Thankfully, BoA hasn't invaded my territory.

Are you really arguing that this is sane?

This message is a waste of my time, TK.  I think we should all be whining about the taxes we pay and how best to kick lazy deadbeats living on government handouts into the church soup lines.  Maybe then people would start to appreciate the benefits that the financial services industry is doing for our country.

Focus, people.  Focus!

If George Bush hadn't fucked the country, and the world, up so badly, Enron and World Com would be remembered in the history books alongside the Teapot Dome scandal as administration defining scandalous shames upon our nation's honor.  But who would want to be remembered for that?  So Dubya redoubled his efforts at ignominy and proved to the world why he is named "Bush".

Last edited by Max (1/07/2011 11:11 am)

tkihshbt wrote:

Thankfully, BoA hasn't invaded my territory.

Are you really arguing that this is sane?

Sanity isn't the issue.  As a result of government intervention, the bank's revenue is down.  They're looking for ways to recoup the lost revenue.  I'm not sure why that would surprise you.

Your follow up post was the correct response.  If the notion of what BoA is doing offends you, don't do business with them.  BoA will then be forced to weigh the revenue lost as a result of lost customers against the revenues lost as a result of regulation and decide which is the lesser of two evils.

Funny how the cost of government regulation always gets passed to the consumers.  Who knew?   

tkihshbt wrote:

Well, the guy from Enron did die. So clearly no good deed goes unpunished.

You know, that's a weird one.  He died before he had a chance to appeal, meaning that whatever settlement was (or would have been) imposed on him can't be enforced and the beneficiaries of his will get to keep the money!  Even his death, autopsy, and almost immediate cremation were unusual enough to raise some eyebrows.  Not that it MEANS anything though.  We have a free press and a conspiracy cannot exist in our country because if it did it would be unveiled through our free press and free market system. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Lay#Abatement_of_conviction

And it's funny how community banks and credit unions are able to survive without bludgeoning their customers with hidden fees.

Banks were making $20 billion on overdraft fees before the government put a limit on how much they could charge them. BoA did away with overdraft fees earlier last year.

Your confidence in the "free market" punishing BoA if people get tired of their shitty services is misguided, IMO.

forsberg_us wrote:

tkihshbt wrote:

Thankfully, BoA hasn't invaded my territory.

Are you really arguing that this is sane?

Sanity isn't the issue.  As a result of government intervention, the bank's revenue is down.  They're looking for ways to recoup the lost revenue.  I'm not sure why that would surprise you.

Your follow up post was the correct response.  If the notion of what BoA is doing offends you, don't do business with them.  BoA will then be forced to weigh the revenue lost as a result of lost customers against the revenues lost as a result of regulation and decide which is the lesser of two evils.

Funny how the cost of government regulation always gets passed to the consumers.  Who knew?   

With all due respect, Fors, I think you carry some unrealistic naivete about fairness and non-intervention.  Starting with the last discussion, the whole idea that a developing embryo has any free will in what its mother eats, or what illegal drugs its mother consumes is obviously absurd.  And yet there is a lot of evidence relating prenatal care to infant health.  Similarly, in the early years of life, a healthy environment and well-conceived stimulation are almost surely linked with health and intelligence later in life.  Why on Earth is everyone playing the Mozart CDs for their children if we don't tend to believe there is something to that?  But your previous opinions seem to disregard all this.

Similarly, when it comes to large anything, the very scale they operate on has an uneven, un-'fair', effect that can best be countered by government intervention, but you seem to either dismiss the former and/or detest the latter.  But in contrast, this basic premise is almost universally agreed upon: we all understand how deleterious it can be for any one company to form a monopoly, or any one person to purchase so much local property that they have Mr. Potter-like influence on the Bedford Falls of the world.  Do you not recall when banks were holding our deposits for 2 weeks, and collecting interest on that money and keeping it for themselves, even though electronic transfers made the exchange almost instantaneous?  It took an act of congress to get them to change their business practices back then.  Was that misguided intervention by the government?

