Russell Franklin: Just what the hell did you do to those sharks?
Dr. Susan McCallister: Their brains weren't large enough to harvest sufficient amounts of the protein complex. So we violated the Harvard Compact. Jim and I used gene therapies to increase their brain mass. A larger brain means more protein. As a side effect the sharks got smarter.
Russell Franklin: All right people, these sharks are thinking, hard and clear. So here's the riddle. What does an eight thousand pound mako shark with a brain the size of a flat head V8 engine and no natural predators think about?
Yeah, that is exactly what Ballmer said about the iPhone.
Interestingly enough, after saying Apple had no chance competing with the millions of WinMo phones, he said Zune would have no trouble competing with hundreds of millions of iPods.
Refer to my last paragraph about the SR-71 being, at best, useless for intelligence. This sentiment, of course, goes with the general theme that you cannot replace people on the ground with planes and satellites. Would could have avoided the Cold War if we knew Russia was actually falling apart. Something we couldn't know by just flying the SR-71 over their country to photograph things they probably placed in plain sight specifically to be photographed.
Plus, I suggest you re-read the paragraph from which you cherry picked the information about Clinton using a line item veto.
The reactivation met much resistance: the Air Force had not budgeted for the aircraft, and UAV developers worried that their programs would suffer if money was shifted to support the SR-71s. Also, with the allocation requiring yearly reaffirmation by Congress, long-term planning for the SR-71 was difficult.[19] In 1996, the Air Force claimed that specific funding had not been authorized, and moved to ground the program. Congress reauthorized the funds, but, in October 1997, President Bill Clinton used the line-item veto to cancel the $39 million allocated for the SR-71. In June 1998, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the line-item veto was unconstitutional. All this left the SR-71's status uncertain until September 1998, when the Air Force called for the funds to be redistributed. The plane was permanently retired in 1998.
Clinton doesn't sound like much of a douche when you word it that way, does he?
Yes, because we need an aircraft that can fly faster than mach 3 above 80,000 feet to penetrate terrorist airspace and evade terrorist fighter jets.
They use Predator drones now because, well, they were not manufactured in the 60s, they cost magnitudes less for the same mission, they can perform more than one type of mission, they are unmanned, etc. etc. etc. etc.
The SR-71 was cool and all, but way too antiquated to keep around. Clinton made a good move killing the SR-71.
By the way, how did the SR-71 help anyway? It gave us zero insight into the Soviets...in fact, it did far worse by giving us false insight. It was a waste of money from conception to retirement. But...damn, it was cool...
As Ethanol-fueled said, there are A LOT of cut scenes. I think the cut scenes at the end alone added up to about an hour and a half.
I enjoyed it, though.
As far as the whole series goes, I would probably rate Snake Eater #1, Sons of Liberty #2, Guns of the Patriots #3, MGS #4, and MG #5. I never did play Solid Snake.
Rating the original #5 is a bit deceptive. I played it to death when it came out and enjoy it every time I have played it since, but I really like the complexity (CQC, sneaking being harder and more integral, choosing not to kill, etc.) of MGS2, 3, and 4. I also rated it below MGS because MGS started the theatrical story line.
Would I drop them in with M1 Garands? Sure, I own both a M1 Garand and an AR-15 carbine and I would go to war with the Garand.;) But seriously, the question evades the whole point.
In terms of the US, I think the problem with us creating new enemies is mainly because we are sending our military to places where it doesn't belong.
That was kind of the point. That is one of the defining characteristics of a militaristic superpower that believes it has the ability to drop in a military, surgically kill all the "bad guys", and then suddenly democracy blossoms all over the land.
I may have worded it poorly, but I was really referring to us as civilians being more and more detached from the reality. The soldiers obviously know what they are doing and it affects them deeply, as per TFA. We have totally unreasonable expectations of our military and look at the world through "military glasses". That significantly affects our moral judgement.
We have this enormous military with all of its "precision" toys designed by the best minds to reduce civilian casualties. We spend nearly half of our tax revenue on maintaining and "improving" this military. So, when there's a problem, we send in the military confident that they are professional, surgical, and moral.
...and they never are because it is impossible for a military to live up to that standard. The whole "hearts and minds" thing is bullshit. A military cannot do that in situations like Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, etc. no matter how many photo ops of soldiers handing out candy to children you have. Again, it's not that soldiers, in general, are evil. It's just that no matter how surgical their weapons are, they are, as a whole, still a huge friggin' hammer. And that hammer is being wielded by people with blinders and guided by incompetent and immoral intelligence agencies.
But no one here understands that, so we continue pursuing things like UAVs thinking some day we might be able to create that magical weapon that only kills "the bad guys." We have this impossible dream of some day being able to impose our national will from an airbase in Utah and everyone will love us for it.
