Others have refuted your claim about "selective" reading, so let's go talk about you hating "bigotry". How is condeming an unnatural (even if largely harmless) activity bad if the politically correct group ("liberal" in a perverted sense of that word) you promote declares group marriage and pedophilia evil, often in the same sentences they bash homophobia?
Group marriage is fully natural, and encouraged by some major cultures. It is not really compatible with the western world, since allowing 1:4 marriages but not 4:1 or 2:2 would be inconsistent and discriminative, but unlike homosexualism it does not hamper biological functions in any way.
Some parts of pedophilia, namely those where the younger partner is between puberty and the "legal age of consent" is fully natural too. In fact it's the current law what is a perversion -- it bans a fully healthy behaviour and punishes it harsher than murder. Too bad, it would be unwise to change that law without amending related parts as well -- the root issue comes from people below 18 being "children" without being allowed to take on any responsibility and then suddenly fully grown at then magic age. If they are sheltered from any "evils" like pornography or reading about violence, how are they supposed to handle these issues when they are adult?
So uhm, "homosexualism good, group marriage bad". I hope you can see what's wrong here.
I don't see any problem with group marriage. Pedophilia, when acted upon, even with the stated consent of the child, is considered wrong because children are not considered capable of consenting to sexual activity. I believe there is plenty of research on brain development to support this, despite the fact that they may be fully sexually mature in the physical sense. We are more protective of their emotional well-being these days than in the past, and more inclined to err on the side of caution.
I do agree with you though that having the "bright line" drawn at a specific age as we do can lead to problems as well. There should be more ability to let them gradually accept more responsibility and adult rights and privileges rather than having it all fall on them on their 18th birthday.
The only real issue to me is how you handle the rights granted to married couples when you get into situations like group marriages. It looks messy and likely to cause a lot of unintended consequences. That'll take some time to work out.
Ok, just to be clear, exactly what is it that you think Obama should be doing that he's not doing about the oil pumping into the gulf? I'm just curious because I really haven't heard of any useful suggestions that haven't already been acted on, and you've got a whole group of conservatives that want to downplay the severity of the situation at every opportunity. After all, like Limbaugh said, oil is natural!
Except that's a red herring. The problem that honest liberals have with Obama's response to the disaster in the Gulf has been his reliance on BP in the response effort. Or as Shep Smith pointed out, 'BP has a worse safety record than all other companies combined, times ten'. Why was BP free to dump whatever dispersants they wanted into the Gulf? Why have they been free to restrict information to the public? Why have they been free to higher private security guards to chase the press off public beaches?
Mostly because the only other people with any ability at all to do anything about this issue don't want to get involved, and claim that BP has a better understanding of this particular well than they do and is the best group to handle it. Yes, they screwed up royally in causing the problem, but there's nobody else that can really do anymore to fix it than they can either.
As for the restriction of information and the press, I don't know what the reasons are around that, but I certainly don't think that the press should be barred from reporting on the issue. The dispersants are one of those issues where there's just not enough information to know whether it's a good thing to do or not. Whether you use them or not, you're going to have people screaming about it. I happen to suspect that they're mostly concerned with visible oil, and the dispersants are helping to minimize that. So they feel it's worthwhile because whatever harm they end up doing will likely not be as immediate or visible, and possibly a lot harder to pin on them than the oil problem. But with no real data about the effects of this kind of usage, the government was pretty much damned whether they let them do it or not.
Medicine has advanced tremendously since then. Health issues are not the problem. If that were the problem, we'd outlaw fast food and half the stuff in the grocery store.
So once a publisher decides that a book is no longer making money, and they stop printing them, there's no way to know if interest in the book picks up again at some later date, perhaps many years later, because there aren't any around for people to buy. How do you gauge demand for something that's not available?
It disturbs me just how easily you talk about taking somebody's rights away. And frankly, that "intangible property" doesn't seem so intangible when you've spent months working on it.
How about this - take the time and effort to write a book of your own. Spend some time dealing with publishers, get it published. And THEN see what you think about how intangible it is.
