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Re: This punishes the poor [Re: fin.] #66848
02/20/06 03:14 PM
02/20/06 03:14 PM
Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 9,582
North-West Europe
Wouter Offline
Carpal Tunnel
Wouter  Offline
Carpal Tunnel

Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 9,582
North-West Europe

Quote

But, I'm drained, you win. Did you see my new post " A cat vs F-16"?


Me too, so lets get back to catamaran topics. I'm composing the post right now.

Wouter


Wouter Hijink
Formula 16 NED 243 (one-off; homebuild)
The Netherlands
-- Have You Seen This? --
Re: This punishes the poor [Re: Wouter] #66849
02/20/06 03:34 PM
02/20/06 03:34 PM
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 6,049
Sebring, Florida.
Timbo Offline
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Timbo  Offline
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Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 6,049
Sebring, Florida.
Not so fast you two! There will be no hijacking of this thread! Wouter, here are some things I LOVE about the Netherlands:

1. No Fat Chicks!
2. Lots of Bicycles!
3. Lots of Heineken!
4. Texel!
5. Lots of windmills!
6. Nice guys like Wouter who will take you to their Cat club, show you boats and buy you Heineken, on draft, at the club!

Things I don't like about the Netherlands: The summer is too short and not nearly warm enough. If it weren't for that, I'd move there. I spent my first 30 yrs. freezing my butt off in the North East of the US, dreaming of summer, which up there is only June, July and August. So now I'm in Florida and on those few days it doesn't get to at least 80 (27C), I think I need to move further south! I hate wearing long pants and a jacket, and sailing in a Dry Suit? Please, let's not even talk about that!!

Could we please get back to talking Politics??


Last edited by Timbo; 02/20/06 03:41 PM.

Blade F16
#777
Re: This punishes the poor [Re: Timbo] #66850
02/20/06 03:40 PM
02/20/06 03:40 PM
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 3,348
F
fin. Offline OP
Carpal Tunnel
fin.  Offline OP
Carpal Tunnel
F

Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 3,348
Quote
Not so fast . . .


Do you know that place in London, Speaker's Corner? It would be nice if we had a place like that!


Re: This punishes the poor [Re: Wouter] #66851
02/20/06 04:11 PM
02/20/06 04:11 PM
Joined: Nov 2002
Posts: 5,558
Key Largo, FL & Put-in-Bay, OH...
Mary Offline
Carpal Tunnel
Mary  Offline
Carpal Tunnel

Joined: Nov 2002
Posts: 5,558
Key Largo, FL & Put-in-Bay, OH...
Wouer,
How tall are you?

Re: This punishes the poor [Re: Timbo] #66852
02/20/06 04:16 PM
02/20/06 04:16 PM
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 3,348
F
fin. Offline OP
Carpal Tunnel
fin.  Offline OP
Carpal Tunnel
F

Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 3,348
Quote

Could we please get back to talking Politics??



Ask Mary to designate an officially sanctioned "speakers Corner". I'm beginning to feel like the guy who won't shut off his cell phone in the theater!

Re: This punishes the poor [Re: fin.] #66853
02/20/06 04:58 PM
02/20/06 04:58 PM
Joined: Nov 2002
Posts: 5,558
Key Largo, FL & Put-in-Bay, OH...
Mary Offline
Carpal Tunnel
Mary  Offline
Carpal Tunnel

Joined: Nov 2002
Posts: 5,558
Key Largo, FL & Put-in-Bay, OH...
I think height is relevant.

Re: This punishes the poor [Re: Mary] #66854
02/20/06 05:27 PM
02/20/06 05:27 PM
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 3,348
F
fin. Offline OP
Carpal Tunnel
fin.  Offline OP
Carpal Tunnel
F

Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 3,348
Quote
I think height is relevant.


Dare I ask why!

Re: This punishes the poor [Re: Timbo] #66855
02/20/06 05:50 PM
02/20/06 05:50 PM
Joined: Oct 2005
Posts: 49
Israel, Sdot Yam
Opher Offline
newbie
Opher  Offline
newbie

Joined: Oct 2005
Posts: 49
Israel, Sdot Yam
Quote
Opher, good to hear from someone actually living there! Were those Inter 20 pictures posted a couple months back yours? It looked like a nice place to sail.