Terrorism does not have a military solution. That has been proven consistently throughout history. The more you crack down on terrorists with a military, the more collateral damage you cause and the more future terrorists you create.
One day we will fight a large army again, and we will be friggin' well equipped to do that. We may even win some hearts and minds after pushing the opposing military out of their country. But even then, we will not achieve anything in the long run since no one is willing to think outside the box. No one, here anyway, is willing to accept that real peace has to come from raising the standard of living around the world. Shit, Americans do not want their tax money doing that in America, let alone anywhere else in the world.
At the very least, we have to get out of the mindset that every problem has a military solution.
That's the interesting thing, isn't it? There's definitely a distinction from someone that purposefully kills the innocent and someone that accidentally kills the innocent.
But, on a larger scale, UAVs, fighter jets, guided missiles, guns, sniper rifles, artillery, catapults, sling shots, blowguns... they all spawn from the desire to kill, the desire to be safe while killing, and the desire to maintain a moral high ground by avoiding collateral damage.
Have we really ever met that last goal, though?
For all the good-hearted meticulousness of the UAV pilots, they still kill civilians. Bad intelligence, fog of war, misjudgements, etc. There is no perfect weapon that magically kills the "bad" guys and leaves the "good" guys alive.
The more precise we think our weapons are, the more arrogant we get that we can use them surgically. We get ourselves into a mindset of being superior and then head out on adventures like Iraq and Afghanistan confident that we can win hearts and minds while killing bad guys with our surgical weapons.
Then someone blows up a village...and it all goes to shit. It's kind of hard not to create new enemies when half a town is killed by an unseen drone flown by some guy on the other side of the world.
So, the UAV pilots are nothing more than the next evolution in disconnecting ourselves from war and the massive collateral loss of life it always causes. The more disconnected we are, the more arrogant we become, the poorer our judgement becomes, and the worse it gets. It's not because the UAV pilots are evil, it's because their whole mission is fundamentally selfish and flawed.
Well, you can make academic arguments one way or the other, but the reality is that you have no real choice to keep your money in a bank. I mean, you personally might be able to keep your money in a personal safe. However, the economy would collapse if everyone did.
If you realize that you have to keep your money in a bank, you realize that you have to give up some personal information in the form of bank records and credit card records. Are the laws strong enough to serve the people by protecting that information? Certainly not, but that's a different issue.
We have to make choices to limit our exposure. Choosing not to use Google docs, Gmail, etc. is certainly not inconsistent with choosing to store your money in a bank.
By the way, I respect the opinion that abortion is morally wrong. I do not agree with it, but, hey, that's life. But, abortion had nothing to do with the argument at hand.
Plus, it's hard to see how people were playing the moral superiority card when they were running around blowing up clinics, and severely beating doctors and clinic staff. That's escalating civil disobedience into terrorism. And that goes for liberal groups like ALF too.
I never said anything about liberal vs. conservative. What I did say is this:
slavery = voters voting to take away the legal rights and protections of a group of people based on their skin color.
"protection of marriage" = voters voting to take away the legal rights and protections of a group of people based on their sexual orientation.
This country affords married couples tax breaks and significant legal rights and protections. What "protection of marriage" is basically saying is: "you are different and we don't like you: therefore you do not get the same perks we get."
In fact, it is the conservatives that should be fighting AGAINST "protection of marriage." You know: KEEP GOVERNMENT OUT OF OUR LIVES! Isn't that what a true conservative believes?
Obviously slavery is much more extreme than "protection of marriage," but the premise is the same. I just used slavery as an example because superdave80 did...and it fit my point much better than it fit his.
Yeah, it's like he thinks he has some kind of obligation to stand up against something that is morally wrong. It's like when voters agreed slavery was OK, but assholes, public servant assholes even, went around illegally freeing slaves.
Eh, that scene just didn't fit. It's OK, though. It was a fantastic movie. Made even more so by the fact that the only other movie that has come close to being that good this year is Ironman.
I didn't sense much reaction from the audience I was with. There was a lot more reaction to the whole pencil bit (from me as well...because it was awesome!). But I am sure most of them were supporting blowing up the prisoner boat. That was what would have been interesting to explore more deeply instead of ignoring reality to give some contrived morality lesson and make the audience feel good about themselves instead of really examine who they are and what they are capable of...like the rest of the movie was trying to do.
I disagree with you, though. You cannot judge people based on forced, Catch-22 situations. I would feel immense sorrow for them, but would certainly not think less of them.
I do think less of people that support the death penalty, for the reasons you stated.
