So, a couple of things: 1) It really sucks when you feel crappy and everybody says it's all in your head. I'm sorry. 2) The only known influence that radiowaves and related phenomena can have on human tissue is heat, and that's only in specific circumstances (think microwave ovens). Otherwise, human being are not known to be able to detect radiation in that part of the spectrum . 3) However -- and this is interesting -- many electrical devices can generate a high pitched whine or squeal, caused when some object begins rapidly vibrating in response to a high frequency electric current. (You may have heard this sort of thing with a television set; usually it's the yoke or similar component vibrating that causes the TV to "shriek" after it warms up). A tone outside the range of human hearing of sufficient decibel level and duration *can* cause remarkably unpleasant effects in humans, including headaches, depression, itching, etc. I would hypothesize that anybody genuinely feeling such effects in response to EMF transmission is actually hypersensitive to high frequency sound waves....
There have been a number of collaborative works published in the past (though not in the precise way you're decribing). In 1969, a couple of dozen reporters at Newsweek each wrote a chapter for a novel, "Naked Came the Stranger." (it was however, a spoof designed to demonstrate that it didn't matter how lousy the book was, if it had a lot of sex in it it would sell). Author was listed as "Penelope Ashe."
A similar spoof book, Atlanta Nights, put together by a bunch of science fiction writers to demonstrate that a vanity press Publish America, would print anything, was eventually self-published through an on demand publisher, Lulu.com
But there are some advantages to this if you're a journalist. For example, in early 2001, I wrote the following:
"Now, some of my best friends are Mac crazies. And the truth is, I own three Apple computers myself. I like Apple's products. They're a little overpriced, but they're often overengineered too, and that attention to detail shows. Even so, though there was a time when there really were enormous advantages to running Apple computers over the alternatives equipped with a Microsoft operating system, I think those days are gone. The two breeds have evolved in tandem. They're fairly evenly matched today, and any advantages offered by Apple are fairly marginal. The competing manufacturers that produce Windows-based computers offer an overwhelming array of designs and options, one of which will almost certainly meet your exact needs. In contrast, the Apple universe is controlled by a single company, which explains why, for instance, until this month nobody could buy an Apple computer with a recordable CD drive built in. A federal judge has declared that Microsoft has monopoly power in the market for desktop computer operating systems, but Apple has a real monopoly in the market for Apple computers."
Response was off the charts, by letter, email, and page commentary. And I noted to myself at the time that, were I ever in a position where I needed to goose my numbers, all I'd have to do is simply recite the facts about Apple and wait for the rabid masses to descend...
No, SOX merely requires that the retention period be clearly stated in policy and that the retention period be "reasonable." In fact, that's stated in your link.
You know, I wasted quite a few years covering the Microsoft antitrust trial, and what killed these guys then was the internal email. I would have thought they'd developed policies designed to purge email more than, say, 90 days old, after that experience, but given the darwinian nature of life at Microsoft, where everybody is always attacking everybody else, I guess you have to document what you've been saying to people or you run the risk of being stuck with the blame when the tide turns. Ironic that MS is basically being beaten up by the very same "cover your butt" memos people write internally to protect themselves....
Since all seating is assigned (some airlines notably excepted) the only reason to fight to get on before anybody else is to make sure you've got space in the overheard to store your bag. I was on one flight a couple of years ago where there literally wasn't space in the overhead to store my (relatively) small computer bag (I was seated in a row that had no under seat storage, so anything i had had to go in the overhead). One flight attendant was most insistent that my laptop would have to be gate checked; I protested and another passenger finally volunteered to have his (massive) bag in the overhead gate-checked; I bought him a drink.
I think people would be more than willing to board by row, highest number first, if the airlines would just consistently enforce their rules about how much stuff you can carry aboard. In the winter, overhead space disappears instantly; people stow these huge coats up there along with their bags. And don't get me started about the jerks who throw their bags in the overhead at row 2 and then walk back through an empty plane to site in row 20. Half a dozen of these guys on the plane means everybody up front has to put their bags in the overhead towards the rear of the aircraft, then fight their way back up front through the embarking mob for seating, and THEN wait for everybody else to disembark to get to the rear of the aircraft to recover their bags....
Doesn't anybody else think it's hilarious that a P2P group is bitching about intellectual property theft? I'm just sayin'....
The Free Market is magic
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Open US GPS Data?
