rob

Who's making the strawmen now?

too many children, if you ask me. I saw some women with like 9 kids the other day. WTF? Are the orphanages empty already or something? She was really fat and ugly, too -- I can't believe she got laid at least 9 times.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2006/sep/6/20060906-100020-4785r/ Most of these numbers come from the Heritage Foundation, so they're questionable, but still interesting

According to your graphic, "poverty" was defined as being more than 50% below national median income. They claim the median has been "equalized" but I'm not sure how they did that. It's true -- America has lots of problems. It's still awesome, though, and I like living here.

Hey, America probably has one of the greatest wealth & income disparities in the world. We also have more incarcerated criminals than most of the rest of the world. And probably poorer education. I bet you can't bring yourself to say anything good, though, right?

what are the other country's median household incomes? Without that data, the graph is kind of meaningless. I'd rather be living at 50% below 45k than 100% of 12k, for example. I mean, if I start a nation that has a median income of $5 and everybody manages to make $5 a year, does that mean I have no poverty? I give about 4% of my income every year to children's charities. How much do you give? I mean, besides all of the world-changing you're doing here on CC.com.

"It's not robbing if the egyptian is dead" or something -- that was my favorite line from the sanitized thread. I wonder what we need to say/do to get this thread locked?

now I feel like you're personally threatening me. Are you wishing me ill on a climb???? Mods, take notice!!!

I heard raindawg was a grave robber or something. Is that true????

What you call guilt is also known as having a sense of fucking history so we don't repeat the same fucking "mistakes". But it's hard to feel the proper amount of personal guilt if you read a lot of history, because history teaches us that actually mankind in general is pretty fucked up. If I were trying to raise a humanist or something, this would be a good idea. However, I'm really trying to cultivate a proper "America sucks and everyone else is better" attitude in my children, so it's actually quite important to not teach them world history. I'm a big fan of teaching them American history, though -- but only the bad parts.

Well, you need to get your card-carrying credentials in progressive hyperbolic myopia first, then you'll be good to go. I understand the key is to create the impression that not only has America done terrible things to people, but that nobody else has -- it's vital they believe that cruelty and selfishness are an American trait, not a human one.

my biggest challenge as an American Liberal is to make sure I raise my kids with the proper amount of guilt

Sure. And Google would have this same problem if people started using Bing and hotmail. Every advertising firm faces this challenge. The Neilson Company makes billions of dollars using almost the same business model as FB and google, only they're monitoring people's TV watching instead of internet usage (using special TV sets that people elect to have installed). They've been making tons of money since the 1930's, and even though TV is in decline (relatively), they still had a billion-dollar IPO of their own last year. And their growth was only a measly 2.6%, compared to FB's massive 100+% growth of last year. Advertising is big bucks!

Rad's guilty-liberal whine about having to explain the crying native americans to his children was the best.

you mean fuckin' AWESOME!

I bet it was Raindawg.

so weird!

If this were true, why does Nokia bother admitting they are losing money like it's going out of style? Enron committed fraud -- that doesn't mean that now "none of this is real anymore." You've taken an over-zealously bombastic and hyperbolic position in response to inequity and corruption, much in the way Kevbone does. Chill out a bit, it's not all a conspiracy. Google isn't anything more than "a few servers." Are they hype, too? They're making money hand-over-fist. Advertising companies have always been around, and providing advertising is as much of a service as any other industry. You can see the actual product they produce when you log onto websites and see the ads. They're real things, and people are paying for them, and companies will never stop paying for advertising. Now, you can absolutely argue that the service they are providing isn't worth the billions they are making -- and I'd probably agree with you. But when you take an obviously emotional position and loudly offer up statements like "none of this is even real anymore" as proof, well -- your argument gets lost in the lunatic fringe and loses it's momentum. yeah, and my grandparents said Rock 'n Roll was a fad. Just teasing you, old man I don't find FB to be a weird business model at all. Look at the money the advertising companies on Madison Avenue made in the early-20th century. It was epic. Serious, serious cash! Companies making their money in advertising are not a new thing by any stretch of the imagination. What makes you say it's not sustainable? It's been going strong probably since the invention of publishing. I think you're right, though, making money off of facebook.com advertising isn't a winning model - there isn't enough growth left in it. I think they're going to branch out and sell an advertising service that other websites can call into and provide FB-contextual ads on 3rd party sites. Basically, this is what google does, except that FB stands to achieve a higher level of micro-context than google can achieve via web searches alone. After all, FB knows what you like! Kinda scary, isn't it?

I guess maybe you're just saying the value of the service they are providing is not worth the revenue they are seeing -- over $1 billion last quarter alone! I'd tend to agree with you. But I guess people are giving them money, anyway. It will be interesting to see what their next quarter results look like and if their YOY declining revenue trend can be corrected.

Of course it was Florida. Florida or Germany, that's the only place shit like this ever happens.

no, 40% of revenue. You're kidding, right? Agreed that FB is overhyped, but 40% revenue growth isn't exactly an indication of impending failure. Of course, the revenue growth is declining.... You're correct, it could definitely dry up, especially as the online advertising market gets more and more crowded. But comparing FB to the housing boom is pretty ridiculous -- it sounds almost like you're trying to claim that FB isn't actually making any money, but I'm sure I must be misunderstanding what you mean. As to their stock being in a bubble -- not really. They're down another ~10% today, and look to keep going down. Hardly the definition of a bubble -- looks more like a bursting bubble, to me. Had it stayed at 38 and gone up -- definitely, that would have been some crazy shit. But it looks to me like the stock is simply normalizing to rational levels where it will no longer be overvalued -- I expect it to stop falling around $15-$20. We'll see.

Like a kid brother

Ah, the old Canadian militia myth -- so adorable! :kisss:

Yeah, but myspace had a fraction of the revenue. Just because they're in the same market space doesn't mean they're the same. It's like comparing Carl's Jr. to McDonalds, or something. I agree with you about the flaw in the FB model of advertising wherin the ads are actually on the FB page itself -- this is not where the money is. My prediction (and others) is that FB will eventually launch a global advertising framework (like google's adsense) that will allow external websites to target ads to me based on my FB user profile. Talk about privacy concerns!