I hated the ferry scene. First, it was completely contrived and forced. I could not believe the Joker could have set that up even after suspending all reason. Second, I think the civilians would have blown up the prisoner boat in real life given that scenario. Even given another poster's reference to the "Prisoner's Dilemma." The Wikipedia article on that says 40% of participants cooperated. So, that 60% that didn't, and there were a lot of people on those ferries. Someone would have convinced the others to blow up the prisoners. That makes the morality lesson all the more annoying.
It would have made the movie that much greater and that much more intensely dark if Batman had to deal with the fact that one group blew up another group. Obviously, it would not have meant that the Joker was right about everyone being like him since the whole scenario was stacked to force people to act a certain way. But, it would have been interesting to see Batman struggle with it and reconcile it for himself.
Of course, that would have made the movie way too long, so it would have been better cut it out, make Dark Knight 30 minutes shorter, and use it in another sequel.
Also, it would have been an interesting way to explore how people make strong assumptions. The people on the civilian ferry kept saying: "They had their chance. They chose to rape and murder. Why should they survive?" It's the same kind of assumptions some people make about the detainees in Guantanamo. "They're in Guantanamo, they must be terrorists!"
There is a difference between a terrorists attack or murder and accidents. Accidents, while unfortunate, do not leave the grieving yearning for revenge. Grieving is bad enough, but adding the rage that comes from knowing that ones who killed your loved one still live and breathe just makes it that much worse.
I'm sure the families of victims of drunk drivers feel a yearning for revenge. Not just against the drunk driver that may or may not have survived, but against all people that drive over the legal limit. Last time I checked (when my state rep was pushing a bill to ban radar detectors), somewhere around 50% of auto fatalities were related to alcohol somehow. So, that's a lot of families yearning for revenge.
The real difference, I think, is that auto fatalities are just routine. It's hard for the general public to get outraged about something has been happening upwards of 40 times a day for the past couple of decades.
Anyway, if we gave NASA the kind of money we give the military, I am certain we would have the same toys we have now. The only difference is those toys would not have started out as weapon systems.
NASA also started off by drawing from the DOD. As did microwaves, vulcanization, and the list goes on.
And? That's missing the point entirely. Of course, almost everything comes from the military. The US, and almost every nation in history, has put almost all of its resources in to their militaries. My point is: just because good things do come from the military, does not mean they have to come from the military and saying "good things come from the military" does not justify the outrageous military spending in the US.
Any organization with the money that the military has would produce exactly the same useful civilian items the military has produced. First, the inventions that make into civilian hands make it there because they are immensely useful to civilians, so you can pretty much be assured that someone in the civilian sector would think it up. Second, when you have an organization throwing around money like the military, the civilians that thought up the idea will get money and: viola, you have radio navigation/LORAN/GPS.
I disagree. The military has goals to accomplish, and to which it is primarilly price insenstive. As more and more orders to the military for X are met, the technology becomes cheaper. A civilian organization, on the other hand, would primarilly have an incentive to make more noticable changes. That is, more immediate changes, noticed more quickly, less riskly and leading to great stuff. Becuase there would be a huge incentive to release every 2/4 years.
Even look at NASA and the DOD. NASA uses COTS parts, whereas the DOD sees nothing wrong with demanding some widget be special made.
Again, missing the point. If you give any organization the money we give the military, they can have goals, be price insensitive, and demand some widget be specially made.
By "civilian," I do not necessarily mean private corporations. Admittedly, NASA is not entirely civil, but that's what I mean. Massive undertakings like the interstate system, GPS, and the Internet need government backing, but that backing does not need to come from the military. As I was saying, anything big coming out of the military is usually of such value that its invention is inevitable; the only variable is who has the money to pay for it.
You are correct, civilian organizations would not invent the same things as the military and I said that in my post. Civilian organizations would not invent battlefield products, they would invent consumer products.
It goes back to the basic premise that military technology makes it into civilian hands because there is a civilian need. If there is a civilian need and there is someone willing to fund it, you will get the same result.
You cannot tell me that without a military throwing money around for research on killing people, we would have never developed digital computers (the first mechanical computers were developed outside of the military), we would have never thought to connect them, and we would have never thought to make a robust, global network like the Internet....or that someone at Dryden Flight Research wouldn't have thought...gee, a network of satellites might make it easy to track an aircraft's position to a really high degree of accuracy!
Granted GPS and the Internet, being such massive undertakings, would need government backing. But, that backing certainly does not need to come from the military, and I wonder if they might have even reached civilian use faster if all of the secrecy overhead and design goals contrary to civilian use were removed.
I hate this argument. Any organization with the money that the military has would produce exactly the same useful civilian items the military has produced. First, the inventions that make into civilian hands make it there because they are immensely useful to civilians, so you can pretty much be assured that someone in the civilian sector would think it up. Second, when you have an organization throwing around money like the military, the civilians that thought up the idea will get money and: viola, you have radio navigation/LORAN/GPS.