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
The Free Market crazies here in the States believe that nothing can possibly be produced that's better than what the free market can deliver. I'm not kidding; some people here are completely psychotic about it. I'm a big believer in free markets, but anybody with any sense understands the concepts of market failure and sets policy accordingly...
Look, you want to keep a weapon in your household to protect your family in the extremely unlikely event that civilization collapses, knock yourself out. I know a guy who has a freakin' arsenal in the basement, along with supplies for a siege. Now, I consider this harmlessly eccentric (I roll my eyes a bit and tweak him about all the effort and money he puts into preparing for something that, oh, is not going to happen in his tract house suburban neighborhood); he consider it prudent preparation against the rabid mobs of citizens that will one day roam the streets taking what they want. I consider that scenario extremely unlikely, but I don't think having lots of rifles and ammo and freeze dried food in your basement hurts anybody, although I would argue that this sort of behavior is symptomatic of making waaaaaay to much money and not having any real hobbies (or friends, for that matter).
What does do harm is paranoid rants about prying my gun from cold dead hands; just stop talking crazy, as *it is counterproductive to gun ownership.*
What I object to, and what I will continue to object to, is the constant drumbeat in the "gun culture" that the only thing that prevents the United States from becoming a military dictatorship is the 80 million gun owners in America. That's crazy talk. We don't need a revolution, what we need are rational discussions of the utility of guns in a household. Not crap about "revolution;" that scares people. Stop talking about it, for the love of God.
Not sure what you mean by ex-18, unless you're referring to something like the MK 19 grenade launcher, which, while it's certainly an effective weapon against infantry formations as well as armored carriers, isn't exactly something you can order through the mail. Plus it weighs nearly 100 pounds; heck, the ammo belt for the thing weighs about 50 pounds. In addition, it's really designed as a crew-type weapon, so any fantasy somebody has about setting this up on their porch and fighting off a squad of Marines -- which, to reiterate, is a situation that will never, ever happen -- is, again, delusional. You might as well suggest setting off a neutron bomb in your driveway, since you've got about as much chance of getting an MK 19 and ammo in your closet.
The crown tried to outlaw guns?! And that caused the Revolution?!!
I can't tell if you're pretending to be delusional and mocking the gun crazies or really believe this crap. The crown didn't need to "outlaw" guns in colonial America; until the development of mass production, guns were extremely expensive and thus rare in pre-revolutionary American households, according to "Arming America" by Michael Bellesiles. Your great-great-great grandfather did not spend all day shooting at food; he grew it himself, bartered, or bought, pretty much like you do today. Jeeze.
To the extent that the crown attempted to restrict the gun trade, it was far more concerned with entrepreneurial types selling guns and powder to the Indians in violation of the law. Guns remained a relative rarity in American homes until the time of the Civil War, when mass production using interchangeable parts brought prices down low enough for average people to buy one.
As for your claim that "all" tyrants attempt to outlaw guns, well, gee, they pretty much try to control everything, no? Hence the name "tyrant." What about all the non-totalitarian states that also restrict or ban guns? Britain comes to mind; I've spent a lot of time over there and it certainly qualifies as a free society. And what about totalitarian societies that don't ban gun ownership, like Iraq before we imposed democracy upon its much put-upon citizens. There's a place where nearly every household had at least one automatic rifle, yet it was clearly a malevolent dictatorship.
Face it, there's no causative relationship between restrictions on gun ownership and totalitarianism, and you have allowed yourself to be brainwashed into delusional thinking by the people who have created a very nice business through force feeding nonsense to the gullible. I am the proud owner of a card that gives me access to the National Rifle Association's state of the art range, but the card very clearly states that I'm not a member of the NRA. I wouldn't give those malevolent demagogues the change out of my couch.
As for the need to defend yourself against the government, again, whatever arsenal you may have in your house will not do you any good against a tactical assault by a well-trained and well-equipped military unit. But that's beside the point, as the job of people who work for the government is to protect citizens. Even goofballs like you.
Um, no I am under no such impression. I am describing the crazies, loons who think they and their 9mm are all that stands between liberty and the military turning on its own citizens. Your scenario is of course accurate; even if some overtly fascist goon somehow managed to get his hands on the levers of power and ordered the military to suppress Americans, a huge chunk of the military wouldn't show up for work the next day. That doesn't make the crazy gun-lover scenario of noble crazy gun lovers fighting off a squad of brown-shirted Rangers less crazy; in fact it makes it more crazy. So, to sum up: Crazy gun-loving people should stop saying their guns are all that stands between us and a fascist America. That's insulting to the military, its insulting to people who work in the government, and it's insulting to the electorate. It also makes it a zillion times harder for those of us who are not in fact crazy to talk about our guns to our friends, as there are so very many crazy people with guns right now that just having a gun suggests that you might in fact be crazy. Crazy people should, you know, be quiet.
