Schools don't tend to work very efficiently splitting local populations, so if there is any competition, the weaker is quickly eliminated.
... and replaced by more capable management, when a profit margin is realizable in an unsaturated market. Really, I should not have to quote from The Wealth of Nations on Slashdot. This is kindergarten Econ. Don't make me do it.;-)
The parents don't want to move just to try out other schools further away, and neither they nor the student want longer traveling time between home and school.
A lot of students seem not to want to go to school at all. Those are all problems to solve within, not among, families. Obviously, commutes will be more challenging for some than for others. In the suburban areas where I've lived, I have always been within easy walking distance of at least two primary schools, and by secondary school ages "everybody drives" or carpools with somebody who does. Bicycles and buses also exist. A slightly longer commute seems a fair trade for actually learning something at school, from what I read about the state of the education system. Or, were all the problems cited in the justifications for "No Child Left Behind" pure fabrications?
Schools essentially have a captive consumer base, so there isn't the same incentive to excel.
That is a result of the status quo, not an argument for it.
No standard set means that getting an American student is a bit of a pot-shot, and often not worth the risk.
But I'm not suggesting "no standard set," I'm suggesting that the free market is more responsive to the same forces by which you want standards set [ proficiency, productivity, in short employability of graduates ] than adding to existing education expenses separate surveys asking what employers want, hoping people trained only in the fields of education & politics have sufficient vocabulary in industries in which they've never worked to understand the survey results, etc. ad nauseum. Private, regional authorities set standards for colleges and universities, and they do it very well.
Some of your arguments about the feasibility of competition among primary schools, I can partially accept. I definitely -- eagerly -- concede that competition will not be maximally ruthless, as that requires such impossibilities as "perfect information" and perfectly equal availability to all consumers of all competing products. Increasing the degree that free market forces are allowed to operate does not guarantee nor even imply textbook-perfect capitalism. Still, some competition provides those advantages to some degree, which is always a greater degree than in a market that's officially held captive, by statute. Always. Like any ideal, laissez-faire capitalism is a better situation than will ever be seen in reality. The operation of its principles is always a matter of degree, and there are always externalities preventing 100% realization of capitalist competitiveness. But imposing more externalities than the unavoidable ones such as those imposed by the finite speed of light and non-omniscience of suppliers and purchasers, is generally harmful to society, especially the poor. Heritage Foundation rank of countries by economic freedom I don't know have studies specifically comparing levels of market competition competition in schools, so I have to do the best I can, which in this case is to point out the general tendency of "economic freedom" to correlate with fewer cases of abject poverty.
The idea that some general, useful minimum requirements for primary & secondary education could not be just as easily [ much more easily, I'd wager, given the more limited scope and lesser complexity of the subject matter ] defined by private enterprise for primary & secondary education as for colleges and universities, I'm
Free market tends not to work so well with primary/secondary education. Free market tends not to have been permitted in primary/secondary education. So to say it "tends not to work so well with primary/secondary education" may be factually correct, but for a reason which does not tend to support your claim of its inherent inability to work as I describe.
With universities, the student can live separately to his/her parents, so there's a lot more competition for the students. With primary/secondary schools, the student is lucky to have a real choice between two or three schools. I have no personal experience, but I have heard of "boarding schools" for primary/secondary education. I don't suggest that every family send their kids off to boarding schools at 6; the point of mentioning them is that they are competitive, and those who use them seem to be satisfied. Also, if I understand correctly, it's not unheard of that for different ideological reasons or gender-based admission requirements or preference for different varieties of plaid, one family sends their kid a couple hundred miles southwest to a boarding school in an area where one or more families send their own kids an equal distance northeast. Scale the implied incomes to lower & middle incomes, and the distances to points within the same neighborhood, suburb and small/medium town, and again I see no insurmountable obstacles that amount to any reason why it should be expected not to work.