Timbo, the I20 pictures were taken on the Sea of Galilee, about an hour inland from our club at Sdot Yam, on the Med coast. I’ve attached a picture from last Saturday of our N6.0 off the 2000 year old Roman city and port of Caesarea, less than a mile North of us.

But back to politics…
Quote
Good to hear a voice of sanity from Israel. The news coverage we get up here is quite pro-palestinian,

Rolf, It never ceases to amaze me how, with hundreds of millions of Muslims surrounding us, many of whom are quite radical and would love to have all Israelis take a very long swim, we still come out the oppressors. Maybe that’s the same press busy blaming America for attacking “innocent” countries instead of urging European leaders to find creative but effective ways to protect our way of life from a rapidly growing threat.

Because I do agree with Wouter in theory:
Quote
Have them develop themselves into prosperous nations. Did the trick for us and the Catholic church was every bit as influential as the Imans are right now.

I just think their leaders may need some “convincing” before they relinquish unlimited power to a thriving, secular, democratic lifestyle, and happily join the West.

And speaking of Hammas, their leader Haled Mash’al was warmly received in Teheran today. Wonder what that does to my optimistic scenario from yesterday?

Attached Files
67533-Caesarea.JPG (19 downloads)

Opher
Nacra F20C ISR1
F18 Cirrus ISR2
Sdot Yam, ISRAEL
Re: Europe/older societies [Re: Tiger] #66856
02/21/06 08:42 AM
02/21/06 08:42 AM
Joined: Mar 2005
Posts: 2,074
Northfield,NH USA
bullswan Offline
Pooh-Bah
bullswan  Offline
Pooh-Bah

Joined: Mar 2005
Posts: 2,074
Northfield,NH USA
Quote
A noticeable thing:

All of the forum members who were very active (and nasty) at selling Bush policies these last years are suddenly absent.

Is it because they feel like us that the [censored] is going to hit the fan shortly?


Nope. It's because it gets tiring hearing the same crap from the Kool-aid drinking crowd. Bush lied about wmd, oil conspiracy, Iraq is only about oil......blah, blah,blah.

(Dammit, they've drawn me into this mud..... )

Greg


The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised. - George Will
"It's not that liberals aren't smart, it's just that so much of what they know isn't so" -Ronald Reagan
Re: Europe/older societies [Re: davidn] #66857
02/21/06 08:58 AM
02/21/06 08:58 AM
Joined: Mar 2005
Posts: 2,074
Northfield,NH USA
bullswan Offline
Pooh-Bah
bullswan  Offline
Pooh-Bah

Joined: Mar 2005
Posts: 2,074
Northfield,NH USA
Quote
If I may jump into this long non-sailing discussion late, I would like to make a couple of points that seem to have been left behind in the flurry of thoughts going off into numerous interesting directions.

Capitalism versus Socialism: I don't think you can get away from a basic truth that the more you want someone or something (government, for instance) to do for you, the more freedom of independent action you will give up. Any good society will take care of its vulnerable citizens; even barbaric societies did this to differing extents. But the more these support programs proliferate, the more people will be happy to depend on them; not everyone is motivated by the work ethic. Way back, Benjamin Franklin said that we should help the poor, but not make them so comfortable that they want to stay in that condition (I'm paraphrasing). The beauty of Capitalism is that it appeals to human being's self interest, which is more reliably stronger than human being's altruistic instincts. Since Capitalism is basically amoral, it must be coupled with a strong rule of law to reign in excesses. In support of the above very brief theme, I offer some general statistics. US economic growth rate is consistently higher than Europe's. US unemployment rate is way below Europe's (Europe varies from 6 to 9% while the US is under 5%). Opinion poles show Europeans much less optimistic about their future than US citizens. This attitude may be why Europe's birth rate (among ethnic Europeans) is not sustaining itself. The gowing social support payments necessary from years of social welfare and the aging baby boom generation is creating an impending economic crisis more dangerous than our "boomer" social security crisis.

If government gets out of people's way (except for enforcing proper rules of fair play, so to speak), one sees the inventiveness of people unleashed. Ireland's economic boom over the last 20 years serves as a good example. In the US, I am constantly amazed at seeing how people will find the smallest need and find a way to make a living filling that. The inventiveness of these entrepeneurs never ceases to amaze me. Now, before I get slammed with examples of how this idea is perverted or corrupted in the US, I didn't claim it was perfectly functioning here, just better than in many other places in the world. We have many distortions of the free market here and some lead to real economic problems. In general, though, barriers to entrepeneurism are much lower in the US than in Europe and that's a good thing.

