Slashdot Mirror

First, some on Slashdot reuse to see it but Anonymous is a nasty group of vigilantes; there's no place for them in a civilized society. They attack people and businesses they do not like always with the pretense that they have attacked somebody who was in the wrong ... but they do their attacks using attack methods that are themselves illegitimate and wrong. They'd be the first ones outraged if somebody formed an "anonymous anonymous" group to use hacking attacks to attack them...

Second, the so-called westboro baptist church is a scam. You have a big extended family of lawyers who long ago stumbled onto all of the loopholes in American law nobody else had previously tried jumping through... they call themselves a "church" and therefore get tax and "free-speech" protections they know people will be unable to beat in the courts, and then they do everything they can to try to incite Americans to "violate their rights" ... at which point they sue for damages. They've been awarded plenty of money this way. Where better to incite and get somebody to punch them or get somebody to try erecting laws to stop them than by making outrageous attacks on the families of fallen soldiers???? And the whole "God Hates Fags" line they use?? Really??? Wake UP people! ... they NEVER try this where it is both a significantly related location (San Francisco? Miami?), and out-of-sight of the cameras that they need to help document the backlash (and aid in their lawsuits). They know the law VERY well and know EXACTLY how far they can push and incite while still being sheltered by the 1st Amendment. They do their shtick in middle-America, in places where the thing they supposedly oppose is not a generally relevant matter, where emotions will run hot (funerals of dead kids or fallen soldiers, etc), and where the population they anger is not loaded with constitutional lawyers.

Anybody who thinks this group is a real church should ask these simple questions:

1. How many of them have law degrees and have passed bar exams?

2. How many of them have theological degrees, degrees in ancient Greek, or ancient Hebrew? (compare the number to the previous number)

3. How much money have they made from lawsuits claiming people have violated their rights?

4. How much money have they collected in their offering plates that is unrelated to lawsuits? (compare the number to the previous number)

5. What percent of the "members" are related to each-other by blood or by marriage?

There are many churches/synagogues whose conservative Christian/Jewish members believe (some very strongly) that homosexuality is wrong/sinful, but who NEVER behave the way the WBC people do; The WBC people behave like a caricature of what people think religious people might be. The seriously religious easily recognize these freaks for what they are and never ally with them. If the WBC crew truly believed what they make money pretending to believe, then they'd never use the tactics they use which make everybody hate them AND their supposed message. They are laughing all the way to the bank.

I will sleep soundly tonight and dream a happy dream in which these two groups fight a great apocalyptic fight ... and they all go to hell

You have been propagandized

Republican policies are generically "pro-business" because the nation runs on business-and-markets rather than on wealth redistribution, but they tend to be concerned more about the impact of policy on SMALL business and on big businesses that are important to national security (like Boeing) than the caricature you seem to believe in. Republicans take the silly view that it's stupid to attack business, when the nation runs on business and any tax or penalty or other burden you put onto business is just passed straight-through to the employees, customers, or investors (all are individual people) anyway. As a matter of history, Big entertainment businesses, big software businesses, and big wall street bankers give more to Democrats than Republicans. In fact, many Democrat presidents (including Clinton and Obama) have filled their cabinets with guys from Wall Street. Bill Gates and Microsoft are in bed with Democrats. Warren Buffet (a really big business guy) is in bed with Democrats. etc.

Do I infer correctly?

No.

Haha, it's your right to be as laconic as you wish. However, it doesn't really grant any insight. I'm left to infer that you are okay with the government having your personal information (e.g. name, address, demographics, income records, etc) and are *not* okay with the government likely recording the entirety of everyone's electronic communications. What's your personal cutoff in terms of comfort with the government? What's your perspective on data tracking schemes like this: DEA wants to scan all license plates on Utah's 'drug corridor'?

Can you think of a reason why the other people on the road with you might have a compelling interest to have some connection between a car rolling down the highway and the owner's address?

What, to assist stalkers? To allow a person to track down the home of someone who cut them off in traffic accidentally? Haha, if you're probing for a "law enforcement" angle response, I'm unconvinced having home address information is necessary data. For example, hit and run accidents are already a felony and the police often solve these crimes without license plate data.