In fact, I am not even sure radio navigation (the old "A"/"N" morse code beam navigation) started out as a military invention. Once you have radio navigation, it is not much of a stretch to come up with LORAN, and GPS is just the next logical step after LORAN.
Anyway, if we gave NASA the kind of money we give the military, I am certain we would have the same toys we have now. The only difference is those toys would not have started out as weapon systems.
Well, I had to take my belt off and show the tops of my boxers once. You are right, though. That has stopped.
However... If there are ways around security, as you mentioned there are (and there always will be), then there is no security and privacy intrusions in the name of security are not reasonable and should not be legal.
I think that is a really hard concept for people to wrap their minds around. There is no security, and no one can provide security. Terrorism, despite the efforts of governments to make us think otherwise, is so rare there is really no reason to even worry about it. When it is not rare, think Iraq, there is something fundamentally wrong and terrorism is just the symptom.
"Fighting terror" and "securing us against terror" is just reactionary and idiotic. Even using Lockerbie as an example... Everybody said: "Hey, we're checking bags now! That would have stopped Lockerbie!" Did airline terrorism stop? No. Nobody addressed the core issues. So why bother?
My domestic point was that they do not care about privacy at all, would likely start searching laptops (not necessarily for the security of the aircraft, but just because we will let them when they ask), and that none of the measures make us any more safe.
As far as the border goes, searching laptop drives is only going to inconvenience the innocent and maybe catch the random, idiot child pornographer. It is a stupid exercise and totally beyond what a Customs agent should be looking for.
Back to domestic searches...
Let's assume there is a good and sufficient reason to search bags. Fine, let's go in a private room and you can search it while I am present and able to observe that the TSA agent is acting appropriately and that my rights are being at least somewhat respected. They do this in Turkey, by the way, and the security staff there is far and above more professional and courteous than TSA...at least, that was my colleague's experience there.
In order to do that without hiring tons of new people and without making people miss their flights, you have to recognize that it is not how many bags you search, but simply that you search bags. You do not need the massive, inefficient security centers and unsupervised bag searches.
I whole-heartedly disagree with the public, extended searches they perform in the security line. It is absolutely inappropriate to open someone's bag, wand them, make them take off pieces of clothing, etc. in full view of everyone else in line.
You give up all your privacy and even dignity when you fly these days because TSA and Customs are going down an endless road. First, we X-Ray. Then we open suspicious bags. Then we search bags without the owner present and no suspicion. Now we search laptop hard drives. I am not using a slippery slope argument here, they are doing it for me.
Going back to the assumption of the need to search bags, how many bombs were involved in 9/11? Zero. How many contraband items at all were involved in 9/11? Zero. How would bag searches have stopped 9/11? They would not have.
Approximately 200,000 people have died in auto accidents since 9/11. Do we really need to be afraid of the extremely minuscule chance that someone is going to hijack or blow up a plane? Does security really need to be anything more than passive checks of destinations, maybe random (or even profile) interviews in the terminals, maybe passive explosive residue checks, and maybe some metal detectors? Especially considering the fact that there is always a way around any security measure you implement?
Does the government really have good and sufficient reason to search my bags? No. It doesn't make anyone any more safe from highly improbable terrorist events.
His point is technically correct in the sense that TSA does not believe in privacy even on domestic flights. Have you had a TSA note left in your suitcase letting you know that your bags were searched without your permission, without a warrant, without your supervision, and mostly certainly not in a discrete manner during domestic travel? I have.
Of course, I am sure it is legal because somewhere, buried in the 4 pt. text, is a clause stating that you implicitly consent to your bags being searched simply because you bought a plane ticket. Much like holding a Florida driver's license means you implicitly consent to a sobriety test at any time. I am sure it will not be long before they are searching domestic travelers' hard drives. After all, Oklahoma City was domestic terrorism. Terror is everywhere.
The cool thing is, though, you can encrypt your hard drive. You cannot encrypt your suitcase. And, like another poster said, you can always store your sensitive data on an iPod, a thumb drive, etc. That is the major problem with organizations like TSA and Customs that people do not seem to understand. They are always fighting a losing battle against people that are way ahead of them.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... Government for the people... Stop it, please, you're killing me. How exactly are you going to get Congress to enact a law that completely stops corporate campaign contributions? That's "simple"? Would you tell people giving you millions of dollars to stop it? I wouldn't, the country be damned! Shit, as long as I'm rich and my kids are rich, the country doesn't matter.
By the way, by law, corporations are individuals, so you have to tread lightly there lest you violate free speech.
Seriously, I think armed rebellion is warranted (I know you are listening, NSA) to force term limits. Term limits are an extremely important, but not very visible, tool for the people. I do not think people realize how important term limits are, even while they say: "Bush is horrible, but at least he can't be reelected."