My impression is that a lot of college students also only "have a real choice between two or three schools" -- University of Blah, Blah State University, and sometimes Blah A&M and/or Blah Technical Blah. Even public tuitions are getting more difficult for families that aren't already in the top percentile of wealth, so for most, private tuitions are totally out of the question. But in primary & secondary education, the price of education per student is consistently less on average, while performance is consistently higher than their public counterparts. If all private schools were religious, we could chalk the differences up to some cultural or moral attributes, but since the same holds true for non-religious schools, I know of no other plausible hypothesis for the discrepancy than the relative amounts of pressure from the free market.
[more to follow in separate post]
Since Bush has taken office, he has made me almost ashamed to admit where I'm from. Good, unless you're from Texas. Then, why only "almost" ashamed?
That doesn't mean that I'm willing to sit idly by while some idiot starts calling people "Americans" as if it were an insult, merely because he doesn't agree with the point that he was making. Bah! Ask Britney Spears about what fun it is to be #1. In an international forum, "representing" the United States is about the same thing as being Britney Spears in a camera store. Nothing to do about it but get used to it.
Sorry, I don't mean to keep picking at nits, I just can't help myself sometimes. No prob. Just let me know if you find a patch or gum for that.
But there's a difference between criticizing America and bashing it, and johannesg catapulted clear across the line. I've never really considered myself a "patriot", but I used to feel that in spite of it's flaws I was fortunate to live in one of the greatest countries in the world. Ha-ha! What did you say about picking at nits?
That doesn't mean that I'm willing to sit idly by while some idiot starts calling people "Americans" as if it were an insult, merely because he doesn't agree with the point that he was making. What if smart people start considering "Americans" an insult? We already import most of our cars & research scientists. WTF is so smart about either?
all form, no substance
Logic comes before the math and binds it. Qualify logically, Quantify mathematically. You first. Start with this:
I am concerned that people are becoming dismissive of general relativity when it's clear many do not understand its ramifications.
Which people, and which of the ramifications of general relativity do you claim we do not understand?
It's nice to see some common ground. Here's my first disagreement with that reply:
My worry is that if the national government gets too small, the kind of clashes of power seen in 1995 will become more frequent and even worse. "More frequent and even worse" than a handful since the Constitution, & totally inconsequential? Because, that's what it was to me.
Fifty states, each with their own population, their own values, and their own agendas, trying to wrangle agreements between each other, trying to decide on compatibility of their standards (e.g. education). United States colleges & universities have their "standards" set by regional, not federal authorities, and they all end up compatible enough for corporate work. Why shouldn't we expect that free market forces will be just as useful to primary & secondary education?
If they are not, why should you & I excuse them from accountability? We still have to hold them accountable, it's just that we don't have to be paranoid about accountability failing to the point where we cripple our country. "Cripple our country"? Who ever said anything about "cripple our country"? So, back to what you said about the "sweet spot," you seem pretty reasonable so far, and I'm having trouble understanding why you and I believe that the same country [in which we both live?], is on opposite sides of the "sweet spot," the nature of which we're defining so similarly. Does it also annoy you when you find instances when truth is stranger than fiction?
gr8scot: "Mongoose wouldn't need to "randomly assume" anything" You didn't even get the recipient of the reply right. I wasn't replying to Mongoose, I was (sort of) defending him. Three points in your reply, and everyone of them is outright wrong. That might be a record even for Slashdot! Ok, probably not, but it's stil pretty bad. Bloody hell, you're right! I meant johannesg wouldn't need to randomly assume anything, not Mongoose ["Disciple", which I also forgot].
To the rest of your correct points, my only excuse is that I gave too much latitude to johannesg for these very salient points:
Does anyone honestly believe that Apple back then can be compared to Microsoft now? Or that the lies perpetrated by Bush, that led to the invasion of two countries and hundreds of thousands killed, are comparable to those of Clinton about getting a blowjob? Does anyone think it is smart or witty to make such comparisons? Half-assed defense of my half-assed previous argument, which you pretty well demolished, btw:
Fair point (though wrong. We don't "misspell" color, we just spell it differently. Fine, then I didn't "misuse" observation, I just used it differently.
"They seems to toss out the 1st and 4th all the time if it 'digital information', like its something different."