I guess it's like doing good deeds. If I do something bad but can earn forgiveness from God by doing something good, why can't I do lots of good stuff and then do something really rotten with no black mark against my soul? Alas, apparently it doesn't work like that...I've saved up all those good deeds and now they're essentially worthless. What is the point of being a good person if I cannot now go out, for example, and eat a puppy without fear of divine retribution?
Excellent analogy. Because the Canadians would certainly be directly supporting the American insurgents, plotting to take over the United States for the nefarious ends of the Mounties (or, as they're known at the Department of Homeland Security, the Red Guard), plus the American military personnel would have to function in completely foreign environments, like the neighborhood down the block from the one they grew up in, together with the difficulties associated with a non-native force struggling to understand local customs as well as deal with an enormous supply chain that would force units to drive six inches to rearm.
Seriously, the suggestion that the American military machine could not completely shut down any US "revolution," if such an insane thing were to occur, is delusional thinking. But of course, it's no more delusional than thinking that we don't live in a democracy, that you can't affect change through the ballot box, that it always comes down to who has the most bullets, and that the only way to fix things is to get all my fellow believers together and form a militia to defend ourselves against the crypto-fascists who want to take our guns away. (Note: I am not saying there are no crypto-fascists in government, and I'm not saying that nobody in the government ever fantasizes about ruling us with an iron fist, I'm saying that all the other decent people in government won't let that happen, and I would argue that the recent revelations about "bad things" the current government has done or tried to do is evidence that it's pretty hard to mount a secret conspiracy to take your rights away). Hey, you want to start a revolution? Run for office.
Since I started carrying a pistol (death threats; need I mention they're from crazy gun freaks?) I've been forced (like, at the gun range) to come into contact with this bizarre subculture whose members are convinced that everything about America is a lie. It's like they think XFiles is a series of documentaries. From my perspective, if it's a choice between worrying about people who are professional bureaucrats suddenly throwing all their ideals out the window and deciding to shoot American civilians versus worryng about people who are honest to god crazy, I'd worry about the crazy.
Oh for God's sake. The American Revolution would never have happened if the people who lived here had been able to vote.
I have a concealed carry permit for work reasons, but anybody who thinks a fully automatic weapon, or a 50 caliber sniper rifle, or any other firearm you care to name, is going to hold off a squad of United States military personnel trained and equipped with enough firepower to bring down a mechanized infantry unit is freakin' delusional. Trust me, it's not fear of your 45 that keeps the government from kicking down your front door. The vast, vast, VAST majority of the men and women who work for the United States government spend most of their time trying to protect your rights, not scheming about how they can oppress you, and they don't do that because they're afraid you'll "rise up," they do it because it's their job. Get a grip. Crazies give gun ownership a bad name.
Can I stop this thread right now by going straight to the end and asking, So if you had the opportunity to go back in time and kill Hitler in 1925, you wouldn't do it?
Except that paying your only competitor to stop competing, and paying that competitor's "suppliers" (movie studios) to stop making critical assets for that competitive product (pre-recorded movies on HD-DVD) is a clear violation of antitrust laws in the United States and Europe (maybe Japan too, but I know nothing about that). This is going to be hilarious. Sony, of course, being a Japanese company, can ignore US antitrust law. As long as they're willing to stop doing business in the United States. I'm literally laughing out loud....
OK, so why should an employer be able to dictate what you say / wear on the job? That is, why should it be okay for an employer to have a policy stating that implied racial intimidation will not be tolerated on the premises? (That is, if we really want to protect free speech, shouldn't it be protected everywhere?)
Or, to embrace your position (I freely concede that I'm not being exactly fair on this, but this is clearly the implication of what you're saying), why would it be okay if Cletus, who runs a drill press at Bobco, burns a cross in his yard across the street from Bobco but it would not be okay for Cletus to drape a noose atop his black co-workers locker?
While you mentioned how the employement of Cletus might lead to boycotts by customers -- and, let me say, you bet it will -- the concern I noted was how this affects employee retention: If i have to work with Cletus, dude, I'm gonna quit. Me and all the smart people. Pretty soon Bobco will be out of business because nobody wants to work with Cletus.