Copyright isn't some inalienable right possessed by creators of works. It's a limited right granted by the government for a (supposedly) limited period of time, for the specific purpose of "promoting the progress of science and useful arts." The publishing industry has lobbied for and continually been granted extensions and expansions of the duration and scope of copyright, to the point where the public sees little benefit from the bargain in the first place. I hardly see it as some terrible thing to roll back those changes to something that is more balanced with the public interest.
Just by the fact you were able to correctly deduce the meaning of what he meant to type, this should indicate to you that he got the meaning across even with the typo. Pointing out his error just makes you look like a douche bag, please stop.
It wasn't a typo. He used a word that was obviously the wrong one in that context. Yes, it's possible to deduce his meaning despite that, but pointing out such errors can at least allow the person to get it right next time. That's not a bad thing.
Or is Olbermann being clear and referring to it as a counter of "how many days Pres. Obama has shown almost no leadership or sense of urgency about an issue that could fuck over the economy (and people) of an entire region of America for several generations"?
Ok, just to be clear, exactly what is it that you think Obama should be doing that he's not doing about the oil pumping into the gulf? I'm just curious because I really haven't heard of any useful suggestions that haven't already been acted on, and you've got a whole group of conservatives that want to downplay the severity of the situation at every opportunity. After all, like Limbaugh said, oil is natural!
Would McCain be any better? Likely not. Does that mean Obama is doing a "good job" of handling it? Not in the least. It's possible to be disappointed & upset with the behavior of your leaders in circumstances like this. Obama rightly deserves criticism for some of what he's done, regardless of whether you believe McCain would have been worse.
What actions, or lack thereof, specifically, are you criticizing?
If it actually mattered much to you, then wouldn't you do a little research to find someplace more suitable for you? If people don't care enough to even look for another place, then it must not be much of an issue.
Wrong. People have jobs, families, friends, lives. It takes time and effort to research something. Even if you really want a non-smoking bar, and it would affect your health otherwise, sometimes you just don't have the time or energy, or the inclination to make an effort to find one. People aren't always rational. Nor do they have unlimited time or resources.
And that matters why? If you're too busy or too lazy to even look for an alternative, that's your problem. It obviously isn't that important to you. Hell, if you're so busy that you can't spend ten minutes on the net looking up a smoke free bar, then when do you even have time to go to a bar?
How that justifies legislating away people's right to go to a bar that allows smoking is still something I can't fathom.
It's called democracy. You vote for representatives to represent your interests in the laws you want passed.
Ahh, the old tyranny of the majority approach, right? Anything goes as long as a majority supports it? I'd really hate to see us go down that path as a country, where we can arbitrarily choose to infringe on individual liberty for no good reason, but just because some might be somewhat inconvenienced by something.
Requiring the labeling of food doesn't remove anyone's rights anymore than requiring that food not contain harmful amounts of poisonous substances.
It removes the right of manufacturers to choose to not pay for labels for their food. You can make anything into a 'right'. Doesn't mean it's not stupid.
Food safety and labeling laws were enacted in response to many dangerous practices and deceptions on the part of the food industry. People had no way of knowing what they were getting when they bought something, which enabled all sorts of fraud and abuse on the part of the industry.
There's no such deception or lack of information when it comes to smoking. People know the risks and can make informed choices to go to such places or not.
Why should a spouse be entitled to protect the criminal activities of their partner? If a spouse were compelled to testify, I can think of two situations. The first is that he/she knew about the criminal activity and is therefore involved or failed to report the criminal activity, and can take the fifth amendment. The second is that he/she can honestly say under oath that he/she did not know of the criminal activity.
I don't know all the legal history behind it, or why it came to be that way any more than you do, so I can't really say whether there's a good reason for it any more than you can. What I can say is that it's been there for a long time and I doubt you can just hand-wave it away. Even if you did manage that, there are hundreds of other rights granted to married people that would also need to be dealt with.
It's been established as a legal right in this country, whatever your opinion is about it. It's one that is firmly entrenched in the law, so it would need to be handled, as well as all the rest of the legal rights.
(Requiring food labeling removes the right of companies not to be interfered with. We force labeling upon food manufacturers because the increased information is worth the tradeoff of the lost freedom.)