Besides, I don't believe the automobile/owner home address link is being so forcefully established for that reason (ie. it's welcomed, but is a side effect): they are building the national Real ID system and want confirmed home addresses for everyone within their database. Because driving/car ownership is a practically-essential aspect of life in the US (save for within the densest of urban areas), they are assured of a high level of population compliance in obtaining the data.

How about a more neutral example: are you comfortable with the government requiring banks to know/record your home address and report it on demand? Opening a bank account or brokerage account requires essentially the same level of proof of domicile that the DMV requires now. I can't really think of a "hit and run" type possible justification for linking domicile to financial accounts.

You know, if you looked at that link about the Census then you saw the scanned images of a few of documents prepared by the Census department that were used by the FBI to round up the Japanese. My reaction was, "Wow, someone had to type all that out. Things are so much more efficient now." I would prefer it if we, as a society, didn't make this easier.

I appreciate your responses; I understand we are unlikely to agree, but I do wish to understand the philosophy of others and share my own. It's far too simplistic to write off those with a different perspective via a caricature of their position.

Not missing much - it's a pretty crapy movie over all.
It's basic premise is based on Captain Willard's intro sequence in Apocalypse Now.

I'd wake up and there'd be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife, until I said "yes" to a divorce. When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I'm here a week now... waiting for a mission... getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around the walls moved in a little tighter.

But they wait till the end to show you that. So it ends up being all about this jack-off who works as a bomb squad expert defusing IEDs and what not who keeps re-enlisting for another tour because it's all he can deal with any more. He's little more than a caricature of a risk junky with a death wish.

The plot consists of a few people dying, David Morse making a brief appearance as a gung-ho Colonel filled with bravado in homage to Duvall's Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, how relatively untrained US regulars are able to out shoot and outlive highly trained SAS in a fire fight against a few insurgents holed up in a shack and how he risk of getting blewn-up is a hellofa rush.

And that's about it.

Frankly I'd have liked it better if it featured a Humvee odyssee up the Highway of Death to find a Colonel Kurtz character leading a group rebel Kurds holding their own against both the US Allies the Insurgents with Kurtz' command being terminated during the goat slaughtering for a Ramadan feast.

This almost seems like a sick joke at this point. Not only are they loading up the system with advertising, but it's so poorly implemented at this point that Canonical is slowly becoming a caricature of modern software companies. What does anyone have to gain from this? When did opening a web browser and typing "amazon.com" become too much work? Have we reached the point where the only thing people want out of their computers is a shopping/advertising hub?

Seriously, this fails on so many levels that I'm completely baffled. This is supposed to be a major new feature, but it obviously will become completely non-functional when you get disconnected from the net. Ignoring all the other problems, why is there a major OS-level feature that works COMPLETELY differently depending on whether or not you are connected to the internet? I'm trying but I can't find any way to stretch this so that it actually makes sense.

Don't pretend the US administration, donkey or elephant regardless, doesn't want this.

I wouldn't be as sure as you are. The current situation is in their best political interest, in every manner you can possibly imagine, and they've no material reason to make the slightest concessions. Think about it for a moment, and forget for a moment that they wouldn't mind banning an islamic website or three...

They currently control ICANN et al. If they cave in to the demands of authoritarian States, they'll need to forfeit ICANN. So this is dead in the water to start with. Not to mention the NSA.

Also, consider that for every website or page that the US seeks to take down through courts (e.g. torrent sites, hacker sites, the occasional prophet caricature, etc.), there are millions upon millions of other pages that the likes of China or Iran can do absolutely nothing about. These broadcast the Western lifestyle in its full glory, complete in its individualism and variety, its freedom of speech, its demands for democracy and transparency, its shameless cult of wealth and well being, its abundance of scientific knowledge and know how, its undaunted religion bashing, its supremely libertine sex practices, its borderline-rabid feminists, et cetera, ad nausea. Adding insult to injuries, pesky plebeians who question their situation to the point of deciding to take down (and occasionally shoot) their oppressors do so live over the internet. Yuck. Yuck. Yuck.

