Really well put. What are we defending if we throw away the core principles? Our elected AND appointed officials all take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. Clearly, killing a citizen without due process in a court of law violates that Constitution. Who watches the watchers (if not US)?
Musk really has the vision and guts to push us in these areas that have languished for years (private space travel, electric cars, and now domestic electric power generation), and seems to be making them working concerns. If he gets even one past the tipping point, it's a lifelong career's worth of accomplishment. He may get the hat trick! Maybe we should pay attention to his alternative to the California high speed rail project...
I think much of the problem with our current system (and has been seen in the "Occupy" movement as it has grown) is that it doesn't take into account the hard wired limit in our brains when we try to interact with more than about 150 people (as discussed by Malcolm Gladwell in "Tipping Point" for example). Our "representatives" are not accountable or responsive.
My own experience with juries (I have served on four now) is that it is a system that really does work the vast majority of the time. I have found that people who serve on one are not exactly happy to do it, but they understand why they need to, they understand the stakes and consequences, and are generally very conscientious. I would much rather stake my freedom or even my life on the jury system rather than one based on a judge alone. If you have served as well, you may well agree with this point. If so, why does that democracy work and our broader one not? I think a big reason is the rule of 150.
Why not organize at the lowest level in groups (neighborhoods) of no more than 150, then that group selects one representative to serve at the next level of government also limited to 150 representatives, and so on to a third level (which would represent in total no more than 3,375,000 people - roughly equivalent to a state). At each level, the rule of 150 is preserved so that people could actually get to know one another and at least have a chance to work together. Accountability is baked in. Provide a "bill of rights" to ensure the inviolable ones are preserved. Establish the scope of authority so that the first level takes care of neighborhood issues, the second level schools, local roads, zoning, etc. The higher level groups would be unauthorized to establish rules that are within the scope of the lower level (something important that was completely lost in our system somehow).
It would at least be better than the system we have now.
I notice that Time Tunnel is missing. I don't think the list is restricted to good episodes and movies. Maybe including that would make the visualization too messy.
You are ignoring the cost to store the nuclear waste, which every nuclear advocate seems to ignore. I'm not interested in kicking the can down to the next generation (or 10!).
I just happen to have a serious and concrete suggestion.
http://www.cs.ucr.edu/~eamonn/iSAX/iSAX.html
The referenced research paper includes experiments in which significant yet subtle changes in large time series data, such as a full night of EKG recording, can be identified two orders of magnitude faster than previous methods.
The approach is relatively simple (the paper isn't heavy on math), and should scale very nicely to a parallel processing attack on the SETI signal detection problem.
I always wondered if they could assemble enough anti-matter to perform a Cavendish experiment if it would prove to be repulsive to regular matter gravitationally. I know the current theory doesn't call for it, but hey, that's why we do the experiments. Very symmetrical (in comparison to the electrostatic force equation), and very cool, if it turned out to be true.
On the other hand, somebody should stop these fools now. The next thing they will want to do is bottle the stuff, and regular nukes would be toys in comparison.
As a long ago reformed COBOL programmer, I know that there is NOTHING you can do in COBOL that you can't do faster and in a more easily maintained manner in an object-oriented language. If the legacy platform only supports COBOL, then you are still better off changing platforms. The stuff that hasn't changed still exists because it is managed by a bunch of cowards who are only interested in punching the clock until retirement.
To paraphrase Robert Heinlein, democracy is based upon the assumption that a thousand people together will make a wiser decision than one (like the decision to watch American Idle instead of doing almost anything else). A dictatorship is based upon the opposite assumption (don't like that assumption much either).
In any case, I always thought that we should have some form of more direct input. What if congress could set the tax rate and provided 100 general categories for budget areas the revenue could be spent within (defense, highways, health care, education, etc.), and we the people could directly prioritize these categories. This direct voting would be binding on congress, and would be used to determine how much overall is allocated to each area. Office of Management and Budget would need to certify that a given expenditure fell within a spending category.
What would be the downside of this kind of direct democracy?