Strange how this seems to be working out. On one hand, digital info is considered to be real, physical property when it comes to copyright and patents, then on the other hand when it comes to emails, internet traffic, phone calls...it all seems fair game. WTF? There are too many effete geeks who have computers & piles of peripherals, and too few who have guns. Duh.
Also annoyed kids, maybe? There are a lot more Chinese than Estonians. Maybe it all originates in one little shit-hole village. I don't know. http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/17/1936236
And even if not, maybe national security information doesn't belong on public networks, including the Internet. Just a thought.
This is entirely unbalanced strategically by the fact that government officials earn their supper by the actions of observing, whereas citizens have to earn their supper as well as using secondary time to observe the government officials. Most of us work only 8-12 hours per day. That leaves 12-16 available, minus 1.5-3 for sleep. Kidding. Nevertheless, count me in.
Plus the fact that they have the infrastructure and funding already in place in many cases. OK, but they built the Internet, too, and made it available. Adding one database, and copying it or parts of it to many clients, analogously to BitTorrent, should be challenging in the fun sense, not an enormous hassle.
Come to think of it, if we did that wouldn't we become an alter-government by necessity just to be able to coordinate the operation I'm just not thinking of such a big operation, I guess.
My preference would be to bite the bullet, invest in better quality (and more extensive) education for a much larger percentage of society, invest in social solutions to common problems (such as universal healthcare but to an equal or superior standard to the private healthcare that currently exists), and see what people do as a result. Absolutely no sane person would ever consider giving me the authority or the resources to try this, and I can't blame them. I sure as hell wouldn't vote for me, even if my ideas would work. Well said! A sane person might, however, take away the authority from those who already have it but haven't done what you outlined, in order to lower everybody's taxes, "and see what people do as a result."
A loss of privacy could indeed lead to a loss of security, but a scam can equally well have the effect of you spending time to correct things (ie: it spends your time) and costing others - such as banks - money. Your security ends up unaffected, but only as a result of a transfer of the damage to time and money. What do you want to bet me, on equally likely?
You're blowing out of proportion everything I'm saying. Considering that the essence of our disagreement is on matters of proportional importance of the government's scale, I'll leave my direct rebuttal to that summary for later.
I think you're using the word "damaging" as I would use "totally autocratic." Damaging as in curtailing essential liberties, not "totally autocratic". But at least we both consider it negative. I agree, that much agreement on what is "damaging" is a good start for a constructive conversation.
I'm reminded of the saying, from Mussolini's Italy, "at least the trains are on time," or something to that effect. That's complete bullshit. I'm not at all saying we should accept dictatorship for something as trivial as the trains, I'm saying we shouldn't be so paranoid about the astronomically low odds that a large government may pose a threat to our freedoms. Large governments allow smoother operation of public services (yes, including trains), and they don't automatically become totalitarian as soon as they reach a certain size. I'm not trying to argue that large governments "automatically become totalitarian as soon as they reach a certain size." But, for any type of representative government, the danger of abuse after a poor electoral choice increases with the size of government.
Do you remember "the federal government shutdown of 1995"? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_government_shutdown_of_1995 It was fascinating to me how I didn't notice it in any way except that it was on the news. I really started taking small-government arguments seriously then, and based on that direct experience, it is impossible for me to agree that in general, large government is correlated to smoother societies. More recently, I've noticed that the various arguments, especially from Alberto Gonzalez when speaking to the Senate, have borne little resemblance to reality. Specifically, the claims of a need for greater surveillance privileges with less court oversight. Nothing in the report of the 911 Commission, or any other publicly-available document supports that conclusion. It's possible that some classified documents do, but I don't run around making assumptions that the right to spy on me is "for a good reason" without any information whatsoever on which to support that reasoning. If, in secret meetings with military and national security subcommittee members, whose minutes are classified, it is decided on the basis of genuine facts that warrant-less wiretaps are justified, so be it. On the basis of the information available to me, I don't like the amount of power a clown like GWB has at his fingertips. Heaven forfend, we're ever subjected to a C- college student, from a Big Eight instead of Ivy League school, with, say, a history of heroin & meth abuse instead of alcohol & the occasional cocaine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush_substance_abuse_controversy Admittedly, the latter is a bit of unproven speculation. Admittedly.
