Posted on 01/02/2011 12:11:23 PM PST by neverdem
Yes, particularly since the American business practice of claiming that all employee inventions are the property of the employer -- and forcing employees to sign papers ginned up by the legal department with binding force -- extinguishes the interest in any sort of invention among great numbers of otherwise inventive people.
I once knew a petroleum engineer who invented a better mousetrap (a gravel-pack well-completion tool) while working at the old Gulf Oil. He had to sign over his patent to Gulf, which never AFAIK did anything with it. Graveyard. Oblivion. Smooth move, Gulf.
The engineer? Went on to drink his career into oblivion, too. And why not? It wasn't like he was making zillions of dollars re-equipping the petroleum industry with his nifty new tool or anything. Time for the grave.
>> “I think the long lived people are the ones with the genes they inherited from their long lived ancestors.” <<
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As I noted above, that has not proven out to be so. When they come here and eat our diet, and go to our doctors, they quickly begin to die younger.
I am not talking about the people who come here from other cultures, I am talking about the ones who are here and have been here for many many generations. Some families are longer living than others. For instance, my husband is 75 and no one in his family has ever lived that long before. My family on the other hand, almost everyone lives to be very very old.
Beg to differ. Current life expectancy in the U.S. (all races, both sexes) is 77.9 yrs. In fact, life expectancy has risen every year since 1900 -- when it was 49.24 yrs. See...
National Vital Statistics Reports
In Biblical days, the average life expectancy likely didn't go far beyond 30. You might hope to live "three score and ten" -- but the vast majority didn't come close.
Aside from eating our Wheaties and living a clean life, something has got to be causing this. Better diet, safer work conditions, better medical care...and pharmaceuticals belong in there somewhere.
For example, after suffering cancer in 1989, I'm alive today because of chemotherapy. That's 22 extra years...so far. And I'm not the only one.
Will flips between Carter and Reagan. Let’s not insult Hamilton.
Poor Hamilton would suffer a stroke if he saw the fedgov today.
Hamilton would be thrilled that the government was in the hands of the elite.
But he would be appalled by what the elite have become.
“Let’s not insult Hamilton.”
That was a comment from someone who likely wouldn’t want George to know he said it but I thought it was right on from the context at the time.
And yeah, as much as Hamilton is my least favorite of the founders, I’d be perfectly happy if he were president today. lol That’s how far we’ve drifted.
I don’t think so. Hamilton despised Caesar and politicians like him. That was at the heart of his disdain for Burr.
Hamilton remains correct as to most points of government and helped make America great. He deserves rehabilitation on the part of conservatives.
He was a real revolutionary hero who risked his life, loved his adopted country and worried about the aristocrats like Jefferson. It’s the Jeffersonians that are today’s RINOs.
You would be happy if he were president as he’d be another Reagan. He should be in your top 5 Founders.
Take a read of this and get back to me. It might change your mind about that great man.
http://www.amazon.com/Alexander-Hamilton-American-Richard-Brookhiser/dp/0684863316
That devil Burr robbed us of one of the greatest Americans of all time. He surely made our country thrive: united and strong. You’ll enjoy the book. It’s a short and easy read, plus it covers Hamilton warts and all.
I’ve read the book and it was good and well written but by someone with a bit of a ‘Hamilton bias’. I know enough about the man to make a judgment and sorry he’s not in the top 5 :-) However, his help in electing Jefferson does not go unnoticed. The Burr incident was a travesty.
That’s interesting. I found the author especially balanced. Most conservatives and liberals tar Hamilton with equal vigor. What keeps him out of your top 5 and who’s in?
We got the America he designed in the Federalist papers. It worked well until Teddy Roosevelt ruined it with his trust busting.
After that FDR simply picked up the reins and steered sharply statist. Our government today would appall Hamilton.
You sound like a liberal arts grad.
Don’t be upset just because you couldn’t make it into engineering school. You’ll still be running the country with all those political science and journalism grads who produce nothing and screw up life for the rest of the populace that actually tries to create stuff.
“What keeps him out of your top 5 and who’s in?”
In general and not saying they were all angels but I favored the anti-federalists and the Democratic Republicans - iow, Madison once he got on board, Jefferson, Monroe and other Virginians George Mason, Richard Henry Lee and then Franklin, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Rush and I gained more appreciation for John Adams despite his being a Federalist, after reading many of his letters including all of them with Jefferson. And again, that said.... I’d still enjoy a Hamilton presidency at this point in time. His ‘big gov’t’ then was micro compared to anything after Lincoln.
I think it is the bible that sets a man’s life at 3score and 10 but not that everyone will reach that age..
Our diet makes for taller Japanese than the Japanese that don't immigrate...also the diet tends to result in certain types of cancer...
Japanese eat much more fish than we do and we eat much more meat than they do..
How do you think America would have looked under the anti-federalists and the Democratic Republicans if they’d imposed their vision?
You have simply picked an arbitrary period of time that is not representative in general to make a false assessment.
Life expectancy has not changed for two millenia in the big picture, and extending that to three millenia shows that life expectancy has dropped by 40 - 50 years.
Eating ‘Wheaties’ is part of the reason for that drop.
>> “For instance, my husband is 75 and no one in his family has ever lived that long before. My family on the other hand, almost everyone lives to be very very old.” <<
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Looking at it from that perspective, My mother’s family normally lives into their 70s and my father’s family into their late 80s to early 90s, but the difference is clearly their traditional diets. My mother’s family has consumeed processed carbs (pasta, wheat, sugars) to a much greater extent than my father’s family. They also have a much greater propensity for going to doctors than my father’s family, who eschew that ‘religiously.’
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