Slashdot Mirror
Russell Franklin: Just what the hell did you do to those sharks?
Dr. Susan McCallister: Their brains weren't large enough to harvest sufficient amounts of the protein complex. So we violated the Harvard Compact. Jim and I used gene therapies to increase their brain mass. A larger brain means more protein. As a side effect the sharks got smarter.
Russell Franklin: All right people, these sharks are thinking, hard and clear. So here's the riddle. What does an eight thousand pound mako shark with a brain the size of a flat head V8 engine and no natural predators think about?
Yeah, that is exactly what Ballmer said about the iPhone.
Interestingly enough, after saying Apple had no chance competing with the millions of WinMo phones, he said Zune would have no trouble competing with hundreds of millions of iPods.
Refer to my last paragraph about the SR-71 being, at best, useless for intelligence. This sentiment, of course, goes with the general theme that you cannot replace people on the ground with planes and satellites. Would could have avoided the Cold War if we knew Russia was actually falling apart. Something we couldn't know by just flying the SR-71 over their country to photograph things they probably placed in plain sight specifically to be photographed.
Plus, I suggest you re-read the paragraph from which you cherry picked the information about Clinton using a line item veto.
The reactivation met much resistance: the Air Force had not budgeted for the aircraft, and UAV developers worried that their programs would suffer if money was shifted to support the SR-71s. Also, with the allocation requiring yearly reaffirmation by Congress, long-term planning for the SR-71 was difficult.[19] In 1996, the Air Force claimed that specific funding had not been authorized, and moved to ground the program. Congress reauthorized the funds, but, in October 1997, President Bill Clinton used the line-item veto to cancel the $39 million allocated for the SR-71. In June 1998, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the line-item veto was unconstitutional. All this left the SR-71's status uncertain until September 1998, when the Air Force called for the funds to be redistributed. The plane was permanently retired in 1998.
Clinton doesn't sound like much of a douche when you word it that way, does he?
Yes, because we need an aircraft that can fly faster than mach 3 above 80,000 feet to penetrate terrorist airspace and evade terrorist fighter jets.
They use Predator drones now because, well, they were not manufactured in the 60s, they cost magnitudes less for the same mission, they can perform more than one type of mission, they are unmanned, etc. etc. etc. etc.
The SR-71 was cool and all, but way too antiquated to keep around. Clinton made a good move killing the SR-71.
By the way, how did the SR-71 help anyway? It gave us zero insight into the Soviets...in fact, it did far worse by giving us false insight. It was a waste of money from conception to retirement. But...damn, it was cool...
As Ethanol-fueled said, there are A LOT of cut scenes. I think the cut scenes at the end alone added up to about an hour and a half.
I enjoyed it, though.
As far as the whole series goes, I would probably rate Snake Eater #1, Sons of Liberty #2, Guns of the Patriots #3, MGS #4, and MG #5. I never did play Solid Snake.
Rating the original #5 is a bit deceptive. I played it to death when it came out and enjoy it every time I have played it since, but I really like the complexity (CQC, sneaking being harder and more integral, choosing not to kill, etc.) of MGS2, 3, and 4. I also rated it below MGS because MGS started the theatrical story line.
Would I drop them in with M1 Garands? Sure, I own both a M1 Garand and an AR-15 carbine and I would go to war with the Garand. ;) But seriously, the question evades the whole point.
In terms of the US, I think the problem with us creating new enemies is mainly because we are sending our military to places where it doesn't belong.
That was kind of the point. That is one of the defining characteristics of a militaristic superpower that believes it has the ability to drop in a military, surgically kill all the "bad guys", and then suddenly democracy blossoms all over the land.
I may have worded it poorly, but I was really referring to us as civilians being more and more detached from the reality. The soldiers obviously know what they are doing and it affects them deeply, as per TFA. We have totally unreasonable expectations of our military and look at the world through "military glasses". That significantly affects our moral judgement.
We have this enormous military with all of its "precision" toys designed by the best minds to reduce civilian casualties. We spend nearly half of our tax revenue on maintaining and "improving" this military. So, when there's a problem, we send in the military confident that they are professional, surgical, and moral.
...and they never are because it is impossible for a military to live up to that standard. The whole "hearts and minds" thing is bullshit. A military cannot do that in situations like Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, etc. no matter how many photo ops of soldiers handing out candy to children you have. Again, it's not that soldiers, in general, are evil. It's just that no matter how surgical their weapons are, they are, as a whole, still a huge friggin' hammer. And that hammer is being wielded by people with blinders and guided by incompetent and immoral intelligence agencies.
But no one here understands that, so we continue pursuing things like UAVs thinking some day we might be able to create that magical weapon that only kills "the bad guys." We have this impossible dream of some day being able to impose our national will from an airbase in Utah and everyone will love us for it.