They don't have a right not to be interfered with in the first place. They've never had such a right, as the government has the right to legislate commerce, and has since the founding of the country.
So no actual evidence of that ever happening, anywhere, right? Most parents would freak out if their kids came home saying they heard that from a teacher and it would be all over the news. I don't buy it.
What should constitute a marriage in the eyes of the government but a contractual relationship? Nothing more then an economic corporation entered into by agreeing people to share certain assets and liabilities.
That depends on what rights you're talking about, and what sort of contract the government would view as a marriage. What about your right to not be made to testify against your spouse in court? Could everyone hired by a corporation be made to enter into a marriage contract so that nobody could testify against anyone else? There's more to it than you're accounting for I think.
Like I said, everyone has the same recourse as far as school teaching goes. I don't like that groups here in Texas want to teach religion as science, but I'm not trying to get their religion outlawed.
Imperfect knowledge: If you want to go to a bar, but you only know about smokey bars (maybe because there are only smokey bars), then you will sigh and go to a smokey bar. You have no choice.
If it actually mattered much to you, then wouldn't you do a little research to find someplace more suitable for you? I did that myself several years back and found some smoke-free places where I could go play pool and not leave smelling like an ash tray. If people don't care enough to even look for another place, then it must not be much of an issue.
Imperfect competition: Maybe there is a non-smokey bar, but other qualities of a bar make it preferable to you. So you sigh and go to the bar which you otherwise prefer, despite the smoke.
How that justifies legislating away people's right to go to a bar that allows smoking is still something I can't fathom.
Irrational decision: Maybe you never really thought about bars being smokey, like you just assume they all have smoke and that's the price of admission. The thought literally never occurred to you to choose a non-smokey bar.
Same response as the last one. Makes no sense.
I relate this to food labeling. Americans like their food labels, so why did it take legislation to get them? Why didn't the market provide food labels? Think about it: if you walked into a grocery store and none of the food was labeled, would you walk out and starve to death? No, you would just buy the available food. That's a failure of market theory -- basically because market theory isn't very good at matching reality.
Requiring the labeling of food doesn't remove anyone's rights anymore than requiring that food not contain harmful amounts of poisonous substances.
It's an analogy in terms of purpose (avoiding intimidation and harassment), not in terms of mechanism of implementation. Therefore, if the analogy (concerning purpose only) is valid, it amounts to calling for anonymous petitions to be handled in much the same way secret ballots are handled, i.e. "whatever it takes to make this happen" now that we've established that it should happen for similar reasons.
So basically you think the government should be responsible for validating petitions? California is gonna be in an even bigger financial mess if that ever happens. They have petitions for everything.
Frankly, the intimidation and vandalism is unacceptable and illegal, and should be dealt with by the police. I don't see how it's really any worse than the intimidation and vandalism that gays have had to deal with though. Certainly not a reason to hide the signatures from public verification.
You might just avoid it. But others might replace the word "avoid" with the word "vandalize."
FYI I'd never vote for gay marriage. Does that make you dislike me?
Would it suddenly make a difference if I told you that I would like to see the government eliminate all references to marriage of any kind, including traditional (read: heterosexual) marriages? That is, I would like to see the complete and entire elimination of government recognition of "marriage".
The problem is that, right now, there are a huge number of legal rights conveyed by marriage (the exact number varies by state, but it's probably a LOT more than most people realize). All of these would have to be re-written to either grant the right some other way or remove it completely. Then those that are removed would have to be provided for some other way, as many of them are rather necessary for resolving all sorts of legal situations.
My point is that the concepts of "legal union" and "marriage" should be separated, as they are in quite a number of other countries.
Well Prop 8 sure as hell doesn't do that. As long as marriage is both a legal and religious union controlled by the government, then Prop 8 most certainly is oppressive to gays. Of course the bigots out there don't want to separate the two, because then some churches and other institutions would be allowed to perform marriages for gays. They obviously can't allow that to happen.
> Except the state isn't trying to force any kind of morality on them
Actually, they are, through the public education system. This may or may not be a good thing, but there are plenty of people in this country, in all parts of the political spectrum, who disagree with the morality our public schools teach. Some send their kids to private school as a result, some home-school, some just teach their kids to take what school teaches them with a grain of salt.