This is the worst comment on this article. You've imagined he's a libertarian caricature solely so that you can create an opportunity to bust out this stock liberal attack on libertarians, with not a shred of fact to go with any of it.

According to BBC, "He moved to Belize about three years ago seeking lower taxes".

Also, I never once said anything about libertarians. That you instantly associate "tax evasion" with "libertarians" is their own fault, not mine.

What is wrong with you?

Utter disgust with people who refuse to do their share to support society yet start whining when it turns out they're not the top predator in the jungle.

He ran from the US because he had built a custom hang-glider and the test flyer died, prompting a wrongful death lawsuit from the guy's family. McAfee, assuming they would win and bankrupt him, grabbed what funds he had left and ran for it.

So he's not only a tax evader but also a fugitive from justice, thinks an independent court would find him guilty of at the very least criminal negligence, and doesn't want to pay damages for the harm he's caused. Much better.

He's paranoid and desperate, not political.

I never claimed he was political. That's your own strawman. All I said he ran to avoid taxes. That you piled more wrongdoings on top of that doesn't exactly make this seem any less of a case of getting what he had coming, though.

Did he, for example, attempt to evade the taxes necessary to maintain the society ordered and relatively free of corruption? And if the answer would happen to be "yes", then having such fears is simply the price to pay.

This is the worst comment on this article. You've imagined he's a libertarian caricature solely so that you can create an opportunity to bust out this stock liberal attack on libertarians, with not a shred of fact to go with any of it. What is wrong with you?

  He ran from the US because he had built a custom hang-glider and the test flyer died, prompting a wrongful death lawsuit from the guy's family. McAfee, assuming they would win and bankrupt him, grabbed what funds he had left and ran for it. He's paranoid and desperate, not political.

Pointing out through example? The "Arab Spring" has interesting historical parallels to the European revolutions of 1848 (Wikipedia notes that they came with similar names such as "Spring of Nations", "Springtime of the People"). In the historical example, one saw both good and bad outcomes from that event over the past century and a half, including the eventual spread of democracy throughout all of Europe.

Sure, the Arab Spring may end up being "tragic farce" just as much of the European version did (particularly, the advent of Communism). But I doubt anyone will be able to "recognize" that within a year of the start. I do believe however that there are a bunch of idiots eager to put their particular spin on current events and that you are one of those idiots, based on your posts so far in this thread.

How about you think rather than just sounding like some two-dimensional caricature from a Hollywood movie?

As long as the science doesn't, you know, have anything to do with evolution, or the earth being older than 6000 years, ..., or getting pregnant from rape.

Those aren't the positions or views of the overwhelming majority of political conservatives, just the caricature of conservatives invented by liberals as a smear tactic and reinforced by their media allies. Insisting that most conservatives hold such views is like insisting most liberal men inflate their scrotums (scroll down a few pictures at http://www.zombietime.com/hall_of_shame/) for fun.

or climate change

There is real scientific debate about climate change and what effect, if any, human activity has on it. Notably, it is liberals who insist on suppressing the debate by declaring the scientific argument to be over and by smearing those who challenge their narrative.

Should I go on?

It doesn't matter. The modern day boogeyman has been replaced with the Republican. A convenient caricature of straw man arguments against a certain philosophy of how to govern. Political discourse has stopped being about policies and plans and instead about implanting and defending against pins stuck in the voodoo doll.

Democrat policies cannot be wrong, and proof that they are wrong are flawed and fabricated, Republican policies are always racist, and points to the contrary represent propaganda from Fox News.

Anyway, since I'm pretty sure no one thought to ask the political affiliation of the first caveman that managed to ignite straw, this discussion is completely asinine in reference to rising sea levels.

(Posting anon for obvious reasons. This is a joke!)

Recently, my sister confided a fantastically silly plan for halting the missile strikes in and around the gaza strip.

Take a rickety ald crop duster, paint it in North Korean colors, and use it to drop crushed up pork rinds, and cheap beer all over the conflict area.

