Update 2024-03-27: Greatly expanded the "Samples" page and renamed it to "Glossary".
Update 2024-04-04: Added 5 million mid-2011 posts from the k47 post dump. Browse (mostly) them here.
Update 2024-04-07: Added ~400 October 2003 posts from 4chan.net. Browse them here.
Welcome to Oldfriend Archive, the official 4chan archive of the NSA. Hosting ~170M text-only 2003-2014 4chan posts (mostly 2006-2008).
It is simple economics, the US is the most powerful country in the world and it has a large educated middle class that influence how this country is run, 535 senators and congressmen plus the Obama administration run a country with a GDP of $15.7 trillion and a government that spends $3.8 trillion, so each elected official influences the spending of something in the order of $5 billion to $30 billion dollars.
Let's say 1% of this $5 billion is spent on educational grants and subsidies and you want to influence an official to spend 1% of this $50 million on your college fund for your disadvantaged ethnic group, that would be a cool $500000 in your pocket. Even if you spent $10000 on advertizing and rallying up support for your little cause you would still profit from this.
On a larger scale you might have nation wide special interest groups, these groups can determine whether someone gets elected or not, if they say you are unamerican/racist/sexist/homophobe, then "boom", you're out of the race. Both senators will try their best to promise to ensure the leaders of these movements get their kickbacks and funding.
Influencing people is big business and that is what the institution of the American left wing is all about.
Washington - A pleasantly warm and wet spell in central Mongolia eight centuries ago may have propelled the rise of Genghis Khan, according to a United States study.
Researchers analysed tree rings spanning 11 centuries, showing that the conqueror seized power during dry times and was able to expand his empire across Asia during an unusual stretch of good weather.
The years before Genghis Khan's rule were marked by severe drought from 1180 to 1190, said the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.
But from 1211 to 1225, as the empire spread, Mongolia saw an ususual period of sustained rainfall and mild temperatures.
"The transition from extreme drought to extreme moisture right then strongly suggests that climate played a role in human events," said study co-author Amy Hessl, a tree-ring scientist at West Virginia University.
"It wasn't the only thing, but it must have created the ideal conditions for a charismatic leader to emerge out of the chaos, develop an army and concentrate power."
For the oldest samples, Dr Hessl and lead author Neil Pederson, a tree-ring scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, focused on an unusual clutch of trees found while researching wildfires in Mongolia.
The gnarled, stunted Siberian pines were emerging from cracks in an old solid-rock lava flow in the Khangai Mountains, according to a statement from Columbia.
Trees living in such conditions grow slowly and are particularly sensitive to changes in weather, so they provided an abundance of data to study.
Some of the trees had lived for more than 1,100 years. One piece of wood the scientists found had rings going back to about 650 BC.
Researchers compared those samples to younger fallen trees and pieces bored from living trees.
Anyone here watch Question time in the house of parliament and discuss our current situations in Australia. For our government or for the opposition? Some topics to discuss >Qantas, NBN, mining tax, people smugglers, unemployment rate.
I like how athiests say that if you make an extraordinary claim (like that God exists) you have to have extraordinary claims to back it up. They say that books and writing isn't enough to prove this claim, because anybody could have just forged the Bible and just *claiming* to be an authority on the matter.
In 50 years from now, or a few hundred years from now, people believing that the holocaust happened, will face the same problem. They say that there's "mountains of evidence" to support this highly extraordinary claim, but with time, this mountain will be eroded into an amount of evidence no bigger than the Bible. Then people will point and laugh at the jews and their "fabled" extinction, going "Well, you're still *here*, aren't you? How do you explain *that*? I don't believe in your religious texts - I'm an atheist.".
Putin: "We need to keep russians safe in Ukraine!"
John Kerry: "In the 21th century, you just don't act in a 19th century manner, by invading another country with a completely made up excuse!"
Putin: "The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence."
John Kerry: "My God, you're right! You're obviously just doing it in the name of freedom! Well, carry on then!"
Europe: "Not so fast! We have the UN and the G8 and all manners of unions and pacts, so that we can stand united against the super powers! Together we will assemble into a giant robot and do battle!"
Putin: "Oh go fuck yourself, Europe."
Europe: "Oh no, Putin spoke, and he has the veto power! We now have to go fuck ourselves, like the powerless, pre-lubed up babies we are!"
Putin: "Okay, so now that we have Ukraine, what country do we destabilize next? This game of funding and supporting protesters against governments, is really too easy. I'll give Europe five more years, before they're all learning russian in their schools and we're burning all their culture, like we've done with so many countries before. I say we invade Finland next. Sweden doesn't have a military, so once we defeat Finland, we get Sweden for free, and from there we control the north coast of Europe."
Sweden: "But we have the UN to protect us! ...and pacts! ... We're so fucked!"