What are schools teaching that is so objectionable? That you shouldn't hate people for who they are? Whatever. Anyone that has a problem with what schools teach has the same options for recourse as the rest of us (unless they have a fair amount of money, in which case they have more options than most of us). I don't see how that has anything at all to do with opposing equal rights for gays. Gay people getting married doesn't affect my marriage one bit. I don't see how it affects anyone else's marriage either.
> believe they're in possession of some sort of "universal moral code" which proclaims that
> being gay is wrong.
Yep, they do in fact believe that. I happen to think they're wrong, but I also happen to think that moral codes are a private matter, by and large. Various caveats apply in terms of my moral code's effect on you, etc.
It is a private thing, but they're making it into public policy. Their sacred myths are being used to deny real people their real rights under the law. That is unconscionable.
Before smoking was widely banned in bars, there were polls showing that a majority of people, indeed, wished bars were smoke free -- and yet, over 95% of bars allowed smoking. This is called market failure, and for some crazy reason some market-minded people refuse to recognize it. Now, since we have banned smoking, even more people are glad bars are smoke-free.
So why did the market fail, if indeed it did in this case? If there was a majority that wanted smoke-free bars then why weren't there more smoke-free bars opening up? How do you know it was really a market failure?
What it boils down to is that ACTA is being lobbied for and crafted by the copyright industry, who have a direct financial incentive to extend and expand copyright restrictions as much as possible. They should bear the burden of proving that such extension and expansion serves the public interest rather than just their own financial interests. Aside from some laughably bad "studies" showing ridiculous figures for damages caused by copyright infringement, what have they produced in the way of evidence to support their case? Nothing that I've seen. There have been quite a few thoughtful analyses of copyright law that have determined that more is not better, and that shorter terms would result in more innovation rather than less, and that's just the financial argument. It doesn't even get into the questions of constitutionality or natural rights.
People on/. think it is, but then I'm not convinced many people here have a good grip on copyright. A non-trivial number seem to think that any copyright is a bad thing, that it hurts the economy, etc. There is some pretty good evidence to indicate that's not the case, but they aren't interested. They have an all or nothing stance on it. As such, this treaty is automatically and "obviously" a bad thing to them, since it increases copyright.
There's plenty of evidence that contradicts the "all or nothing stance" that the copyright industry holds, claiming that more copyright is always a good thing.
Well, I'm going to go ahead and say they are perhaps not the best to make that call, due to their bias.
Huh? Did you seriously just use the bias argument to argue against people who are arguing against changes being lobbied for by industries with a direct financial stake in the outcome? Really? The opponents of ACTA are biased you say? Wow.
That doesn't mean I think they are wrong that the treaty is a bad thing, I think they are arriving at that conclusion incorrectly and that is why they might think it "obvious" when maybe it isn't.
So this is the kind of thing I like to see. Some real analysis to determine what benefits and costs it has (everything has benefits and costs) and if those result in a net benefit for the public. Looks like these experts say that no, it doesn't.
I think that is far more useful than just trying to claim "It is obvious!" When you think something is obvious, especially something complex (as any new law is) ask yourself: Is it really, truly obvious, which would mean that nearly everyone should see it, or do I think it is obvious because of my biases?
I think that the industry hasn't done a thing to prove that longer and more restrictive copyright serves the public interest, yet you, and the government, seem to accept their views as true until proven otherwise. Where's the skepticism for their claims?
And moderation is jacked as well, since yesterday. What used to be a simple process [choose the mod selection and it would be immediately applied] is now b0rked, choose the mod selectiopn and nothing happens, no update, no Apply button at the bottom of the page, nada.
Yeah, this has been pissing me off. I thought maybe I had disabled something by accident through NoScript or something at first. But no, the problem is definitely on the/. side.
Slashdot Mirror
Others have refuted your claim about "selective" reading, so let's go talk about you hating "bigotry". How is condeming an unnatural (even if largely harmless) activity bad if the politically correct group ("liberal" in a perverted sense of that word) you promote declares group marriage and pedophilia evil, often in the same sentences they bash homophobia?