The beauty of the plan, is the incluson of poorly translated english language leaflets stating that the fearless leader, kim jong un, has heard of the suffering of the people in the region, and is delivering a humanitarian aid package, compliments of his newly formed "damnation army" program.

By mashing up the pork rinds, you make them light enough to get caught by desert winds, and whirled about like snow, ensuring that the combatants cannot avoid coming into conact with the product.

By making both combattants angry at the distant North Korea, you make the middle east into their and china's problem!

We decided that the porkrinds should be made from 100% vietnamese potbelly pigs, and the beer should be made from as much rice as possible. We gave some thought to what the packaging for the products should say, and decided on "NK krunchies", (with a caricature of kim Jong eating said pork rinds with a shit eating grin on his face), and "Leader's lager", in a super generic looking poptop can.

While there are some genuine alarmists, in a lot of cases the people concerned over a given issue are not alarmist; media looking for a more exciting story, or opponents wishing to ridicule their concerns come up with the over-the-top alarmism. While some of your examples have questionable merit, it's perfectly reasonable to be concerned about ocean acidification, or launching radioactive waste through our atmosphere, or ponies; most people who have these concerns aren't running around waving their hands in the air and prophesying doom, they're just keeping an eye on the issue, trying to figure out the extent of the problem, and thinking about how it might be solved. So just remember that hand-wringing, doom-foretelling alarmist caricature that you mock is just that; a largely fictional caricature, which shouldn't be allowed to obscure the real issues that exist.

Ah, but the NYT has no reputation for truth or honesty among non-liberals.

They have slanted nearly every story to the left for my entire life. You lefties have a media world full of left-leaning outlets, so you are not often challenged to read/see things from either a neutral or right-leaning perspective (and, indeed, there has been a desperate "don't watch fox" theme on the left since before the network even got going... I've been paying attention, I have a neighbor who worked at a Fox affiliate and he was getting protested by libs before the network even went live) but right-leaning people live in a left-saturated media world... we have no choice but to see what your side is writing and saying. You guys often paint a caricature of the world-views of conservatives because you do not know any serious conservatives, have not been exposed to their media, and generally get your views of them from liberals in the liberal media who edit and mis-characterize them (hint: Comedy Central comics edit EVERYTHING and take EVERYTHING out of context because they are COMICS and not neutral JOURNALISTS), but we have a very clear view of your views because we cannot avoid them; we are force-fed your views by liberals who hold those views on nearly every media outlet. The NYT lost all the credibility it had decades ago when they proudly and boldly lied to the American people about Stalin's massacres (he was a communist and the folks at the Old Grey Wench were not going to expose one of their own). They spin any story about a flawed Republican as an overdue expose' of malicious evil and any story about a flawed Democrat as an unfortunate personal tragedy. When Republicans are in power, they leak unending streams of classified info; When Democrats are in power they actively refuse to even tell their readers about leaks that have occurred. There is a good reason why every Democrat in Washington DC leaks to the NYT... they are practically an arm of the Democrat National Committee.

You must be a murdochaphobic... and your irrational fear means you must be silenced! Nobody should invite you to speak on a campus!

It's pretty funny, really... young people used to say things like "don't trust anybody over 30" and "rage against the machine!"... now y'all been reduced to "Rage for the machine!" and "make all the non-conformists shut up!"... You have become useful idiots... tools ... meat puppets... you stupidly support making government huge, injecting it into all aspects of life, and you will ultimately be swamped by the tsunami of absolutely unprecedented public debt that will come due in the later half of your lives. You have become cogs in the machine and you have enthusiastically done it to yourselves. You are losing your true freedoms... and that is one of the very few things you truly deserve...

I have many views that you would probably label as right-wing and extreme, and yet I'm not the slightest bit sexist, racist, or homophobic. Will that truth affect your gross caricaturizations in the future? Probably not.

DUDE... Those four characters are extreme caricatures of me in my youth (except the comic books, costumes, and card games). When I talk to normals about science or computers it's like Sheldon talking to Penny. A former girlfriend to her sister "did you understand any of that?" when I was explaining what was wrong with her computer. The sister says "nope, not a word." I'm sure you've been there yourself. Every character on the show is a caricature, from the "normal" slutty Penny to the stupid boyfriend who thought Leonard's laser was going to blow up the moon.