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Really well put. What are we defending if we throw away the core principles? Our elected AND appointed officials all take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. Clearly, killing a citizen without due process in a court of law violates that Constitution. Who watches the watchers (if not US)?
Musk really has the vision and guts to push us in these areas that have languished for years (private space travel, electric cars, and now domestic electric power generation), and seems to be making them working concerns. If he gets even one past the tipping point, it's a lifelong career's worth of accomplishment. He may get the hat trick! Maybe we should pay attention to his alternative to the California high speed rail project...
I think much of the problem with our current system (and has been seen in the "Occupy" movement as it has grown) is that it doesn't take into account the hard wired limit in our brains when we try to interact with more than about 150 people (as discussed by Malcolm Gladwell in "Tipping Point" for example). Our "representatives" are not accountable or responsive.
My own experience with juries (I have served on four now) is that it is a system that really does work the vast majority of the time. I have found that people who serve on one are not exactly happy to do it, but they understand why they need to, they understand the stakes and consequences, and are generally very conscientious. I would much rather stake my freedom or even my life on the jury system rather than one based on a judge alone. If you have served as well, you may well agree with this point. If so, why does that democracy work and our broader one not? I think a big reason is the rule of 150.
Why not organize at the lowest level in groups (neighborhoods) of no more than 150, then that group selects one representative to serve at the next level of government also limited to 150 representatives, and so on to a third level (which would represent in total no more than 3,375,000 people - roughly equivalent to a state). At each level, the rule of 150 is preserved so that people could actually get to know one another and at least have a chance to work together. Accountability is baked in. Provide a "bill of rights" to ensure the inviolable ones are preserved. Establish the scope of authority so that the first level takes care of neighborhood issues, the second level schools, local roads, zoning, etc. The higher level groups would be unauthorized to establish rules that are within the scope of the lower level (something important that was completely lost in our system somehow).
It would at least be better than the system we have now.
I notice that Time Tunnel is missing. I don't think the list is restricted to good episodes and movies. Maybe including that would make the visualization too messy.
You are ignoring the cost to store the nuclear waste, which every nuclear advocate seems to ignore. I'm not interested in kicking the can down to the next generation (or 10!).
I just happen to have a serious and concrete suggestion. http://www.cs.ucr.edu/~eamonn/iSAX/iSAX.html The referenced research paper includes experiments in which significant yet subtle changes in large time series data, such as a full night of EKG recording, can be identified two orders of magnitude faster than previous methods. The approach is relatively simple (the paper isn't heavy on math), and should scale very nicely to a parallel processing attack on the SETI signal detection problem.
I always wondered if they could assemble enough anti-matter to perform a Cavendish experiment if it would prove to be repulsive to regular matter gravitationally. I know the current theory doesn't call for it, but hey, that's why we do the experiments. Very symmetrical (in comparison to the electrostatic force equation), and very cool, if it turned out to be true. On the other hand, somebody should stop these fools now. The next thing they will want to do is bottle the stuff, and regular nukes would be toys in comparison.
As a long ago reformed COBOL programmer, I know that there is NOTHING you can do in COBOL that you can't do faster and in a more easily maintained manner in an object-oriented language. If the legacy platform only supports COBOL, then you are still better off changing platforms. The stuff that hasn't changed still exists because it is managed by a bunch of cowards who are only interested in punching the clock until retirement.
To paraphrase Robert Heinlein, democracy is based upon the assumption that a thousand people together will make a wiser decision than one (like the decision to watch American Idle instead of doing almost anything else). A dictatorship is based upon the opposite assumption (don't like that assumption much either). In any case, I always thought that we should have some form of more direct input. What if congress could set the tax rate and provided 100 general categories for budget areas the revenue could be spent within (defense, highways, health care, education, etc.), and we the people could directly prioritize these categories. This direct voting would be binding on congress, and would be used to determine how much overall is allocated to each area. Office of Management and Budget would need to certify that a given expenditure fell within a spending category. What would be the downside of this kind of direct democracy?