I work at a printing press in NY (Outside of the city in Nassau on Long Island) and my boss has an iphone. A co-worker of mine also had an iphone for a while before he gave it up for a cheaper plan. Maybe the refusal to sell only applies in the city proper?
To make decisions? I can predict what my father will order in a restaurant and do it far more in advance than seven seconds but I don't see how that detracts from his ability to decide what he wants to eat. So he likes bacon and actively chooses to have some whenever he's in a restaurant. Does the fact that I know this prove that he can't decide for himself? Likewise, does the fact that a piece of machinery "know" I like to and do click a button with my left hand prove I can't decide for myself which hand to use?
I've known for a long time now that I use my brain to think and make decisions. Were the people who are involved with the free will debate not aware of this? Or do their definition of free will state that the decision making process must not involve using one's brain at all?
I love how Scott Adams has managed to turned part of the scientific community into brain-dead scandalous attention whores with his bullshit about the non-existence of free will. He doesn't even define it, and people are scrambling to prove him correct.
I'm not on FioS, but I am currently on Verizon's $18 plan and they do cap bandwidth on it. Every month after a certain threshold my connection goes to shit. I do a lot of World of Warcraft and it tends to be bandwidth intensive. I didn't know what it was at first, so I troubleshooted the connection with Blizzard and with Verizon and both sides insist it's fine on their end. But then I read an article researching the issue and noticed someone else who had connection problems and Verizon admitted to slowing his connection down because he was using too much of the bandwidth. It struck me as making a lot of sense, because both times before, when I had bad latency issues, I'd stop playing for a month. When I get back the connection would be fine again. This has happened on and off since TBC was released in February.
I spent last night going through their terms and conditions as well as their acceptable use clause and couldn't find anything about this. I've read the EFF article on how to detect packet tampering but I'm not interested in stripping my computer naked to the world wide web just to confirm what I'm 99% sure to be true. Instead, I called up Time Warner today and will switch to cable.
Them's the breaks.
The assumption you are making here, I think, is that a person is worth the same amount to society no matter how old he is, when conventional wisdom states otherwise. Children, as assets, are worth more (or believed to be worth more) because their potential to contribute and change society is higher than adults. In fact, as an individual grows older, his value increases until it peaks (depending on how useful it is, the peak may occur at any time between 18 to 99 years old) and then the value drops. Banning cigarettes from minors, then, could be viewed as premium on the insurance society buys to reduce the likely-hood of the assets to spoil pre-peak. We pay more to insure a brand new car than one that's been around the block, and this is really the same thing.
My argument raises a very obvious question, and that is if I'm right why do we have social welfare programs for the elderly? And the answer to that is, social security as well as other similar programs were put in place as incentives to keep our citizenry productive. Telling people they won't be discarded once they become useless boosts morale and helps maintain their value as assets. Promising future advantages for current yields is a cheap and inexpensive (in the short-term) way to boost productivity. It is especially effective when competition is steep for labor. Why pay through the nose for a good worker when you can offer intangible benefits that may or may not materialize? The idea is, you want do do as much promising as possible without actually following through on it, which is why when social security was enacted, the retirement age was so close to the life-expectancy age.
Anyway, getting back to your argument, if we look at the smoking ban as a premium society pays on its insurance for the citizenry, then age 18 is when we perceive the first depreciation of that asset and the extra we pay is removed.
I think it's fairly obvious that Bush's unauthorized wiretapping has dug up enough dirt on current Democrat House members that he could basically blackmail them to get this sort of thing passed. Well, things could be worse. Cheney could be forcing an ultimatum down Congress against Iran & North Korea, or diverting funds from the Treasury to his Big Corporation buddies...
Just another conspiracy theory, but it makes sense, no?
I've always believed that aliens do exist and that they're aware of us and have merely cloaked themselves by removing themselves from our perception. Logically, it'd make sense. The easiest way to do prevent primitive civilizations from accessing technology they're unprepared for is to hide it from them. And the best way to do it is to prevent them from noticing anything of the sort exists in the first place. Wouldn't you agree that if you don't want someone to read a book, the best way to do it is to gouge the person's eyes out and then not mention the book at all? All of that matter that we know is out there but can't perceive, the fact that quantum particles alter their behavior when we observe them, both evidence that my conspiracy theory may hold weight.
It'd be an awesome test too to see if a civilization is worthy of joining the Universe. If we crack the cloak before the planet gets annihilated we deserve to be recognized. If we don't, we're little better than sludge anyway.