Granted, this is an extreme hypothetical, as much of the behavior of Cletus, such as noose decoration, is currently prohibited by federal law.
But what I'm hearing from you is, you think those sorts of prohibitions are dangerous to free speech in general, or morally wrong, or unnecessary; what i hear you saying is we shouldn't be allowed to pass moral judgements on other people because it allows them to pass moral judgments on us. I concede the hazard you suggest, yet I think it worth the risk. But then I'm old enough to remember visiting some godforsaken town in in North Carolina as a very young boy and being shooed away from a drinking fountain by an otherwise pleasant old lady because I couldn't read the sign above that particular fountain that said, "Colored." It was days before my mortified father explained what had happened; I was bewildered. I guess i still am a little. America was a pretty freaky place not so long ago, because nobody wanted to say, "Hey, that's not right. You shouldn't be allowed to do that to people." We were all so concerned about not restricting the rights of people to do stuff like, oh, set up separate water fountains for black people and white people, that we totally ignored the fact that, hey, the white water fountain has cold, clear water and the black water fountain has murky warm water. And then we snapped out of it, passed some laws in 1964, and all that crap went away. Amazingly, the Republic still stands, and Cletus is free to mourn the fact that he has to carry his own water with him these days, because who the hell knows who drank out of the water fountain.
I don't think you and i are so far apart on this; I was a journalist for 22 years, and buddy, I am a First Amendment absolutist. But the Constitutional protections on free speech only exist to prevent government interference in what you want to say. That whole, "Then they came for me..." thing is a very noble and moving description of what happens when you let a government tell you who can speak and what they can say. There's no moral imperative that says I as a private citizen need to put up with jerks that impinge on my own moral imperatives. You might as well argue that a newspaper is obliged to print every letter to the editor, since to do otherwise is to suppress free speech.
A.J. Liebling once wrote, "Freedom of the press belongs to the man who owns one." While he was talking about the illusion of free public debate in an era when mass market media was the only access people had to vox populi, it's particularly interesting today that, essentially, anybody with access to the Internet has access to a printing press. Put up something smart or provocative enough, your words can be on everyone's lips. And you don't have to identify yourself, since the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that anonymous commentary is critical to the functioning of a democracy. So Cletus doesn't have to say, I'm Cletus and i work at bobco and here is why I think white people are racially superior. Cletus
I hear what you're saying, but I would argue that your proposed solution to this issue is impractical for a number of reasons, including that basic idea that an employer shouldn't have to fork over a paycheck every two weeks to some pervert who's espousing a political philosophy the employer personally finds profoundly offensive. The easiest targets for me to identify here would be an employee who is publicly endorsing -- but not practicing -- pedophilia, an employee who's in the paper as the new Grand Dragon for the local KKK, and a guy who's started flying a Nazi flag in his front yard and posted anti-semitic signs. In addition to the moral implications of preventing employers from escorting such freaks off their premises, if you kept those pervs on your payroll it would be pretty bad for business and you'd actually probably have a hard time keeping sane people on your payroll, cuz who wants to sit next to Mr. NAMBLA at the lunch table?
The nation has addressed your concerns on a certain level by protecting specific classes of people. That is, it's against the law to fire somebody just because they're old, for example, or because they're a woman, or because of their race. But it's difficult to protect direct public speech because you quickly trip over my examples above; that is, how can you protect the guy who wears a Hillary for President button while at the same time not protecting the guy who wants to wear a swastika to work?
I don't disagree with your assessment of his actual duties and responsibilities; a lot of guys will take that "producer" credit over anything, even a pay raise. But really, if you don't have any editorial influence, you're not a producer in my opinion. I wondered if the company would have been so freaked out about what he was writing if he didn't hold a producer title?
I completely agree with your assessment: Journalists publicly trash critical resources at their peril. At one point in my life, I wouldn't have been able to get Bill Gates to urinate on me if I was on fire, much less return a phone call on deadline.
This was less of an issue years ago when media outlets were comparatively scarce; sources needed the exposure on television and in print as much as you needed their quotes. But the explosion of 24 hours cable news and development of the Internet as a means of news / PR has tilted the playing field toward sources and left news organizations too often in thrall to people they should be skeptical about.
Slashdot Mirror
He was referring to reproducible studies.