Regarding oil: The Alberta (Canada) oil sands contain more oil reserves than currently exist in Saudi Arabia. At $2.50 a gallon, it is now becoming economically viable to extract and market. We have in the US vast deposits of shale oil under ground. It can't be accessed by open pit mining like the oil sands, but there is a commercial test operation (to test on a commercial scale) going on out west whereby steam is injected into these deposits and the oil is "cooked" out of the shale. When deleted, the deposit is back filled with water and the whole operation occurs underground. These deposits are vast, close to the level of Saudi Arabia. Last, but very much not least, we have, at current consumption rates, enough coal in the US to fuel our fleet of vehicles for 500 years. This is from methanol extracted from coal.

The US should mandate that the auto makers achieve flex fuel capability on their fleet within 2 to 3 years. It takes only a sensor to determine the composition of the fuel and adjust the mixture accordingly and a protected fuel system (methanol and ethanol are corrosive). This mandate should require flex capability for both methanol (from coal) and ethanol (from corn, etc) which is harder to accomplish, but well within current technology. By now everyone's seen the E85 ads, so the ethanol lobby is in full swing, but we need full flexibility.

The point of all this is to not have a world economic crisis regarding the oil economy while the world economy has transitions beyond its complete dependency on petroleum. We need 50 to 100 years for this process and its readily available. The other, maybe more important point, is that we need to stop funding the Islamic terrorists. Much of the money all countries send to the mid east is used to fund Islamic fundamentalism which is the source of inspiration for Islamic terror activities. As a business man I marvel at cost of goods for a barrel of oil, $5; selling price fob mid east, $60; profit $55 or 1100%. This dependency also coops the western world from properly reacting to terror activities or terror supporting states.

To summarize (and therefore, oversimplify), we should support the vulnerable; create a minimum safety net for the poor, but not one that makes them too comfortable; drive the poor back into productivity, get government out of people's lives as much as possible; enforce fair laws; unleash the inventiveness of humans in the economic sphere; develop alternative fuels quickly, especially the technologies with good return-on-investment capabilities; send less money to the mid east and keep it in our own countries; and sail more rather than burn fossel fuels.

Davidn
H20 781
If Winter's here, can Spring be far behind?



David,
You are my new hero. WORD.
Greg


The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised. - George Will
"It's not that liberals aren't smart, it's just that so much of what they know isn't so" -Ronald Reagan
Re: Alternative energy [Re: Timbo] #66858
02/22/06 08:02 AM
02/22/06 08:02 AM
Joined: Nov 2002
Posts: 5,558
Key Largo, FL & Put-in-Bay, OH...
Mary Offline
Carpal Tunnel
Mary  Offline
Carpal Tunnel

Joined: Nov 2002
Posts: 5,558
Key Largo, FL & Put-in-Bay, OH...
Quote
My parrents bought a VW Diesel Rabbit back in 1978, for $8,000. It got 50 mpg. Wish I could find one today! The new Diesel Jetta gets about 48 mpg, but costs $21-23,000. A Toyota Carola gets 41 mpg on gasoline, for about $13-16,000. Diesel is about $.20 more expensive than gas (why is that? It used to be twenty cents cheaper. Taxes?)


Around 1980-1982, we had a Volkswagen diesel pickup truck that got 62 mpg. We used it to tow our Hobie 18 to regattas.

Apparently, the problem is that we used to have the technology, but somebody lost the recipe.

Re: Alternative energy [Re: Mary] #66859
02/22/06 08:32 AM
02/22/06 08:32 AM
Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 77
Tiger Offline
journeyman
Tiger  Offline
journeyman

Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 77
Quote
Apparently, the problem is that we used to have the technology, but somebody lost the recipe.


Wake up, the technology is there and used somewhere else: Avg fuel consumption in Europe: 40mpg. All these diesels are very efficient (and are cleaner now). American manufacturers have been sleeping for a looong time.

It is all about promoting efficiency and taxing glutony (as they do in Europe since the 70's). Only the govt can do that. Be smart.

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