Terrorism does not have a military solution. That has been proven consistently throughout history. The more you crack down on terrorists with a military, the more collateral damage you cause and the more future terrorists you create.
One day we will fight a large army again, and we will be friggin' well equipped to do that. We may even win some hearts and minds after pushing the opposing military out of their country. But even then, we will not achieve anything in the long run since no one is willing to think outside the box. No one, here anyway, is willing to accept that real peace has to come from raising the standard of living around the world. Shit, Americans do not want their tax money doing that in America, let alone anywhere else in the world.
At the very least, we have to get out of the mindset that every problem has a military solution.
That's the interesting thing, isn't it? There's definitely a distinction from someone that purposefully kills the innocent and someone that accidentally kills the innocent.
But, on a larger scale, UAVs, fighter jets, guided missiles, guns, sniper rifles, artillery, catapults, sling shots, blowguns... they all spawn from the desire to kill, the desire to be safe while killing, and the desire to maintain a moral high ground by avoiding collateral damage.
Have we really ever met that last goal, though?
For all the good-hearted meticulousness of the UAV pilots, they still kill civilians. Bad intelligence, fog of war, misjudgements, etc. There is no perfect weapon that magically kills the "bad" guys and leaves the "good" guys alive.
The more precise we think our weapons are, the more arrogant we get that we can use them surgically. We get ourselves into a mindset of being superior and then head out on adventures like Iraq and Afghanistan confident that we can win hearts and minds while killing bad guys with our surgical weapons.
Then someone blows up a village...and it all goes to shit. It's kind of hard not to create new enemies when half a town is killed by an unseen drone flown by some guy on the other side of the world.
So, the UAV pilots are nothing more than the next evolution in disconnecting ourselves from war and the massive collateral loss of life it always causes. The more disconnected we are, the more arrogant we become, the poorer our judgement becomes, and the worse it gets. It's not because the UAV pilots are evil, it's because their whole mission is fundamentally selfish and flawed.
Damn it... "...no real choice but to keep your money in a bank."
Well, you can make academic arguments one way or the other, but the reality is that you have no real choice to keep your money in a bank. I mean, you personally might be able to keep your money in a personal safe. However, the economy would collapse if everyone did.
If you realize that you have to keep your money in a bank, you realize that you have to give up some personal information in the form of bank records and credit card records. Are the laws strong enough to serve the people by protecting that information? Certainly not, but that's a different issue.
We have to make choices to limit our exposure. Choosing not to use Google docs, Gmail, etc. is certainly not inconsistent with choosing to store your money in a bank.
By the way, I respect the opinion that abortion is morally wrong. I do not agree with it, but, hey, that's life. But, abortion had nothing to do with the argument at hand.
Plus, it's hard to see how people were playing the moral superiority card when they were running around blowing up clinics, and severely beating doctors and clinic staff. That's escalating civil disobedience into terrorism. And that goes for liberal groups like ALF too.
I never said anything about liberal vs. conservative. What I did say is this:
slavery = voters voting to take away the legal rights and protections of a group of people based on their skin color.
"protection of marriage" = voters voting to take away the legal rights and protections of a group of people based on their sexual orientation.
This country affords married couples tax breaks and significant legal rights and protections. What "protection of marriage" is basically saying is: "you are different and we don't like you: therefore you do not get the same perks we get."
In fact, it is the conservatives that should be fighting AGAINST "protection of marriage." You know: KEEP GOVERNMENT OUT OF OUR LIVES! Isn't that what a true conservative believes?
Obviously slavery is much more extreme than "protection of marriage," but the premise is the same. I just used slavery as an example because superdave80 did...and it fit my point much better than it fit his.
Yeah, it's like he thinks he has some kind of obligation to stand up against something that is morally wrong. It's like when voters agreed slavery was OK, but assholes, public servant assholes even, went around illegally freeing slaves.
I hate douchebags like that.
Eh, that scene just didn't fit. It's OK, though. It was a fantastic movie. Made even more so by the fact that the only other movie that has come close to being that good this year is Ironman.
I didn't sense much reaction from the audience I was with. There was a lot more reaction to the whole pencil bit (from me as well...because it was awesome!). But I am sure most of them were supporting blowing up the prisoner boat. That was what would have been interesting to explore more deeply instead of ignoring reality to give some contrived morality lesson and make the audience feel good about themselves instead of really examine who they are and what they are capable of...like the rest of the movie was trying to do.
I disagree with you, though. You cannot judge people based on forced, Catch-22 situations. I would feel immense sorrow for them, but would certainly not think less of them.
I do think less of people that support the death penalty, for the reasons you stated.