So, a couple of things:
1) It really sucks when you feel crappy and everybody says it's all in your head. I'm sorry.
2) The only known influence that radiowaves and related phenomena can have on human tissue is heat, and that's only in specific circumstances (think microwave ovens). Otherwise, human being are not known to be able to detect radiation in that part of the spectrum .
3) However -- and this is interesting -- many electrical devices can generate a high pitched whine or squeal, caused when some object begins rapidly vibrating in response to a high frequency electric current. (You may have heard this sort of thing with a television set; usually it's the yoke or similar component vibrating that causes the TV to "shriek" after it warms up). A tone outside the range of human hearing of sufficient decibel level and duration *can* cause remarkably unpleasant effects in humans, including headaches, depression, itching, etc. I would hypothesize that anybody genuinely feeling such effects in response to EMF transmission is actually hypersensitive to high frequency sound waves....
Doesn't their health insurance cover a faraday cage?
There have been a number of collaborative works published in the past (though not in the precise way you're decribing). In 1969, a couple of dozen reporters at Newsweek each wrote a chapter for a novel, "Naked Came the Stranger." (it was however, a spoof designed to demonstrate that it didn't matter how lousy the book was, if it had a lot of sex in it it would sell). Author was listed as "Penelope Ashe."
A similar spoof book, Atlanta Nights, put together by a bunch of science fiction writers to demonstrate that a vanity press Publish America, would print anything, was eventually self-published through an on demand publisher, Lulu.com
But there are some advantages to this if you're a journalist. For example, in early 2001, I wrote the following:
"Now, some of my best friends are Mac crazies. And the truth is, I own three Apple computers myself. I like Apple's products. They're a little overpriced, but they're often overengineered too, and that attention to detail shows.
Even so, though there was a time when there really were enormous advantages to running Apple computers over the alternatives equipped with a Microsoft operating system, I think those days are gone. The two breeds have evolved in tandem. They're fairly evenly matched today, and any advantages offered by Apple are fairly marginal.
The competing manufacturers that produce Windows-based computers offer an overwhelming array of designs and options, one of which will almost certainly meet your exact needs. In contrast, the Apple universe is controlled by a single company, which explains why, for instance, until this month nobody could buy an Apple computer with a recordable CD drive built in. A federal judge has declared that Microsoft has monopoly power in the market for desktop computer operating systems, but Apple has a real monopoly in the market for Apple computers."
Response was off the charts, by letter, email, and page commentary. And I noted to myself at the time that, were I ever in a position where I needed to goose my numbers, all I'd have to do is simply recite the facts about Apple and wait for the rabid masses to descend...
No, SOX merely requires that the retention period be clearly stated in policy and that the retention period be "reasonable." In fact, that's stated in your link.
You know, I wasted quite a few years covering the Microsoft antitrust trial, and what killed these guys then was the internal email. I would have thought they'd developed policies designed to purge email more than, say, 90 days old, after that experience, but given the darwinian nature of life at Microsoft, where everybody is always attacking everybody else, I guess you have to document what you've been saying to people or you run the risk of being stuck with the blame when the tide turns. Ironic that MS is basically being beaten up by the very same "cover your butt" memos people write internally to protect themselves....
Since all seating is assigned (some airlines notably excepted) the only reason to fight to get on before anybody else is to make sure you've got space in the overheard to store your bag. I was on one flight a couple of years ago where there literally wasn't space in the overhead to store my (relatively) small computer bag (I was seated in a row that had no under seat storage, so anything i had had to go in the overhead). One flight attendant was most insistent that my laptop would have to be gate checked; I protested and another passenger finally volunteered to have his (massive) bag in the overhead gate-checked; I bought him a drink.
I think people would be more than willing to board by row, highest number first, if the airlines would just consistently enforce their rules about how much stuff you can carry aboard. In the winter, overhead space disappears instantly; people stow these huge coats up there along with their bags. And don't get me started about the jerks who throw their bags in the overhead at row 2 and then walk back through an empty plane to site in row 20. Half a dozen of these guys on the plane means everybody up front has to put their bags in the overhead towards the rear of the aircraft, then fight their way back up front through the embarking mob for seating, and THEN wait for everybody else to disembark to get to the rear of the aircraft to recover their bags....
Doesn't anybody else think it's hilarious that a P2P group is bitching about intellectual property theft? I'm just sayin'....