Again, harkening back to Lincoln, we will only do those things collectively that we cannot do better individually: we need government to act as a counterbalance against the power and influence of wealthy people and organizations who, quite naturally, operate for their own benefit, and not for the general good.  And before you repeat your assertion that I resent wealthy people, realize that what I am writing is not all that different from what Buffet, Soros, or Gates would say.

Last edited by Max (1/07/2011 6:20 pm)

forsberg_us wrote:

Life isn't fair.

Spoken like the great Louis XIV.

If that's your philosophy on government, then at least we know where we stand.

Maybe you are trying to be funny, again, but scientists can actually study this stuff in quite a lot of detail these days with a fancy technique called functional MRI, where they can track the blood flow in the brain during all sorts of different activities to see what part of the brain is being used.  Next, it turns out that brain development, repair and regeneration works like most any other part of your body.  Use it and it gets stronger, or at least affect its development. 

As came up earlier, this has been shown with language acquisition.  Learn new languages before puberty and you will use the primary "language" portion of your brain for all of them.  Learn secondary languages after puberty and they will always be just that, secondary, with the brain actually using a different, more analytical part of the brain.  And here's a kicker for the kids raised in isolation: learn no language at all before puberty and your ability to learn any language is very, very limited.

One quick google search for "functional MRI music" got me started and led to this study which shows that musicians and non-musicians actually use different parts of their brain when hearing different note combinations: "In musicians, the inferior frontal gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, medial frontal gyrus, inferior parietal lobule and anterior cingulate respond with progressively more activation to perfect consonances, imperfect consonances and dissonances. In nonmusicians only the right inferior frontal gyrus follows this pattern."

http://journals.lww.com/neuroreport/Abstract/2007/10080/Neural_correlates_of_the_Pythagorean_ratio_rules.3.aspx

APRTW wrote:

I think it is a retarded method to sell iteams.  And "Scientists" studies can say whatever that person wants them to say. 


http://www.livescience.com/health/070814_bad_baby.html

(grin) (grin) (grin) (grin) (grin)

You're right Max. AP is pretty darn smart when he wants to be.

forsberg_us wrote:

I just spent an hour in "Max Land" a/k/a CYC 2nd grade girls basketball.

First, there is no score kept. No winner, no loser. Everyone feels better for simply having participated.

The government a/k/a the referees make sure everything is fair. If a girl travels, they blow the whistle, tell the girl she traveled, but the team gets to keep the ball. Same for double dribbling. Break the rules and you'll get spoken to, but no consequences.

The team that doesn't have the ball isn't allowed to play defense. If a shot goes up and the defensive team rebounds, the team now on defense has to clear the zone. Once the ball crosses half court, the defense is allowed to put their arms out to the side and move their feet, but if a girl actually steals the ball, the government blows the whistle and gives the ball back to the team from which it was taken.

It's a good thing they don't keep score, my daughters team would have lost 10-8. I can't inmagine the years of therapy we would have had to go through if I had to tell her that her team lost.

You're right Max.  I've seen the light. All thanks to an hour of my life I'll never get back.

Was Mozart playing in the background?

APRTW wrote:

I think it is a retarded method to sell iteams.  And "Scientists" studies can say whatever that person wants them to say. 


http://www.livescience.com/health/070814_bad_baby.html

Well, if you read closely, what I wrote was: "if we don't tend to believe there is something to that."

First off, the original study that got that all started was about listening to music, not watching DVDs.  Even then, the idea that listening to Mozart does something "better" than, say, listening to Beethoven is speculative, to say the least.

Next, the choices in life are often A or B, not A or perfection.  If you don't have time to interact with your kids, they are probably better off watching a DVD than sitting in an empty room with no stimulation.  Once you have made that compromise, then an hour of Baby Einstein is probably better than an hour of random TV . . . that's my hunch.

But the take-away message is that the brain develops like any other part of your body, and certain parts need to be used prior to puberty-ish or else they pretty much have no chance to develop at all.