I hated the ferry scene. First, it was completely contrived and forced. I could not believe the Joker could have set that up even after suspending all reason. Second, I think the civilians would have blown up the prisoner boat in real life given that scenario. Even given another poster's reference to the "Prisoner's Dilemma." The Wikipedia article on that says 40% of participants cooperated. So, that 60% that didn't, and there were a lot of people on those ferries. Someone would have convinced the others to blow up the prisoners. That makes the morality lesson all the more annoying.
It would have made the movie that much greater and that much more intensely dark if Batman had to deal with the fact that one group blew up another group. Obviously, it would not have meant that the Joker was right about everyone being like him since the whole scenario was stacked to force people to act a certain way. But, it would have been interesting to see Batman struggle with it and reconcile it for himself.
Of course, that would have made the movie way too long, so it would have been better cut it out, make Dark Knight 30 minutes shorter, and use it in another sequel.
Also, it would have been an interesting way to explore how people make strong assumptions. The people on the civilian ferry kept saying: "They had their chance. They chose to rape and murder. Why should they survive?" It's the same kind of assumptions some people make about the detainees in Guantanamo. "They're in Guantanamo, they must be terrorists!"
There is a difference between a terrorists attack or murder and accidents. Accidents, while unfortunate, do not leave the grieving yearning for revenge. Grieving is bad enough, but adding the rage that comes from knowing that ones who killed your loved one still live and breathe just makes it that much worse.
I'm sure the families of victims of drunk drivers feel a yearning for revenge. Not just against the drunk driver that may or may not have survived, but against all people that drive over the legal limit. Last time I checked (when my state rep was pushing a bill to ban radar detectors), somewhere around 50% of auto fatalities were related to alcohol somehow. So, that's a lot of families yearning for revenge.
The real difference, I think, is that auto fatalities are just routine. It's hard for the general public to get outraged about something has been happening upwards of 40 times a day for the past couple of decades.
NASA also started off by drawing from the DOD. As did microwaves, vulcanization, and the list goes on.
And? That's missing the point entirely. Of course, almost everything comes from the military. The US, and almost every nation in history, has put almost all of its resources in to their militaries. My point is: just because good things do come from the military, does not mean they have to come from the military and saying "good things come from the military" does not justify the outrageous military spending in the US.
I disagree. The military has goals to accomplish, and to which it is primarilly price insenstive. As more and more orders to the military for X are met, the technology becomes cheaper. A civilian organization, on the other hand, would primarilly have an incentive to make more noticable changes. That is, more immediate changes, noticed more quickly, less riskly and leading to great stuff. Becuase there would be a huge incentive to release every 2/4 years.
Even look at NASA and the DOD. NASA uses COTS parts, whereas the DOD sees nothing wrong with demanding some widget be special made.
Again, missing the point. If you give any organization the money we give the military, they can have goals, be price insensitive, and demand some widget be specially made.
By "civilian," I do not necessarily mean private corporations. Admittedly, NASA is not entirely civil, but that's what I mean. Massive undertakings like the interstate system, GPS, and the Internet need government backing, but that backing does not need to come from the military. As I was saying, anything big coming out of the military is usually of such value that its invention is inevitable; the only variable is who has the money to pay for it.
You are correct, civilian organizations would not invent the same things as the military and I said that in my post. Civilian organizations would not invent battlefield products, they would invent consumer products. It goes back to the basic premise that military technology makes it into civilian hands because there is a civilian need. If there is a civilian need and there is someone willing to fund it, you will get the same result. You cannot tell me that without a military throwing money around for research on killing people, we would have never developed digital computers (the first mechanical computers were developed outside of the military), we would have never thought to connect them, and we would have never thought to make a robust, global network like the Internet. ...or that someone at Dryden Flight Research wouldn't have thought...gee, a network of satellites might make it easy to track an aircraft's position to a really high degree of accuracy!
Granted GPS and the Internet, being such massive undertakings, would need government backing. But, that backing certainly does not need to come from the military, and I wonder if they might have even reached civilian use faster if all of the secrecy overhead and design goals contrary to civilian use were removed.
I hate this argument. Any organization with the money that the military has would produce exactly the same useful civilian items the military has produced. First, the inventions that make into civilian hands make it there because they are immensely useful to civilians, so you can pretty much be assured that someone in the civilian sector would think it up. Second, when you have an organization throwing around money like the military, the civilians that thought up the idea will get money and: viola, you have radio navigation/LORAN/GPS.
In fact, I am not even sure radio navigation (the old "A"/"N" morse code beam navigation) started out as a military invention. Once you have radio navigation, it is not much of a stretch to come up with LORAN, and GPS is just the next logical step after LORAN.
Anyway, if we gave NASA the kind of money we give the military, I am certain we would have the same toys we have now. The only difference is those toys would not have started out as weapon systems.