The Free Market crazies here in the States believe that nothing can possibly be produced that's better than what the free market can deliver. I'm not kidding; some people here are completely psychotic about it. I'm a big believer in free markets, but anybody with any sense understands the concepts of market failure and sets policy accordingly...
Look, you want to keep a weapon in your household to protect your family in the extremely unlikely event that civilization collapses, knock yourself out. I know a guy who has a freakin' arsenal in the basement, along with supplies for a siege. Now, I consider this harmlessly eccentric (I roll my eyes a bit and tweak him about all the effort and money he puts into preparing for something that, oh, is not going to happen in his tract house suburban neighborhood); he consider it prudent preparation against the rabid mobs of citizens that will one day roam the streets taking what they want. I consider that scenario extremely unlikely, but I don't think having lots of rifles and ammo and freeze dried food in your basement hurts anybody, although I would argue that this sort of behavior is symptomatic of making waaaaaay to much money and not having any real hobbies (or friends, for that matter).
What does do harm is paranoid rants about prying my gun from cold dead hands; just stop talking crazy, as *it is counterproductive to gun ownership.*
What I object to, and what I will continue to object to, is the constant drumbeat in the "gun culture" that the only thing that prevents the United States from becoming a military dictatorship is the 80 million gun owners in America. That's crazy talk. We don't need a revolution, what we need are rational discussions of the utility of guns in a household. Not crap about "revolution;" that scares people. Stop talking about it, for the love of God.
Not sure what you mean by ex-18, unless you're referring to something like the MK 19 grenade launcher, which, while it's certainly an effective weapon against infantry formations as well as armored carriers, isn't exactly something you can order through the mail. Plus it weighs nearly 100 pounds; heck, the ammo belt for the thing weighs about 50 pounds. In addition, it's really designed as a crew-type weapon, so any fantasy somebody has about setting this up on their porch and fighting off a squad of Marines -- which, to reiterate, is a situation that will never, ever happen -- is, again, delusional. You might as well suggest setting off a neutron bomb in your driveway, since you've got about as much chance of getting an MK 19 and ammo in your closet.
The crown tried to outlaw guns?! And that caused the Revolution?!!
I can't tell if you're pretending to be delusional and mocking the gun crazies or really believe this crap. The crown didn't need to "outlaw" guns in colonial America; until the development of mass production, guns were extremely expensive and thus rare in pre-revolutionary American households, according to "Arming America" by Michael Bellesiles. Your great-great-great grandfather did not spend all day shooting at food; he grew it himself, bartered, or bought, pretty much like you do today. Jeeze.
To the extent that the crown attempted to restrict the gun trade, it was far more concerned with entrepreneurial types selling guns and powder to the Indians in violation of the law. Guns remained a relative rarity in American homes until the time of the Civil War, when mass production using interchangeable parts brought prices down low enough for average people to buy one.
As for your claim that "all" tyrants attempt to outlaw guns, well, gee, they pretty much try to control everything, no? Hence the name "tyrant." What about all the non-totalitarian states that also restrict or ban guns? Britain comes to mind; I've spent a lot of time over there and it certainly qualifies as a free society. And what about totalitarian societies that don't ban gun ownership, like Iraq before we imposed democracy upon its much put-upon citizens. There's a place where nearly every household had at least one automatic rifle, yet it was clearly a malevolent dictatorship.
Face it, there's no causative relationship between restrictions on gun ownership and totalitarianism, and you have allowed yourself to be brainwashed into delusional thinking by the people who have created a very nice business through force feeding nonsense to the gullible. I am the proud owner of a card that gives me access to the National Rifle Association's state of the art range, but the card very clearly states that I'm not a member of the NRA. I wouldn't give those malevolent demagogues the change out of my couch.
As for the need to defend yourself against the government, again, whatever arsenal you may have in your house will not do you any good against a tactical assault by a well-trained and well-equipped military unit. But that's beside the point, as the job of people who work for the government is to protect citizens. Even goofballs like you.
Um, no I am under no such impression. I am describing the crazies, loons who think they and their 9mm are all that stands between liberty and the military turning on its own citizens. Your scenario is of course accurate; even if some overtly fascist goon somehow managed to get his hands on the levers of power and ordered the military to suppress Americans, a huge chunk of the military wouldn't show up for work the next day. That doesn't make the crazy gun-lover scenario of noble crazy gun lovers fighting off a squad of brown-shirted Rangers less crazy; in fact it makes it more crazy. So, to sum up: Crazy gun-loving people should stop saying their guns are all that stands between us and a fascist America. That's insulting to the military, its insulting to people who work in the government, and it's insulting to the electorate. It also makes it a zillion times harder for those of us who are not in fact crazy to talk about our guns to our friends, as there are so very many crazy people with guns right now that just having a gun suggests that you might in fact be crazy. Crazy people should, you know, be quiet.
