Yeah, it does show how people judge him. Thankfully for me, he is one of my two favorite authors, mainly because of his disregard for our common sense of decency. (Isaac Asimov is my other favorite.)
The Space Tyrant series has sex throughout it, graphic to an extent. Xanth always had the "stork calling ritual". I read the book that page mentions, Tatham Mound, with the honey lube/birth control. Firefly is a full length novel that contains a section that, IIRC, is presented as something one of the characters dreams while being affected by a powerful aphrodisiac. In truth, that part was actually written by a pedophile serving time in prison.
Sex is not a taboo subject for him. No aspect of it seems off limits, as far as story line goes. I wonder if that Stross guy considers him to be worthy of praise for that.
--I just looked for mention of Piers Anthony in Stross's essay. There are a couple comments that mention one of his short stories, but I'm not sure if the comments are from Stross, a reader, or both. PA's story "In the Barn", which they attribute to a collection edited by Harlan Ellison, was actually published first in a collection of short stories by PA, called "Anthonology". I read that back in the late 1980s. Certainly doesn't get praise for not following our social mores.
People buy Brian Herbert's Dune universe re-hash books like crazy. I've read a few thousand pages of them myself. But how many people read his earlier book, Sudanna, Sudanna? Not the best storytelling ever, but one of the most charming and original.
Was that the one with one-eyed aliens that lived on a peanut? Read it 20 years ago, and strongly recommend it for this thread.
First off, unionized pencil makers are "private sector". Unionized package deliverers are "private sector". I am not specifiying private or public sector unions. I am talking about unions in general.
If you think the opposite of "union" is "private sector", then we can't have a conversation, because you don't know what the terms mean.
As to non-union employees who do shitty jobs and don't get fired, that is at the discretion of the manager/owner/boss. Other non-union employees generally don't defend lazy or shitty co-workers, because those people make the good employees have to work harder. So the good hard-working employees want to see the lazy shitbags fired.
In unions, good workers want 'job security', which means they have to defend all the lazy shitty workers, so that if a good worker is facing being fired later, they know the union will defend them as well.
Some of us would rather not have lazy shitty coworkers, and build our job security by actually doing our jobs, or even starting our own companies.
But, hey, if you want to defend lazy shitty workers so that they will defend you in turn, more power to you. Have fun doing their work for them for the rest of your working life.
I have never had this problem and I have been to stations up and down the state of California. None had gloves.
Good for you. I've pumped diesel a few times, and the pump handles usually smell of it. There must have been some diesel on them. Which meant my hands then smelled of diesel, because there were not disposable gloves to wear.
I've never had that experience with gasoline pumps. I don't know why only one fuel type would have the problem. But there it is.
Isn't being drunk at work something you can be fired for, union or otherwise?
In a rational world, yes it would be. But here in America, unions make their own rules. Senior union members would have to do much worse than being drunk to get fired. However, new union members would not necessarily have that protection. That would still be at the discretion of the union bosses though, not the employer.
There clearly has to be a balance, and just because American did it wrong doesn't mean the concept is broken.
That is true, but most of us here on/. are American living in America, so we give our slant to it. Personally, I don't reject the concept of unions, and I know what conditions they were formed to fight against, but their current manifestation in the US is not good. It's party politics, but with people's jobs.
People are suggesting throwing the whole idea out when it just needs some improvements, but that seems to be the normal polemic nature of American political "debate".
The improvements can't happen, because the unions themselves, along with their political benefactors, insist they are already perfect. The improvements would take power from the union, since it isn't likely that the needed fix is to give the union more power over the workers and employer. And any change that would limit the power of the union is treated as a deathmatch, to be fought with every available resource.
and continue to get made well in Germany with Union Labor. Also, I'm fed up with the guys putting parts on at the assembly line getting blamed for for shitty American Cars. They just tightened the bolts people.
My father worked for GM and was in the UAW. It never stopped him from telling us how bad his coworkers and fellow union members were. Stupid and lazy people are not excluded from union membership.
One of my teachers in high school also had UAW experience. One story I remember was of the spot welders that were supposed to make a dozen precise welds as the frame moved down the assembly line. Some days the workers just didn't care, and made eight welds that were near where they were supposed to be. Those cars would rattle from the missing and misplaced welds. Also, he mentioned the senior union members who came in late, left for lunch early, and never returned. Or worse, returned from lunch drunker than they were earlier.