How would you like for me -- "some crack-pot on the Internet" to you, I'm guessing -- to have the power to make that accusation, wiretap your conversations, and piece them together, until I can make some baseless bullshit like "GWB used cocaine" stick? I admit, in the sense of your statistical argument about general totalitarianism and the loss of all rights, it's far-fetched -- in any particular case -- but I don't feel like taking on faith that everybody in the Bureau is an Angel. If they are angels, why should they resist accountability to the Judicial Branch? If they are not, why should you & I excuse them from accountability?
Sure, but I'm still not convinced that a big government is all that capable either. Sure, larger numbers help, but it also takes bigger, riskier, more audacious orchestration to do anything damaging. I think you're using the word "damaging" as I would use "totally autocratic."
So many flapping lips to shut up, y'know? Yes, I think I'm beginning to know what you mean. As long as it's only a few "flapping lips" to shut up at a time, you're not calling it "damaging."
Sure, a smaller government makes it less likely that any such damaging abuse of power would ever occur, but the benefits probably don't match the benefits of having a larger government with decent oversight over national affairs. I'm reminded of the saying, from Mussolini's Italy, "at least the trains are on time," or something to that effect.
Agreed, but I personally believe that there is a threshold for the amount power gained before any benefits are seen, and that the threshold is very large and difficult to reach. Odd use of the word "benefits."
You pretty much said it there - deformations, changing shape. If gravity actually is the result of the necessity of something like general relativity, which is what I am trying show, then why expand theory in a different direction to say gravity is a force? It affects the momentum of massive objects. The term for the cause of those effects is "force," which, not entirely by serendipity, is also considerably more concise than "the results of deformations to space-time" and does not obscure the similarity with other forces; effects on particles' momenta. Natural philosophy, without quantification, allowed the Greeks who practiced it to be overrun by the Roman savages. You seem to be in favor of a repeat.
The logic is there. How could it be possible to sustain a universe with causality without a constraint on the apparent speed of information ? its not possible. Why ? because I am claiming something similar to the anthropic principle, without the humans. The an-anthropic principle? That actually asymptotically approaches humor!
I am saying that if you believe in this universe holding a high degree of stability, then it follows that if any point in space could be observed within equal time, it would fail to present causality because there is no order, no chain of events, no apparent reason to any observation. An event could well be tied to any other point in space, you couldn't possibly know which other event was the real cause of this event. One ring to rule them all, and in the darkness...
Logic comes before the math and binds it. Qualify logically, Quantify mathematically. You first. Start with this:
I am concerned that people are becoming dismissive of general relativity when it's clear many do not understand its ramifications. Which people, and which of the ramifications of general relativity do they not understand? Go, write me a treatise, and don't come back until it's complete.
I guess it's essentially like photons, which are also transverse waves. Their individual amplitudes are defined as perpendicular to the direction of propagation, although the static electric charge is in the direction of the charged material, just like the cumulative gravitational force is in the direction of a large mass.
If I'm looking at it right the wikipedia illustration is off as the circle warps not just in and out but up and down. I don't see why it should do that. Forget about the gravity wave, and consider the distant, spherically & cylindrically asymmetric, rotating object. It will, over time, have a time-varying magnitude in the x-y plane. The gravity wave's function is just to 'tell' the hoop of particles about the rotating gravity source 'over there.'
"gravity is not a force, it is merely a product of observing a universe changing shape, from within the universe of course" is completely invalid. Nice proof, why didn't I think of that ? The model of gravity as deformations to space-time does not logically imply that "gravity is not a force, it is merely a product of observing a universe changing shape."
Don't respect the facts ?
I have put forward logic to do with any possible universe that contains causality - you can refute it, but it exists at a level before math and I have made it clear that math alone is not necessarily reality. You put forth too many words, not enough logic.
To do physics, one needs to generate theories that effectively model reality and can be tested. True, and those tests pass or fails according to their consistency with results, quantified mathematically, not merely qualified verbally.
To generate models, one needs to rigorously determine if a model is self consistent before testing it. Then you can do some math. I'm sure you'll not be on any of the admissions boards or thesis committees that have a say in any of that.