I guess it's like doing good deeds. If I do something bad but can earn forgiveness from God by doing something good, why can't I do lots of good stuff and then do something really rotten with no black mark against my soul? Alas, apparently it doesn't work like that...I've saved up all those good deeds and now they're essentially worthless. What is the point of being a good person if I cannot now go out, for example, and eat a puppy without fear of divine retribution?
Excellent analogy. Because the Canadians would certainly be directly supporting the American insurgents, plotting to take over the United States for the nefarious ends of the Mounties (or, as they're known at the Department of Homeland Security, the Red Guard), plus the American military personnel would have to function in completely foreign environments, like the neighborhood down the block from the one they grew up in, together with the difficulties associated with a non-native force struggling to understand local customs as well as deal with an enormous supply chain that would force units to drive six inches to rearm.
Seriously, the suggestion that the American military machine could not completely shut down any US "revolution," if such an insane thing were to occur, is delusional thinking. But of course, it's no more delusional than thinking that we don't live in a democracy, that you can't affect change through the ballot box, that it always comes down to who has the most bullets, and that the only way to fix things is to get all my fellow believers together and form a militia to defend ourselves against the crypto-fascists who want to take our guns away. (Note: I am not saying there are no crypto-fascists in government, and I'm not saying that nobody in the government ever fantasizes about ruling us with an iron fist, I'm saying that all the other decent people in government won't let that happen, and I would argue that the recent revelations about "bad things" the current government has done or tried to do is evidence that it's pretty hard to mount a secret conspiracy to take your rights away). Hey, you want to start a revolution? Run for office.
Since I started carrying a pistol (death threats; need I mention they're from crazy gun freaks?) I've been forced (like, at the gun range) to come into contact with this bizarre subculture whose members are convinced that everything about America is a lie. It's like they think XFiles is a series of documentaries. From my perspective, if it's a choice between worrying about people who are professional bureaucrats suddenly throwing all their ideals out the window and deciding to shoot American civilians versus worryng about people who are honest to god crazy, I'd worry about the crazy.
Oh for God's sake. The American Revolution would never have happened if the people who lived here had been able to vote.
I have a concealed carry permit for work reasons, but anybody who thinks a fully automatic weapon, or a 50 caliber sniper rifle, or any other firearm you care to name, is going to hold off a squad of United States military personnel trained and equipped with enough firepower to bring down a mechanized infantry unit is freakin' delusional. Trust me, it's not fear of your 45 that keeps the government from kicking down your front door. The vast, vast, VAST majority of the men and women who work for the United States government spend most of their time trying to protect your rights, not scheming about how they can oppress you, and they don't do that because they're afraid you'll "rise up," they do it because it's their job. Get a grip. Crazies give gun ownership a bad name.
It took you long enough :-)
Can I stop this thread right now by going straight to the end and asking, So if you had the opportunity to go back in time and kill Hitler in 1925, you wouldn't do it?
Except that paying your only competitor to stop competing, and paying that competitor's "suppliers" (movie studios) to stop making critical assets for that competitive product (pre-recorded movies on HD-DVD) is a clear violation of antitrust laws in the United States and Europe (maybe Japan too, but I know nothing about that). This is going to be hilarious. Sony, of course, being a Japanese company, can ignore US antitrust law. As long as they're willing to stop doing business in the United States. I'm literally laughing out loud....
OK, so why should an employer be able to dictate what you say / wear on the job? That is, why should it be okay for an employer to have a policy stating that implied racial intimidation will not be tolerated on the premises? (That is, if we really want to protect free speech, shouldn't it be protected everywhere?)
Or, to embrace your position (I freely concede that I'm not being exactly fair on this, but this is clearly the implication of what you're saying), why would it be okay if Cletus, who runs a drill press at Bobco, burns a cross in his yard across the street from Bobco but it would not be okay for Cletus to drape a noose atop his black co-workers locker?