So, for all the good than someone can point out in unions' favor, there are just as many examples of how they eventually fail. As another post points out, it is more the character of the worker than his membership in a union that determines the quality of his work.
Unions are also anti-worker because most of the ones that exist today started via mafia style tactics (threatening workers who didn't join the union and pay dues with violence, in addition to threatening business owners with violence.)
You fully realize that at the time, the business owners were using violence themselves? Not to mention ignoring safety, paying in scrip, and all sorts of wonderful conduct that gets handwaved today,
That's justification for union organizers/leaders threatening and physically attacking workers?
are you just a temporarily embarrassed millionaire?
A) Never be ashamed at having a strong opinion.
B) Not even close to a millionaire, temporary or otherwise. I work for a living thank you very much.
I've had that accusation thrown at me recently as well. It must be a new term in the college text books that vilify people who want to work for a living.
...these days it is the hyper-rich and Super-PACs that influence elections more than anything else. A candidate must kowtow to these special interests. Those depending on handouts are almost without influence. Unless it is handouts to corporations and tax cuts to the very rich that you mean.
Yes, that's why Romney's "47%" comment made not a single ripple when he said it to hyper-rich donors. And he of course, won that election with all those votes from that same 47%.
He doesn't spill it on his hands. The pump handle gets diesel on it, that then transfers to the users' hands. If using disposable gloves helps eliminate a problem, why the grief that someone figured this out?
The media gloms onto democrats because most media personalities think the democrats share their social beliefs. Whether it is true or not isn't the issue, and whether zraider prefers one party of the other also isn't the issue.
As for my sig, I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party in 2012. On another site I used to visit, about half of the two dozen regulars voted Green. The fact that I did shocked the more left wing members of the group, because everyone assumes I am some far right wing zealot.
I have no idea what you are talking about. I'd be perfectly happy with both main parties being dismantled under RICO statutes and their power going to the next 10 parties on various ballots. My sig isn't just for shits and giggles.
The caveat of "The Democrats are *slightly* less rightwing" doesn't begin to explain the policy differences between a left wing party and a right wing party.
The reason for my post above is that I have seen that argument made, that both parties are far right wing, just one is slightly less so, and it makes no sense. Unless the centrist party is the Communist Party, and the left wing parties are Anarchy and Local Warlord, there is no reasonable argument that the US Democratic Party is, in the poster's own words, "extremely right wing".
By the way, regarding my comment about ownership of the land and industry being in the hands of the people and workers, I would also be fine with that system, provided it was not corrupted by the ones in charge. If everyone had to get their hands dirty in the field and factory, living by the motto "If you don't work, you don't eat" we would be much better off as a people. The government might collapse, but I really wouldn't miss it.
The funny part of this is, zraider didn't actually say there was a difference between the parties. He only commented on the media's response to the two parties winning different elections.
I love comments like this. Tell me what is right wing about these positions: nationalizing health care right to abortion paid college tuition open borders/immigration amnesty regulation of business, to a detrimental level union empowerment higher taxes on the rich more social programs for the poor
These might not all be top line items for the US Democratic Party, but they are top line items for prominent members of the party, and solid planks in the party platform.
It seems that the only thing that can make a party left wing is if it advocates that the ownership of the land should be in the hands of the people, and ownership of industry should be in the hands of the workers.
You missed his point. In the US, the Senators were originally appointed by the state legislatures. There were no elections for the Senate. This was set in the Constitution back in the 1700s. As Rockoon says, they are supposed to represent the States, and argue for the States' rights.
In the early 1900s, an amendment was passed that changed how senators are chosen. The reasoning for the change was that the state legislatures were appointing millionaires who donated the most election money to the state legislators, of any party. So, to end the corruption, senators were to be elected by a popular vote of the people.
As we see today though, the people who want to be senators are still giving money to the people who vote for them, but now it is in the form of government handouts to more and more of the population. A candidate who promises to cut handouts won't win if many of the people in his area depend on those handouts.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, it does show how people judge him. Thankfully for me, he is one of my two favorite authors, mainly because of his disregard for our common sense of decency. (Isaac Asimov is my other favorite.)
The Space Tyrant series has sex throughout it, graphic to an extent. Xanth always had the "stork calling ritual". I read the book that page mentions, Tatham Mound, with the honey lube/birth control. Firefly is a full length novel that contains a section that, IIRC, is presented as something one of the characters dreams while being affected by a powerful aphrodisiac. In truth, that part was actually written by a pedophile serving time in prison.