I've always been confused about why 'c' and 'causality' are considered one in the same...Much like light and sound travel at different speeds, but nobody claims a causality violation when you see something before you hear it (a distant explosion, say) why would my example violate causality? Sight & sound are different human senses, but both are mediated by electrical (electromagnetic & electrostatic, but close enough for pop science analogies) forces. The problem with faster-than-light travel is that if you created such a thing, you could observe something distant with a faster-than-light medium before the photons arrive at your eyeballs to tell you about it. You could then react to it while it's proceeding without your interference, alter what occurs, but view the unaltered version of history. Paradoxes make me puke. Please stop asking about them.
What if gravity waves are actually slower (or, dare I say it, faster) than the speed of light, what happens to the General Relativity equations then? All of existence is negated by a gravitational singularity and you never asked that question, if anything ever travels faster than the speed of light.
Well, probably both. Astronomers never seem to stop being "surprised" by just about everything they "discover". It looks that way if you subscribe to nothing and only read the free shit the paparazzi print.
Maybe I'm still stuck in picturing things in three dimensions but I can't see how you could possibly create a transverse gravitational wave. From what I understand a gravitational wave is a distortion in the warp in space time due to a massive object oscillating toward and away from you. I'm not sure about the use of the word "oscillating" there. Using the bowling ball on a flexible sheet model, the force between us and the bowling ball might be mediated by an oscillatory phenomenon, but I don't know about the object itself "oscillating."
PiSkyHi,
Being a metaphysicist, I have real problems with the validity of string theory, so most of what I'm saying is not worth much to physics yet. Strike "yet" from that and replace "much" with "anything." You "have a real problem" with reality, not with the study of gravity waves. The "philosophical point of view" from which you pontificate that "gravity is not a force, it is merely a product of observing a universe changing shape, from within the universe of course" is completely invalid. The descriptions from which you derive yours are summaries of mathematical descriptions and are verbally imperfect, especially in their completeness, without the math. You clearly don't understand the math or don't respect the facts. I don't care which. Go away, read a textbook or read your navel, it doesn't matter. No need to come back and talk to me.
Impostor!
Whew...a little too much OCD for this silliness...time to go alphabetize my receipts. Should I do it according to vendor, category of the goods, brand name, or specific product name...decisions, decisions... The question, if you really have OCD, is not whether to order your receipts "according to vendor, category of the goods, brand name, or specific product name" but whether to order them first "according to vendor, category of the goods, brand name, or specific product name."
Meatspace has prepared me for the likelihood that some moderators will not appreciate the irony of my attention to detail on this subject. It just leaves more irony for me to enjoy.
he's right... but the thing is, the Federal Government isn't doing this to provide us with more security, they're doing it to provide themselves with more power, power over us. That looser surveillance standards and growing surveillance resources have the effect of granting government more power over us is of course true. The implication that this is "somebody's" motive, without proof, is problematic.
Slashdot Mirror
Schools don't tend to work very efficiently splitting local populations, so if there is any competition, the weaker is quickly eliminated.
The parents don't want to move just to try out other schools further away, and neither they nor the student want longer traveling time between home and school.
A lot of students seem not to want to go to school at all. Those are all problems to solve within, not among, families. Obviously, commutes will be more challenging for some than for others. In the suburban areas where I've lived, I have always been within easy walking distance of at least two primary schools, and by secondary school ages "everybody drives" or carpools with somebody who does. Bicycles and buses also exist. A slightly longer commute seems a fair trade for actually learning something at school, from what I read about the state of the education system. Or, were all the problems cited in the justifications for "No Child Left Behind" pure fabrications?
Schools essentially have a captive consumer base, so there isn't the same incentive to excel.
That is a result of the status quo, not an argument for it.
No standard set means that getting an American student is a bit of a pot-shot, and often not worth the risk.
But I'm not suggesting "no standard set," I'm suggesting that the free market is more responsive to the same forces by which you want standards set [ proficiency, productivity, in short employability of graduates ] than adding to existing education expenses separate surveys asking what employers want, hoping people trained only in the fields of education & politics have sufficient vocabulary in industries in which they've never worked to understand the survey results, etc. ad nauseum. Private, regional authorities set standards for colleges and universities, and they do it very well.