Group marriage is fully natural, and encouraged by some major cultures. It is not really compatible with the western world, since allowing 1:4 marriages but not 4:1 or 2:2 would be inconsistent and discriminative, but unlike homosexualism it does not hamper biological functions in any way.
Some parts of pedophilia, namely those where the younger partner is between puberty and the "legal age of consent" is fully natural too. In fact it's the current law what is a perversion -- it bans a fully healthy behaviour and punishes it harsher than murder. Too bad, it would be unwise to change that law without amending related parts as well -- the root issue comes from people below 18 being "children" without being allowed to take on any responsibility and then suddenly fully grown at then magic age. If they are sheltered from any "evils" like pornography or reading about violence, how are they supposed to handle these issues when they are adult?
So uhm, "homosexualism good, group marriage bad". I hope you can see what's wrong here.
I don't see any problem with group marriage. Pedophilia, when acted upon, even with the stated consent of the child, is considered wrong because children are not considered capable of consenting to sexual activity. I believe there is plenty of research on brain development to support this, despite the fact that they may be fully sexually mature in the physical sense. We are more protective of their emotional well-being these days than in the past, and more inclined to err on the side of caution.
I do agree with you though that having the "bright line" drawn at a specific age as we do can lead to problems as well. There should be more ability to let them gradually accept more responsibility and adult rights and privileges rather than having it all fall on them on their 18th birthday.
The only real issue to me is how you handle the rights granted to married couples when you get into situations like group marriages. It looks messy and likely to cause a lot of unintended consequences. That'll take some time to work out.
Currently, the question at the top of the "American Values" section of the America Speaking Out site is this:
"Do you like erections? If so, list the 7 best things about them." - posted by Cockgobbler
I see this site being highly successful... as a source of comedic inspiration :)
Ok, just to be clear, exactly what is it that you think Obama should be doing that he's not doing about the oil pumping into the gulf? I'm just curious because I really haven't heard of any useful suggestions that haven't already been acted on, and you've got a whole group of conservatives that want to downplay the severity of the situation at every opportunity. After all, like Limbaugh said, oil is natural!
Except that's a red herring. The problem that honest liberals have with Obama's response to the disaster in the Gulf has been his reliance on BP in the response effort. Or as Shep Smith pointed out, 'BP has a worse safety record than all other companies combined, times ten'. Why was BP free to dump whatever dispersants they wanted into the Gulf? Why have they been free to restrict information to the public? Why have they been free to higher private security guards to chase the press off public beaches?
Mostly because the only other people with any ability at all to do anything about this issue don't want to get involved, and claim that BP has a better understanding of this particular well than they do and is the best group to handle it. Yes, they screwed up royally in causing the problem, but there's nobody else that can really do anymore to fix it than they can either.
As for the restriction of information and the press, I don't know what the reasons are around that, but I certainly don't think that the press should be barred from reporting on the issue. The dispersants are one of those issues where there's just not enough information to know whether it's a good thing to do or not. Whether you use them or not, you're going to have people screaming about it. I happen to suspect that they're mostly concerned with visible oil, and the dispersants are helping to minimize that. So they feel it's worthwhile because whatever harm they end up doing will likely not be as immediate or visible, and possibly a lot harder to pin on them than the oil problem. But with no real data about the effects of this kind of usage, the government was pretty much damned whether they let them do it or not.
He was a realtor -- is there anything much more sleazy than home sales and financing?
Lawyer, lobbyist, congressperson...
Medicine has advanced tremendously since then. Health issues are not the problem. If that were the problem, we'd outlaw fast food and half the stuff in the grocery store.
So once a publisher decides that a book is no longer making money, and they stop printing them, there's no way to know if interest in the book picks up again at some later date, perhaps many years later, because there aren't any around for people to buy. How do you gauge demand for something that's not available?
It disturbs me just how easily you talk about taking somebody's rights away. And frankly, that "intangible property" doesn't seem so intangible when you've spent months working on it.
How about this - take the time and effort to write a book of your own. Spend some time dealing with publishers, get it published. And THEN see what you think about how intangible it is.