Sex is not a taboo subject for him. No aspect of it seems off limits, as far as story line goes. I wonder if that Stross guy considers him to be worthy of praise for that.
--I just looked for mention of Piers Anthony in Stross's essay. There are a couple comments that mention one of his short stories, but I'm not sure if the comments are from Stross, a reader, or both. PA's story "In the Barn", which they attribute to a collection edited by Harlan Ellison, was actually published first in a collection of short stories by PA, called "Anthonology". I read that back in the late 1980s. Certainly doesn't get praise for not following our social mores.
In the original story, the ship doesn't even land on Earth. It is in a completely new solar system.
By "original story" I mean the book by Pierre Boulle.
I read one of those for school, and never touched the other. They certainly were not for entertainment.
That was a very good book. It wasn't what I was expecting, but turned out to be even better than I could have hoped. Very imaginative indeed.
People buy Brian Herbert's Dune universe re-hash books like crazy. I've read a few thousand pages of them myself. But how many people read his earlier book, Sudanna, Sudanna? Not the best storytelling ever, but one of the most charming and original.
Was that the one with one-eyed aliens that lived on a peanut? Read it 20 years ago, and strongly recommend it for this thread.
Speaking of Piers Anthony, have you read Firefly? Or Pornucopia? If not, find them.
also: http://hradzka.livejournal.com...
First off, unionized pencil makers are "private sector". Unionized package deliverers are "private sector". I am not specifiying private or public sector unions. I am talking about unions in general.
If you think the opposite of "union" is "private sector", then we can't have a conversation, because you don't know what the terms mean.
As to non-union employees who do shitty jobs and don't get fired, that is at the discretion of the manager/owner/boss. Other non-union employees generally don't defend lazy or shitty co-workers, because those people make the good employees have to work harder. So the good hard-working employees want to see the lazy shitbags fired.
In unions, good workers want 'job security', which means they have to defend all the lazy shitty workers, so that if a good worker is facing being fired later, they know the union will defend them as well.
Some of us would rather not have lazy shitty coworkers, and build our job security by actually doing our jobs, or even starting our own companies.
But, hey, if you want to defend lazy shitty workers so that they will defend you in turn, more power to you. Have fun doing their work for them for the rest of your working life.
I have never had this problem and I have been to stations up and down the state of California. None had gloves.
Good for you. I've pumped diesel a few times, and the pump handles usually smell of it. There must have been some diesel on them. Which meant my hands then smelled of diesel, because there were not disposable gloves to wear.
I've never had that experience with gasoline pumps. I don't know why only one fuel type would have the problem. But there it is.
Isn't being drunk at work something you can be fired for, union or otherwise?
In a rational world, yes it would be. But here in America, unions make their own rules. Senior union members would have to do much worse than being drunk to get fired. However, new union members would not necessarily have that protection. That would still be at the discretion of the union bosses though, not the employer.
There clearly has to be a balance, and just because American did it wrong doesn't mean the concept is broken.
That is true, but most of us here on /. are American living in America, so we give our slant to it. Personally, I don't reject the concept of unions, and I know what conditions they were formed to fight against, but their current manifestation in the US is not good. It's party politics, but with people's jobs.
People are suggesting throwing the whole idea out when it just needs some improvements, but that seems to be the normal polemic nature of American political "debate".
The improvements can't happen, because the unions themselves, along with their political benefactors, insist they are already perfect. The improvements would take power from the union, since it isn't likely that the needed fix is to give the union more power over the workers and employer. And any change that would limit the power of the union is treated as a deathmatch, to be fought with every available resource.
and continue to get made well in Germany with Union Labor. Also, I'm fed up with the guys putting parts on at the assembly line getting blamed for for shitty American Cars. They just tightened the bolts people.
My father worked for GM and was in the UAW. It never stopped him from telling us how bad his coworkers and fellow union members were. Stupid and lazy people are not excluded from union membership.
One of my teachers in high school also had UAW experience. One story I remember was of the spot welders that were supposed to make a dozen precise welds as the frame moved down the assembly line. Some days the workers just didn't care, and made eight welds that were near where they were supposed to be. Those cars would rattle from the missing and misplaced welds. Also, he mentioned the senior union members who came in late, left for lunch early, and never returned. Or worse, returned from lunch drunker than they were earlier.
So, for all the good than someone can point out in unions' favor, there are just as many examples of how they eventually fail. As another post points out, it is more the character of the worker than his membership in a union that determines the quality of his work.