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I work at a printing press in NY (Outside of the city in Nassau on Long Island) and my boss has an iphone. A co-worker of mine also had an iphone for a while before he gave it up for a cheaper plan. Maybe the refusal to sell only applies in the city proper?
To make decisions? I can predict what my father will order in a restaurant and do it far more in advance than seven seconds but I don't see how that detracts from his ability to decide what he wants to eat. So he likes bacon and actively chooses to have some whenever he's in a restaurant. Does the fact that I know this prove that he can't decide for himself? Likewise, does the fact that a piece of machinery "know" I like to and do click a button with my left hand prove I can't decide for myself which hand to use? I've known for a long time now that I use my brain to think and make decisions. Were the people who are involved with the free will debate not aware of this? Or do their definition of free will state that the decision making process must not involve using one's brain at all? I love how Scott Adams has managed to turned part of the scientific community into brain-dead scandalous attention whores with his bullshit about the non-existence of free will. He doesn't even define it, and people are scrambling to prove him correct.
I'm not on FioS, but I am currently on Verizon's $18 plan and they do cap bandwidth on it. Every month after a certain threshold my connection goes to shit. I do a lot of World of Warcraft and it tends to be bandwidth intensive. I didn't know what it was at first, so I troubleshooted the connection with Blizzard and with Verizon and both sides insist it's fine on their end. But then I read an article researching the issue and noticed someone else who had connection problems and Verizon admitted to slowing his connection down because he was using too much of the bandwidth. It struck me as making a lot of sense, because both times before, when I had bad latency issues, I'd stop playing for a month. When I get back the connection would be fine again. This has happened on and off since TBC was released in February. I spent last night going through their terms and conditions as well as their acceptable use clause and couldn't find anything about this. I've read the EFF article on how to detect packet tampering but I'm not interested in stripping my computer naked to the world wide web just to confirm what I'm 99% sure to be true. Instead, I called up Time Warner today and will switch to cable. Them's the breaks.
The assumption you are making here, I think, is that a person is worth the same amount to society no matter how old he is, when conventional wisdom states otherwise. Children, as assets, are worth more (or believed to be worth more) because their potential to contribute and change society is higher than adults. In fact, as an individual grows older, his value increases until it peaks (depending on how useful it is, the peak may occur at any time between 18 to 99 years old) and then the value drops. Banning cigarettes from minors, then, could be viewed as premium on the insurance society buys to reduce the likely-hood of the assets to spoil pre-peak. We pay more to insure a brand new car than one that's been around the block, and this is really the same thing.
:-)
My argument raises a very obvious question, and that is if I'm right why do we have social welfare programs for the elderly? And the answer to that is, social security as well as other similar programs were put in place as incentives to keep our citizenry productive. Telling people they won't be discarded once they become useless boosts morale and helps maintain their value as assets. Promising future advantages for current yields is a cheap and inexpensive (in the short-term) way to boost productivity. It is especially effective when competition is steep for labor. Why pay through the nose for a good worker when you can offer intangible benefits that may or may not materialize? The idea is, you want do do as much promising as possible without actually following through on it, which is why when social security was enacted, the retirement age was so close to the life-expectancy age.
Anyway, getting back to your argument, if we look at the smoking ban as a premium society pays on its insurance for the citizenry, then age 18 is when we perceive the first depreciation of that asset and the extra we pay is removed.
Hope this helps.
I think it's fairly obvious that Bush's unauthorized wiretapping has dug up enough dirt on current Democrat House members that he could basically blackmail them to get this sort of thing passed. Well, things could be worse. Cheney could be forcing an ultimatum down Congress against Iran & North Korea, or diverting funds from the Treasury to his Big Corporation buddies... Just another conspiracy theory, but it makes sense, no?
I've always believed that aliens do exist and that they're aware of us and have merely cloaked themselves by removing themselves from our perception. Logically, it'd make sense. The easiest way to do prevent primitive civilizations from accessing technology they're unprepared for is to hide it from them. And the best way to do it is to prevent them from noticing anything of the sort exists in the first place. Wouldn't you agree that if you don't want someone to read a book, the best way to do it is to gouge the person's eyes out and then not mention the book at all? All of that matter that we know is out there but can't perceive, the fact that quantum particles alter their behavior when we observe them, both evidence that my conspiracy theory may hold weight. It'd be an awesome test too to see if a civilization is worthy of joining the Universe. If we crack the cloak before the planet gets annihilated we deserve to be recognized. If we don't, we're little better than sludge anyway.