Copyright isn't some inalienable right possessed by creators of works. It's a limited right granted by the government for a (supposedly) limited period of time, for the specific purpose of "promoting the progress of science and useful arts." The publishing industry has lobbied for and continually been granted extensions and expansions of the duration and scope of copyright, to the point where the public sees little benefit from the bargain in the first place. I hardly see it as some terrible thing to roll back those changes to something that is more balanced with the public interest.
Just by the fact you were able to correctly deduce the meaning of what he meant to type, this should indicate to you that he got the meaning across even with the typo. Pointing out his error just makes you look like a douche bag, please stop.
It wasn't a typo. He used a word that was obviously the wrong one in that context. Yes, it's possible to deduce his meaning despite that, but pointing out such errors can at least allow the person to get it right next time. That's not a bad thing.
Or is Olbermann being clear and referring to it as a counter of "how many days Pres. Obama has shown almost no leadership or sense of urgency about an issue that could fuck over the economy (and people) of an entire region of America for several generations"?
Ok, just to be clear, exactly what is it that you think Obama should be doing that he's not doing about the oil pumping into the gulf? I'm just curious because I really haven't heard of any useful suggestions that haven't already been acted on, and you've got a whole group of conservatives that want to downplay the severity of the situation at every opportunity. After all, like Limbaugh said, oil is natural!
Would McCain be any better? Likely not. Does that mean Obama is doing a "good job" of handling it? Not in the least. It's possible to be disappointed & upset with the behavior of your leaders in circumstances like this. Obama rightly deserves criticism for some of what he's done, regardless of whether you believe McCain would have been worse.
What actions, or lack thereof, specifically, are you criticizing?
If it actually mattered much to you, then wouldn't you do a little research to find someplace more suitable for you? If people don't care enough to even look for another place, then it must not be much of an issue.
Wrong. People have jobs, families, friends, lives. It takes time and effort to research something. Even if you really want a non-smoking bar, and it would affect your health otherwise, sometimes you just don't have the time or energy, or the inclination to make an effort to find one. People aren't always rational. Nor do they have unlimited time or resources.
And that matters why? If you're too busy or too lazy to even look for an alternative, that's your problem. It obviously isn't that important to you. Hell, if you're so busy that you can't spend ten minutes on the net looking up a smoke free bar, then when do you even have time to go to a bar?
How that justifies legislating away people's right to go to a bar that allows smoking is still something I can't fathom.
It's called democracy. You vote for representatives to represent your interests in the laws you want passed.
Ahh, the old tyranny of the majority approach, right? Anything goes as long as a majority supports it? I'd really hate to see us go down that path as a country, where we can arbitrarily choose to infringe on individual liberty for no good reason, but just because some might be somewhat inconvenienced by something.
Requiring the labeling of food doesn't remove anyone's rights anymore than requiring that food not contain harmful amounts of poisonous substances.
It removes the right of manufacturers to choose to not pay for labels for their food. You can make anything into a 'right'. Doesn't mean it's not stupid.
Food safety and labeling laws were enacted in response to many dangerous practices and deceptions on the part of the food industry. People had no way of knowing what they were getting when they bought something, which enabled all sorts of fraud and abuse on the part of the industry.
There's no such deception or lack of information when it comes to smoking. People know the risks and can make informed choices to go to such places or not.
Why should a spouse be entitled to protect the criminal activities of their partner? If a spouse were compelled to testify, I can think of two situations. The first is that he/she knew about the criminal activity and is therefore involved or failed to report the criminal activity, and can take the fifth amendment. The second is that he/she can honestly say under oath that he/she did not know of the criminal activity.
I don't know all the legal history behind it, or why it came to be that way any more than you do, so I can't really say whether there's a good reason for it any more than you can. What I can say is that it's been there for a long time and I doubt you can just hand-wave it away. Even if you did manage that, there are hundreds of other rights granted to married people that would also need to be dealt with.
That's actually legally a privilege.
One that shouldn't exist, if you ask me.