Regular Mayim Bialik holds a PhD in neuroscience. Guest stars have been Leonard Nimoy, George Takai, LeVar Burton, slashdotter Wil Wheaton, and other Star Trek actors. More prominent (to nerds) guest stars have been astrophysicist George Smoot, physicist Steven Hawking, and astronaut Buzz Aldrin.

The show is hilarious. I think you watched with a preconceived mind set. My daughter turned me on to it when she bought the first two seasons on DVD as a gift because "you'll get all the jokes." She was right, there is a LOT that would go over normal peoples' heads. Give it another watch with an open mind.

You've only restated my points here.

You tried to portray people who hold libertarian beliefs as uneducated people who blindly follow pundits: "By and large, the libertarian movement as it is popularized today is a caricature of the original libertarian movement, but populated by low information people that don't read enough, that get all their news from pundits, and who only recently in the last 8 years have taken a real interest in domestic policy and macroeconomics."

That isn't just insulting, it is factually wrong. Libertarian views today correlate with a high degree of independence, distrust of experts/pundits, and high education.

I said that mainstream popular libertarian movement, which has been defined by the Tea Party, should not be listened to, and I am correct. So far, they (the Tea Party) have been an embarrassment

The Tea Party is not a "popular libertarian movement", it is a movement under which a lot of people of many different political views came together to advocate primarily fiscal responsibility. Those views appealed to libertarians, conservatives, and many others. It was quite successful politically and threw a monkey wrench into the political arrangements of both parties, which is why Democrats demonized and stigmatized it and Republicans didn't do much to defend it.

they are mostly a reactionary element that has no real direction

If you think that libertarians are "reactionary", you really have no idea what the word means. And you should figure out whether you really want to associate yourself with the terminology used by communist and socialist revolutionaries to characterize Western democracies during the cold war.

If you weren't so fast to foe me, you might have noticed that we don't disagree with each other on those points, instead you kept in with assumptions.

We disagree on pretty much every point you have made. And if you don't want to piss off people, you shouldn't start off by insulting them.

Greg Cochran over at West Hunter has a pretty damning critique of this paper.

Cochran's review:
In two recent papers, Gerald Crabtree says two correct things. He says that the brain is complex, depends on the correct functioning of many genes, and is thus particularly vulnerable to genetic load. Although he doesn’t use the phrase “genetic load”, probably because he’s never heard it. He goes on to say that that this is not his area of expertise: truer words were never spoken!

His general argument is that selection for intelligence relaxed with the development of agriculture, and that brain function, easier to mess up than anything else, has probably been deteriorating for thousands of years. We are dumber than out ancestors, who were dumber than theirs, etc.

The first bit, about the relaxation of selection for intelligence in the Neolithic -. Sure. As we all know, just as soon as people domesticated emmer wheat, social workers fanned out, kept people from cheating or killing their neighbors, and made sure that fuckups wouldn’t starve to death. Riiight -it’s all in the Epic of Gilgamesh. In the online supplement.

Why do people project a caricature of modernity back thousands of years before it came into existence? Man, he doesn’t know much about history.

Nor does he know much about biology. If he did, he’d understand that truncation selection is what makes such complex adaptations possible. If only the top 85% (in terms of genetic load) reproduce, the average loser has something like 1 std more load , so each one takes lots of deleterious mutations with him. But then, he’s probably never heard of truncation selection. I’m sure they never taught him that in school, but that’s no excuse – they never taught me, either.

If his thesis was correct, you’d expect hunter-gatherers to be smarter than people from more sophisticated civilizations, which is the crap that Jared Diamond peddles about PNG. But Crabtree says that everyone’s the same – stepping on the dick of his own argument. Of course, in reality, hunter-gatherers score low, often abysmally low, and have terrible trouble trying to fit in to more complex civilizations. They do a perfect imitation of being not-smart, amply documented in the psychometric literature. Of course, he doesn’t know anything about those psychometric results.

