow has to fall to half or a third of that - to where wages are, which is a tremendous disconnect. and, that leaves betty boomer with an empty hat.

there's no way around it. the kids aren't going to generate that kind of equity. they can't inherit it unless their parents sell - circular logic, an impossibility.  they're not going to see 500% pay increases. the market just simply has to fall.

i think that pretentious is probably the most overused and least understood word in the english language. the only other word that really comes close is liberal.

which is sort of comical....

help me fix this...

the next time somebody calls you pretentious, ask them if they know what it means - and don't be surprised when they sputter.

i'm actually rather convinced that matt lee's purpose in these daily briefings is to waste time in order to prevent legitimate questions.

the question deserved the response it got, as a consequence of it's utter naivete. how are the iranians supposed to know what the americans don't want them to do? yeesh. the subtle propaganda in the question isn't the idea that the iranians are malleable to american influence - for in truth they are, and anybody that knows the situation knows this (despite matt's enforcement of the axis of evil narrative). rather, the subtle propaganda is the idea that the iranians can somehow get out of the situation they're in by playing along - that the americans are reasonable actors in the conflict, driven by rational concerns and a desire for dialogue. ask ghadaffi or saddam or even assad how well that worked out.

it's not a question of whether the iranians care about or know what the americans want. it's a question of whether the americans care if the iranians are being co-operative. the answer is they don't.

and i'd have laughed at him, too, if i were her.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azDkOcIvxHk

the "incentives" driving the sanctions are not to change the behaviour of the regime, they're to try and incite the population to revolt.

this ends one of two ways...

1) the regime is overthrown.
2) iran becomes a russian protectorate.

....and the "detente" driving talks is a reaction to the increasing likelihood of the second option, not something coming out of a desire to bring the iranian regime back into the international community. on that point you have to give the obama administration a little bit of credit. that's something successive american administrations have not really taken seriously.

"if you grab his tail, he might take off..."

yeah. take off, eh.

hosers...

deathtokoalas
we've seen a few videos of these "crystal clean" lakes, and...

clear water like this is generally not indicative of a healthy lake. a healthy lake has plant-like stuff floating around in it.

you know what actually creates that kind of a situation? acidification. the clarity is generally a response of the ph sinking to a point that it can't support any kind of life. these crystal clear lakes that have been destroyed by acidification to the point that they cannot support life are called "dead lakes".

that doesn't mean that every lake that looks like this is the result of acid rain. there are other factors that may create the same result. but a lake in a mountain in slovakia would likely not be this clear unless it's been destroyed by emissions floating south from germany.

Michal Špondr
Maybe there are just no plants in such height. :-P And maybe it's a melted snow which got frozen again, snow doesn't contain animals. If you were right, Europe should be full of such lakes because of the emissions.

deathtokoalas
europe is full of these lakes, and slovakia is the most affected area.

Nox Solitudo 
I mean, Slovakia usually gets a lot of emissions floating SOUTH from Germany, and probably north from France too.

deathtokoalas
yeah, it's not like this is something that hasn't been studied to death. there's a lot of industrialization in the east of france, but it's the tremendous industrial production in germany (and, to a lesser extent, production in russia) that are the culprits here. really, it's a little surprising how few people have an awareness of this. if you google something like "acid rain europe", you'll see a number of maps that designate the worst areas as existing in a swath through the center of europe that includes sweden, poland and the former czechoslavakia.

SuperMegaUltraPigeon
I thought it was clear because of the shear altitude meaning there is little dirt or plant/animal life, sort of like an isolated lake.

deathtokoalas
yeah, i know this is an idea out there, but i don't think it's really accurate.

so, why do some high altitude lakes lack fish? obviously, fish need a way to migrate to the lake - they can't fly in. they could maybe get dropped by a bird, but that's a fluke thing, and unless they're asexual or pregnant they can't breed alone anyways. so, a relatively new lake that has no way for fish to get in to it will not have fish in it. but, those factors don't apply as well to other types of life. the idea that high altitudes eliminate soil, plants, insects, mammals, etc is not accurate. these kinds of things exist at all altitudes...

nor is there any connection between the glacial origin of a lake and it's ability to sustain an ecosystem - except that sometimes these lakes have unique ecosystems. there are glacial lakes all over canada with elaborate ecosystems. some of the best fishing is in the rocky mountains.

similarly, high altitudes are not a buffer against the high acidity in the rain in the region - which is well established. looking at pictures of the lake doesn't tell me anything. but a google search for tatra mountains and acid rain pulls up several results.

i'm acknowledging that i'm putting two and two together, here. but acidification is really a far more likely explanation for the clarity of the water than the idea that there's no life or soil because it's an isolated glacial lake. glacial lakes are isolated from the waterways in the region. they're not isolated from all the other ways for life to find their way to them. and, they're generally not void of life - unless they've been acidified.

SuperMegaUltraPigeon
You are probably right, i was just doing my bit of speculation. However i imagine even at such altitudes if the lake wasn't acidified then even some form of algae might live, causing the lake to not be clear.

deathtokoalas
ok, i've deleted enough people regurgitating something they read at some pop science website to make a final point and close the thread. just because you've found a link to something on slashdot or reddit doesn't mean the information in the link is worth reading. and, it's certainly not a reason to swing it around the internet like a biblical quote.

my point is that the popular media perception of this is probably wrong.

yes, black ice is more transparent than snow. but what this describes is how well you can see through the ice. it doesn't describe how well you can see through the water. a healthy lake full of black ice would be...black. because the water would be full of stuff. that's why they call it "black ice".

to get that kind of clarity through the lake, you have to be dealing with extraordinarily clear water - water that really only exists as (1) water coming from treatment plants and (2) water in lakes killed off from acidification.

thread closed.

similarly, everybody in the entire world (including the state department) understands that the detainees at guantanomo are pow's, but the state department will never call them that, regardless of the logic, because to do so would invoke the geneva convention. you could stamp "pow" on their forehead and have them sing "we are prisoners of war!", perhaps in the key of c, accompanied by a kaz...no, i'm really not that guy, honest, but you could do that - and they wouldn't crack.

it's a nice try, granted. but it's a waste of time.