Unions are also anti-worker because most of the ones that exist today started via mafia style tactics (threatening workers who didn't join the union and pay dues with violence, in addition to threatening business owners with violence.)
You fully realize that at the time, the business owners were using violence themselves? Not to mention ignoring safety, paying in scrip, and all sorts of wonderful conduct that gets handwaved today,
That's justification for union organizers/leaders threatening and physically attacking workers?
>
are you just a temporarily embarrassed millionaire?
A) Never be ashamed at having a strong opinion.
B) Not even close to a millionaire, temporary or otherwise. I work for a living thank you very much.
I've had that accusation thrown at me recently as well. It must be a new term in the college text books that vilify people who want to work for a living.
I'll toss my hat into the ring on this one. I thought it was very interesting to see what issues they had to work around, and how they did just that.
That's the very argument GP is arguing against. What's the retort to that point?
The founding fathers were wrong when they thought their descendents wouldn't turn into absolute morons within three centuries.
Let me guess, you voted for Obama twice, didn't you.
...these days it is the hyper-rich and Super-PACs that influence elections more than anything else. A candidate must kowtow to these special interests. Those depending on handouts are almost without influence. Unless it is handouts to corporations and tax cuts to the very rich that you mean.
Yes, that's why Romney's "47%" comment made not a single ripple when he said it to hyper-rich donors. And he of course, won that election with all those votes from that same 47%.
He doesn't spill it on his hands. The pump handle gets diesel on it, that then transfers to the users' hands. If using disposable gloves helps eliminate a problem, why the grief that someone figured this out?
The media gloms onto democrats because most media personalities think the democrats share their social beliefs. Whether it is true or not isn't the issue, and whether zraider prefers one party of the other also isn't the issue.
As for my sig, I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party in 2012. On another site I used to visit, about half of the two dozen regulars voted Green. The fact that I did shocked the more left wing members of the group, because everyone assumes I am some far right wing zealot.
I have no idea what you are talking about. I'd be perfectly happy with both main parties being dismantled under RICO statutes and their power going to the next 10 parties on various ballots. My sig isn't just for shits and giggles.
The caveat of "The Democrats are *slightly* less rightwing" doesn't begin to explain the policy differences between a left wing party and a right wing party.
The reason for my post above is that I have seen that argument made, that both parties are far right wing, just one is slightly less so, and it makes no sense. Unless the centrist party is the Communist Party, and the left wing parties are Anarchy and Local Warlord, there is no reasonable argument that the US Democratic Party is, in the poster's own words, "extremely right wing".
By the way, regarding my comment about ownership of the land and industry being in the hands of the people and workers, I would also be fine with that system, provided it was not corrupted by the ones in charge. If everyone had to get their hands dirty in the field and factory, living by the motto "If you don't work, you don't eat" we would be much better off as a people. The government might collapse, but I really wouldn't miss it.
No, the heart of gerrymandering is "recognizing communities and then ripping them apart electorally".
The funny part of this is, zraider didn't actually say there was a difference between the parties. He only commented on the media's response to the two parties winning different elections.
Oh, and, look at my sig.
I love comments like this. Tell me what is right wing about these positions:
nationalizing health care
right to abortion
paid college tuition
open borders/immigration amnesty
regulation of business, to a detrimental level
union empowerment
higher taxes on the rich
more social programs for the poor
These might not all be top line items for the US Democratic Party, but they are top line items for prominent members of the party, and solid planks in the party platform.
It seems that the only thing that can make a party left wing is if it advocates that the ownership of the land should be in the hands of the people, and ownership of industry should be in the hands of the workers.
You missed his point. In the US, the Senators were originally appointed by the state legislatures. There were no elections for the Senate. This was set in the Constitution back in the 1700s. As Rockoon says, they are supposed to represent the States, and argue for the States' rights.
In the early 1900s, an amendment was passed that changed how senators are chosen. The reasoning for the change was that the state legislatures were appointing millionaires who donated the most election money to the state legislators, of any party. So, to end the corruption, senators were to be elected by a popular vote of the people.
As we see today though, the people who want to be senators are still giving money to the people who vote for them, but now it is in the form of government handouts to more and more of the population. A candidate who promises to cut handouts won't win if many of the people in his area depend on those handouts.
How about the district formerly represented by Barney Frank in Massachusetts? It even has the gerrymander look to it.
http://sisu.typepad.com/.a/6a0...
Oh no. He shags the sober sheep too.