Which reminds me of secret clearances: it used to be that having a clearance mean that you were entrusted with information that most people didn’t have. Now, it means that you can’t read Wikileaks, even though everyone else does. In much the same way, you may have the silly impression that having a Ph.D. means knowing more than regular people – but in the human sciences, the most important prerequisite is not knowing certain facts. Some kind soul should post the Index, so newbies won’t get themselves in trouble.

He doesn’t even know things that would almost support his case. Average brain size has indeed decreased over the Neolithic- but in every population, not just in farmers. He might talk about paternal age effects, and how average paternal age varies – but he doesn’t know anything about it. He ought to be thinking about the big population increase associated with agriculture, and the ensuing Fisherian acceleration – but he’s never heard of it.

He even gets the peripheral issues wrong. He talks about language as new, 50,000 years old or so – much more recent than the split between Bushmen/Pygmies and the rest of the human race. Yet they talk. He says that the X chromosome isn’t enriched for cognition and behavioral genes – but it is (by at least a factor of two) , and the reference he quotes confirms it.

Selection pressures and mutation rates can vary in space and time. Intelligence could decrease – it

I'm just not a big fan of the "tough shit" approach to the needs of fellow citizens, be they a person working at minimum wage who has a family member with a chronic illness, or a person whose house and community has been flattened by a hurricane.

It's worth noting that libertarian policy does not say (or even suggest) that the response should be "oh well, tough shit" to those people. The appropriate response to someone in need is, "how can *I* help?" Personal responsibility also means it's up to the individual to decide for him or herself whether or not somebody's appeal for assistance warrants a response - libertarians would say it's not the government's job to force people to help.

Libertarianism and charity are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I think you'd be hard pressed to find any prominent libertarian who would argue that freely choosing to help your neighbors out is a bad thing - they'd encourage it. What they wouldn't encourage is saying, "we're going to pass a law that says you MUST help these people."

I think the implementation of them still needs work.

Indeed, they do. I disagree with fellow libertarians all the time over the "appropriate" level of taxation and regulation that a society "should" have - it's an active discussion. But by the same token, let's not pretend that the Democrats' & Republicans' alternatives are flawless implementations that will work exactly as expected every time, either. None of the parties has all the answers. But dismissing any of them out of hand without evaluating their actual proposals (rather than a straw man created for the purposes of karma whoring on slashdot, as others have done above) is just silly.

As far as guns, and financial market regulation: these are specific implementation details, and opinions vary significantly within the libertarian party itself. I think there's certainly room for improvement and discussion. In general, however, bear in mind that libertarians believe people should bear the consequences of their decisions, as well as be given the latitude to make the decisions that are best for them. This means that, if you buy a gun and misuse it, you should bear the consequences of the crime you've committed. This means that, if you take on too much risk as a bank and end up insolvent, the bank should bear the consequences of the fraud they committed, or excessive risk they've taken on - that is, no TARP bailouts, no "too big to fail," no "we'll save you by giving you taxpayer money."

Having an honest discussion about the appropriate levels of government oversight is valuable, and constructive. Dismissing an entire school of thought (again, as others have done in this thread) by misrepresenting it as a caricature of itself is destructive, and society is the poorer for it.

By and large, the libertarian movement as it is popularized today is a caricature of the original libertarian movement, but populated by low information people that don't read enough, that get all their news from pundits, and who only recently in the last 8 years have taken a real interest in domestic policy and macroeconomics. To put it simply, they don't know what they don't know.

As opposed to the Democratic and Republican parties, who are run by saints and scholars, and whose members all have IQs upwards of a hot day in Death Valley?

I'm sorry that your political understanding is so limited that you can only think in Democratic and Republican categories, and don't understand how movements and political ideas (progressivism, Christian conservatism, libertarianism, Tea Party, etc.) function within US politics. But your ignorance doesn't make make those movements irrelevant. Modern US libertarianism represents a combination of fiscal conservatism and social liberalism that represents the preferences of many voters, and it is having an impact.