It's been established as a legal right in this country, whatever your opinion is about it. It's one that is firmly entrenched in the law, so it would need to be handled, as well as all the rest of the legal rights.
(Requiring food labeling removes the right of companies not to be interfered with. We force labeling upon food manufacturers because the increased information is worth the tradeoff of the lost freedom.)
They don't have a right not to be interfered with in the first place. They've never had such a right, as the government has the right to legislate commerce, and has since the founding of the country.
So no actual evidence of that ever happening, anywhere, right? Most parents would freak out if their kids came home saying they heard that from a teacher and it would be all over the news. I don't buy it.
What should constitute a marriage in the eyes of the government but a contractual relationship? Nothing more then an economic corporation entered into by agreeing people to share certain assets and liabilities.
That depends on what rights you're talking about, and what sort of contract the government would view as a marriage. What about your right to not be made to testify against your spouse in court? Could everyone hired by a corporation be made to enter into a marriage contract so that nobody could testify against anyone else? There's more to it than you're accounting for I think.
Like I said, everyone has the same recourse as far as school teaching goes. I don't like that groups here in Texas want to teach religion as science, but I'm not trying to get their religion outlawed.
Imperfect knowledge: If you want to go to a bar, but you only know about smokey bars (maybe because there are only smokey bars), then you will sigh and go to a smokey bar. You have no choice.
If it actually mattered much to you, then wouldn't you do a little research to find someplace more suitable for you? I did that myself several years back and found some smoke-free places where I could go play pool and not leave smelling like an ash tray. If people don't care enough to even look for another place, then it must not be much of an issue.
Imperfect competition: Maybe there is a non-smokey bar, but other qualities of a bar make it preferable to you. So you sigh and go to the bar which you otherwise prefer, despite the smoke.
How that justifies legislating away people's right to go to a bar that allows smoking is still something I can't fathom.
Irrational decision: Maybe you never really thought about bars being smokey, like you just assume they all have smoke and that's the price of admission. The thought literally never occurred to you to choose a non-smokey bar.
Same response as the last one. Makes no sense.
I relate this to food labeling. Americans like their food labels, so why did it take legislation to get them? Why didn't the market provide food labels? Think about it: if you walked into a grocery store and none of the food was labeled, would you walk out and starve to death? No, you would just buy the available food. That's a failure of market theory -- basically because market theory isn't very good at matching reality.
Requiring the labeling of food doesn't remove anyone's rights anymore than requiring that food not contain harmful amounts of poisonous substances.
It's an analogy in terms of purpose (avoiding intimidation and harassment), not in terms of mechanism of implementation. Therefore, if the analogy (concerning purpose only) is valid, it amounts to calling for anonymous petitions to be handled in much the same way secret ballots are handled, i.e. "whatever it takes to make this happen" now that we've established that it should happen for similar reasons.
So basically you think the government should be responsible for validating petitions? California is gonna be in an even bigger financial mess if that ever happens. They have petitions for everything.
Frankly, the intimidation and vandalism is unacceptable and illegal, and should be dealt with by the police. I don't see how it's really any worse than the intimidation and vandalism that gays have had to deal with though. Certainly not a reason to hide the signatures from public verification.
You might just avoid it. But others might replace the word "avoid" with the word "vandalize."
FYI I'd never vote for gay marriage. Does that make you dislike me?
Would it suddenly make a difference if I told you that I would like to see the government eliminate all references to marriage of any kind, including traditional (read: heterosexual) marriages? That is, I would like to see the complete and entire elimination of government recognition of "marriage".
The problem is that, right now, there are a huge number of legal rights conveyed by marriage (the exact number varies by state, but it's probably a LOT more than most people realize). All of these would have to be re-written to either grant the right some other way or remove it completely. Then those that are removed would have to be provided for some other way, as many of them are rather necessary for resolving all sorts of legal situations.
My point is that the concepts of "legal union" and "marriage" should be separated, as they are in quite a number of other countries.
Well Prop 8 sure as hell doesn't do that. As long as marriage is both a legal and religious union controlled by the government, then Prop 8 most certainly is oppressive to gays. Of course the bigots out there don't want to separate the two, because then some churches and other institutions would be allowed to perform marriages for gays. They obviously can't allow that to happen.