While you mentioned how the employement of Cletus might lead to boycotts by customers -- and, let me say, you bet it will -- the concern I noted was how this affects employee retention: If i have to work with Cletus, dude, I'm gonna quit. Me and all the smart people. Pretty soon Bobco will be out of business because nobody wants to work with Cletus.
Granted, this is an extreme hypothetical, as much of the behavior of Cletus, such as noose decoration, is currently prohibited by federal law.
But what I'm hearing from you is, you think those sorts of prohibitions are dangerous to free speech in general, or morally wrong, or unnecessary; what i hear you saying is we shouldn't be allowed to pass moral judgements on other people because it allows them to pass moral judgments on us. I concede the hazard you suggest, yet I think it worth the risk. But then I'm old enough to remember visiting some godforsaken town in in North Carolina as a very young boy and being shooed away from a drinking fountain by an otherwise pleasant old lady because I couldn't read the sign above that particular fountain that said, "Colored." It was days before my mortified father explained what had happened; I was bewildered. I guess i still am a little. America was a pretty freaky place not so long ago, because nobody wanted to say, "Hey, that's not right. You shouldn't be allowed to do that to people." We were all so concerned about not restricting the rights of people to do stuff like, oh, set up separate water fountains for black people and white people, that we totally ignored the fact that, hey, the white water fountain has cold, clear water and the black water fountain has murky warm water. And then we snapped out of it, passed some laws in 1964, and all that crap went away. Amazingly, the Republic still stands, and Cletus is free to mourn the fact that he has to carry his own water with him these days, because who the hell knows who drank out of the water fountain.
I don't think you and i are so far apart on this; I was a journalist for 22 years, and buddy, I am a First Amendment absolutist. But the Constitutional protections on free speech only exist to prevent government interference in what you want to say. That whole, "Then they came for me..." thing is a very noble and moving description of what happens when you let a government tell you who can speak and what they can say. There's no moral imperative that says I as a private citizen need to put up with jerks that impinge on my own moral imperatives. You might as well argue that a newspaper is obliged to print every letter to the editor, since to do otherwise is to suppress free speech.
A.J. Liebling once wrote, "Freedom of the press belongs to the man who owns one." While he was talking about the illusion of free public debate in an era when mass market media was the only access people had to vox populi, it's particularly interesting today that, essentially, anybody with access to the Internet has access to a printing press. Put up something smart or provocative enough, your words can be on everyone's lips. And you don't have to identify yourself, since the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that anonymous commentary is critical to the functioning of a democracy. So Cletus doesn't have to say, I'm Cletus and i work at bobco and here is why I think white people are racially superior. Cletus
I hear what you're saying, but I would argue that your proposed solution to this issue is impractical for a number of reasons, including that basic idea that an employer shouldn't have to fork over a paycheck every two weeks to some pervert who's espousing a political philosophy the employer personally finds profoundly offensive. The easiest targets for me to identify here would be an employee who is publicly endorsing -- but not practicing -- pedophilia, an employee who's in the paper as the new Grand Dragon for the local KKK, and a guy who's started flying a Nazi flag in his front yard and posted anti-semitic signs. In addition to the moral implications of preventing employers from escorting such freaks off their premises, if you kept those pervs on your payroll it would be pretty bad for business and you'd actually probably have a hard time keeping sane people on your payroll, cuz who wants to sit next to Mr. NAMBLA at the lunch table?
The nation has addressed your concerns on a certain level by protecting specific classes of people. That is, it's against the law to fire somebody just because they're old, for example, or because they're a woman, or because of their race. But it's difficult to protect direct public speech because you quickly trip over my examples above; that is, how can you protect the guy who wears a Hillary for President button while at the same time not protecting the guy who wants to wear a swastika to work?
I don't disagree with your assessment of his actual duties and responsibilities; a lot of guys will take that "producer" credit over anything, even a pay raise. But really, if you don't have any editorial influence, you're not a producer in my opinion. I wondered if the company would have been so freaked out about what he was writing if he didn't hold a producer title?
I share your shame, but for very different reasons.
I completely agree with your assessment: Journalists publicly trash critical resources at their peril. At one point in my life, I wouldn't have been able to get Bill Gates to urinate on me if I was on fire, much less return a phone call on deadline.
This was less of an issue years ago when media outlets were comparatively scarce; sources needed the exposure on television and in print as much as you needed their quotes. But the explosion of 24 hours cable news and development of the Internet as a means of news / PR has tilted the playing field toward sources and left news organizations too often in thrall to people they should be skeptical about.