Well, I had to take my belt off and show the tops of my boxers once. You are right, though. That has stopped. However... If there are ways around security, as you mentioned there are (and there always will be), then there is no security and privacy intrusions in the name of security are not reasonable and should not be legal. I think that is a really hard concept for people to wrap their minds around. There is no security, and no one can provide security. Terrorism, despite the efforts of governments to make us think otherwise, is so rare there is really no reason to even worry about it. When it is not rare, think Iraq, there is something fundamentally wrong and terrorism is just the symptom. "Fighting terror" and "securing us against terror" is just reactionary and idiotic. Even using Lockerbie as an example... Everybody said: "Hey, we're checking bags now! That would have stopped Lockerbie!" Did airline terrorism stop? No. Nobody addressed the core issues. So why bother?
Will regular maintenance of these cars still involve replacing water pumps, alternators, sunroof motors, batteries, etc.? Fundamentals first, people.
My domestic point was that they do not care about privacy at all, would likely start searching laptops (not necessarily for the security of the aircraft, but just because we will let them when they ask), and that none of the measures make us any more safe.
As far as the border goes, searching laptop drives is only going to inconvenience the innocent and maybe catch the random, idiot child pornographer. It is a stupid exercise and totally beyond what a Customs agent should be looking for.
Back to domestic searches...
Let's assume there is a good and sufficient reason to search bags. Fine, let's go in a private room and you can search it while I am present and able to observe that the TSA agent is acting appropriately and that my rights are being at least somewhat respected. They do this in Turkey, by the way, and the security staff there is far and above more professional and courteous than TSA...at least, that was my colleague's experience there.
In order to do that without hiring tons of new people and without making people miss their flights, you have to recognize that it is not how many bags you search, but simply that you search bags. You do not need the massive, inefficient security centers and unsupervised bag searches.
I whole-heartedly disagree with the public, extended searches they perform in the security line. It is absolutely inappropriate to open someone's bag, wand them, make them take off pieces of clothing, etc. in full view of everyone else in line.
You give up all your privacy and even dignity when you fly these days because TSA and Customs are going down an endless road. First, we X-Ray. Then we open suspicious bags. Then we search bags without the owner present and no suspicion. Now we search laptop hard drives. I am not using a slippery slope argument here, they are doing it for me.
Going back to the assumption of the need to search bags, how many bombs were involved in 9/11? Zero. How many contraband items at all were involved in 9/11? Zero. How would bag searches have stopped 9/11? They would not have.
Approximately 200,000 people have died in auto accidents since 9/11. Do we really need to be afraid of the extremely minuscule chance that someone is going to hijack or blow up a plane? Does security really need to be anything more than passive checks of destinations, maybe random (or even profile) interviews in the terminals, maybe passive explosive residue checks, and maybe some metal detectors? Especially considering the fact that there is always a way around any security measure you implement?
Does the government really have good and sufficient reason to search my bags? No. It doesn't make anyone any more safe from highly improbable terrorist events.
His point is technically correct in the sense that TSA does not believe in privacy even on domestic flights. Have you had a TSA note left in your suitcase letting you know that your bags were searched without your permission, without a warrant, without your supervision, and mostly certainly not in a discrete manner during domestic travel? I have.
Of course, I am sure it is legal because somewhere, buried in the 4 pt. text, is a clause stating that you implicitly consent to your bags being searched simply because you bought a plane ticket. Much like holding a Florida driver's license means you implicitly consent to a sobriety test at any time. I am sure it will not be long before they are searching domestic travelers' hard drives. After all, Oklahoma City was domestic terrorism. Terror is everywhere.
The cool thing is, though, you can encrypt your hard drive. You cannot encrypt your suitcase. And, like another poster said, you can always store your sensitive data on an iPod, a thumb drive, etc. That is the major problem with organizations like TSA and Customs that people do not seem to understand. They are always fighting a losing battle against people that are way ahead of them.
Nothing in Wikipedia about it, so you must be wrong. ;)
Seriously, though, it says that there have been many false starts. Plus, there are some pretty serious technical hurdles to overcome.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... Government for the people... Stop it, please, you're killing me. How exactly are you going to get Congress to enact a law that completely stops corporate campaign contributions? That's "simple"? Would you tell people giving you millions of dollars to stop it? I wouldn't, the country be damned! Shit, as long as I'm rich and my kids are rich, the country doesn't matter.
By the way, by law, corporations are individuals, so you have to tread lightly there lest you violate free speech.
Seriously, I think armed rebellion is warranted (I know you are listening, NSA) to force term limits. Term limits are an extremely important, but not very visible, tool for the people. I do not think people realize how important term limits are, even while they say: "Bush is horrible, but at least he can't be reelected."