> Except the state isn't trying to force any kind of morality on them
Actually, they are, through the public education system. This may or may not be a good thing, but there are plenty of people in this country, in all parts of the political spectrum, who disagree with the morality our public schools teach. Some send their kids to private school as a result, some home-school, some just teach their kids to take what school teaches them with a grain of salt.
What are schools teaching that is so objectionable? That you shouldn't hate people for who they are? Whatever. Anyone that has a problem with what schools teach has the same options for recourse as the rest of us (unless they have a fair amount of money, in which case they have more options than most of us). I don't see how that has anything at all to do with opposing equal rights for gays. Gay people getting married doesn't affect my marriage one bit. I don't see how it affects anyone else's marriage either.
> believe they're in possession of some sort of "universal moral code" which proclaims that > being gay is wrong.
Yep, they do in fact believe that. I happen to think they're wrong, but I also happen to think that moral codes are a private matter, by and large. Various caveats apply in terms of my moral code's effect on you, etc.
It is a private thing, but they're making it into public policy. Their sacred myths are being used to deny real people their real rights under the law. That is unconscionable.
Before smoking was widely banned in bars, there were polls showing that a majority of people, indeed, wished bars were smoke free -- and yet, over 95% of bars allowed smoking. This is called market failure, and for some crazy reason some market-minded people refuse to recognize it. Now, since we have banned smoking, even more people are glad bars are smoke-free.
So why did the market fail, if indeed it did in this case? If there was a majority that wanted smoke-free bars then why weren't there more smoke-free bars opening up? How do you know it was really a market failure?
What it boils down to is that ACTA is being lobbied for and crafted by the copyright industry, who have a direct financial incentive to extend and expand copyright restrictions as much as possible. They should bear the burden of proving that such extension and expansion serves the public interest rather than just their own financial interests. Aside from some laughably bad "studies" showing ridiculous figures for damages caused by copyright infringement, what have they produced in the way of evidence to support their case? Nothing that I've seen. There have been quite a few thoughtful analyses of copyright law that have determined that more is not better, and that shorter terms would result in more innovation rather than less, and that's just the financial argument. It doesn't even get into the questions of constitutionality or natural rights.
People on /. think it is, but then I'm not convinced many people here have a good grip on copyright. A non-trivial number seem to think that any copyright is a bad thing, that it hurts the economy, etc. There is some pretty good evidence to indicate that's not the case, but they aren't interested. They have an all or nothing stance on it. As such, this treaty is automatically and "obviously" a bad thing to them, since it increases copyright.
There's plenty of evidence that contradicts the "all or nothing stance" that the copyright industry holds, claiming that more copyright is always a good thing.
Well, I'm going to go ahead and say they are perhaps not the best to make that call, due to their bias.
Huh? Did you seriously just use the bias argument to argue against people who are arguing against changes being lobbied for by industries with a direct financial stake in the outcome? Really? The opponents of ACTA are biased you say? Wow.
That doesn't mean I think they are wrong that the treaty is a bad thing, I think they are arriving at that conclusion incorrectly and that is why they might think it "obvious" when maybe it isn't.
So this is the kind of thing I like to see. Some real analysis to determine what benefits and costs it has (everything has benefits and costs) and if those result in a net benefit for the public. Looks like these experts say that no, it doesn't.
I think that is far more useful than just trying to claim "It is obvious!" When you think something is obvious, especially something complex (as any new law is) ask yourself: Is it really, truly obvious, which would mean that nearly everyone should see it, or do I think it is obvious because of my biases?
I think that the industry hasn't done a thing to prove that longer and more restrictive copyright serves the public interest, yet you, and the government, seem to accept their views as true until proven otherwise. Where's the skepticism for their claims?
And moderation is jacked as well, since yesterday. What used to be a simple process [choose the mod selection and it would be immediately applied] is now b0rked, choose the mod selectiopn and nothing happens, no update, no Apply button at the bottom of the page, nada.
Yeah, this has been pissing me off. I thought maybe I had disabled something by accident through NoScript or something at first. But no, the problem is definitely on the /. side.