Improve your group's performance with the SCORE framework
IN THEIR groundbreaking 1993 article The Discipline Of Teams in the Harvard Business Review, Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith define a team as "a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable."
That definition lays down the discipline that teams must share to be effective.
Katzenbach and Smith discuss the four elements - common commitment and purpose, performance goals, complementary skills and mutual accountability - that make teams function.
They also classify teams into three varieties - teams that recommend things, teams that make or do things, and teams that run things - and describe how each type faces different challenges.
Most executives advocate teamwork. And they should.
Teamwork represents a set of values that encourage listening and responding constructively to views expressed by others, giving others the benefit of the doubt, providing support, and recognising the interests and achievements of others.
Such values help teams perform, and they also promote individual performance as well as the performance of an entire organisation.
But teamwork values by themselves are not exclusive to teams, nor are they enough to ensure team performance.
Building high-performing teams
Teams have become a principal building block of the strategy of successful organisations.
With teams at the core of corporate strategy, your success as an organisation can often depend on how well you and other team members operate together.
Yet not all teams are created equal. Some fail to perform, or they perform below expectations. Some start out well but later lose their focus and energy.
It is critical for managers and team leaders to find ways to ensure their teams are working effectively and are achieving results. When a team becomes aligned, a commonality of direction emerges, and individual energies harmonise.
Members have a shared vision and an understanding of how to complement each other's efforts. As jazz musicians say: "You are in the groove."
SCORE characteristics
A high-performing team demonstrates a high level of synergism - the simultaneous actions of separate entities that together have a greater effect than the sum of their individual efforts.
It is possible, for example, for a team's efforts to exemplify an equation such as 2 + 2 = 5!
High-performing teams require a complementary set of characteristics known collectively as "SCORE".
These qualities are described below:
Strategy and purpose
High-performing teams with a cohesive strategy and team purpose articulate a strong, uniting purpose that is common to all team members.
They will describe how they work together by defining team values and ground rules or team charter. Finally, they will be clear about what they do by defining key result areas.
Clear roles and responsibilities
Successful teams determine overall team competencies and then clearly define individual member roles and responsibilities.
High-performing teams realistically examine each individual's responsibilities in terms of personality, interest and ability, resulting in an accurate understanding of each member's accountability and contribution to the team.
Open communication
Communication is the key component in facilitating successful team performance; its lack limits team success.
Effective communication relies on the proper use of communication channels such as e-mail and voicemail.
Rapid response
A high-performing team is adaptable and responds quickly, as necessary, to changes in the environment, using creativity and "outside box" thinking.
When faced with a problem, these teams brainstorm possible solutions and create innovative resolutions.
Exemplary and effective leadership
An effective team leader is able to adjust his style as necessary, depending on the task at hand and the skill level of each team member performing that task.
The team leader also plays a critical role in raising morale by providing positive feedback and coaching team members to improve performance.
Flexible leadership
In high-performing teams, leadership shifts during the stages of team development based on team needs.
Unlike organisational leadership, which remains somewhat constant, team leadership can shift from directing, when the team is being formed, to more delegating, when the team is functioning effectively.
To transform into a high performing team, an easily implementable framework such as SCORE would assist in achieving that end goal.
NEW YORK - Mr Warren Buffett, the billionaire chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, cited a farm he has owned since 1986 to caution individuals against frequent buying and selling of stocks.
Investors should treat their equity holdings like real estate purchases, focusing on the potential for profits over time rather than short-term price fluctuations, Mr Buffett, 83, wrote in an excerpt from his annual letter published on the website of Fortune magazine on Monday.
"Those people who can sit quietly for decades when they own a farm or apartment house too often become frenetic when they are exposed to a stream of stock quotations," Mr Buffett said. "For these investors, liquidity is transformed from the unqualified benefit it should be to a curse."
Mr Buffett has pursued a buy-and-hold investment approach as he built Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire into a US$280 billion company, accumulating the largest holdings of Coca-Cola, American Express and Wells Frago. He has said individual investors may be better off avoiding his approach to picking stocks, instead purchasing a fund that holds every company in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index.
"The goal of the non-professional should not be to pick winners," Mr Buffett wrote: "The 'know-nothing' investor who both diversifies and keeps his costs minimal is virtually certain to get satisfactory results."
The S&P 500 has returned about 7 per cent annually over the past decade, beating by almost a percentage point the average yearly advance of Mr Buffett's company. He has said he aims to increase Berkshire's book value, a measure Berkshire's book value, a measure of assets minus liabilities, more rapidly than the S&P 500.
Mr Buffett's record of profitable stock picks and takeovers has helped make his letters a must-read on Wall Street. He has said he writes them to be understood by his sisters, who do not work in finance. The full document may be released by March 1, along with financial results for 2013.