Some of your arguments about the feasibility of competition among primary schools, I can partially accept. I definitely -- eagerly -- concede that competition will not be maximally ruthless, as that requires such impossibilities as "perfect information" and perfectly equal availability to all consumers of all competing products. Increasing the degree that free market forces are allowed to operate does not guarantee nor even imply textbook-perfect capitalism. Still, some competition provides those advantages to some degree, which is always a greater degree than in a market that's officially held captive, by statute. Always. Like any ideal, laissez-faire capitalism is a better situation than will ever be seen in reality. The operation of its principles is always a matter of degree, and there are always externalities preventing 100% realization of capitalist competitiveness. But imposing more externalities than the unavoidable ones such as those imposed by the finite speed of light and non-omniscience of suppliers and purchasers, is generally harmful to society, especially the poor.
Heritage Foundation rank of countries by economic freedom
I don't know have studies specifically comparing levels of market competition competition in schools, so I have to do the best I can, which in this case is to point out the general tendency of "economic freedom" to correlate with fewer cases of abject poverty.
The idea that some general, useful minimum requirements for primary & secondary education could not be just as easily [ much more easily, I'd wager, given the more limited scope and lesser complexity of the subject matter ] defined by private enterprise for primary & secondary education as for colleges and universities, I'm
My impression is that a lot of college students also only "have a real choice between two or three schools" -- University of Blah, Blah State University, and sometimes Blah A&M and/or Blah Technical Blah. Even public tuitions are getting more difficult for families that aren't already in the top percentile of wealth, so for most, private tuitions are totally out of the question. But in primary & secondary education, the price of education per student is consistently less on average, while performance is consistently higher than their public counterparts. If all private schools were religious, we could chalk the differences up to some cultural or moral attributes, but since the same holds true for non-religious schools, I know of no other plausible hypothesis for the discrepancy than the relative amounts of pressure from the free market. [more to follow in separate post]
Logic comes before the math and binds it. Qualify logically, Quantify mathematically. You first. Start with this: I am concerned that people are becoming dismissive of general relativity when it's clear many do not understand its ramifications.
Which people, and which of the ramifications of general relativity do you claim we do not understand?
To the rest of your correct points, my only excuse is that I gave too much latitude to johannesg for these very salient points: Does anyone honestly believe that Apple back then can be compared to Microsoft now? Or that the lies perpetrated by Bush, that led to the invasion of two countries and hundreds of thousands killed, are comparable to those of Clinton about getting a blowjob? Does anyone think it is smart or witty to make such comparisons? Half-assed defense of my half-assed previous argument, which you pretty well demolished, btw: Fair point (though wrong. We don't "misspell" color, we just spell it differently. Fine, then I didn't "misuse" observation, I just used it differently.
Strange how this seems to be working out. On one hand, digital info is considered to be real, physical property when it comes to copyright and patents, then on the other hand when it comes to emails, internet traffic, phone calls...it all seems fair game. WTF? There are too many effete geeks who have computers & piles of peripherals, and too few who have guns. Duh.
Also annoyed kids, maybe? There are a lot more Chinese than Estonians. Maybe it all originates in one little shit-hole village. I don't know.
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/17/1936236
And even if not, maybe national security information doesn't belong on public networks, including the Internet. Just a thought.
Do you remember "the federal government shutdown of 1995"? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_government_shutdown_of_1995 It was fascinating to me how I didn't notice it in any way except that it was on the news. I really started taking small-government arguments seriously then, and based on that direct experience, it is impossible for me to agree that in general, large government is correlated to smoother societies. More recently, I've noticed that the various arguments, especially from Alberto Gonzalez when speaking to the Senate, have borne little resemblance to reality. Specifically, the claims of a need for greater surveillance privileges with less court oversight. Nothing in the report of the 911 Commission, or any other publicly-available document supports that conclusion. It's possible that some classified documents do, but I don't run around making assumptions that the right to spy on me is "for a good reason" without any information whatsoever on which to support that reasoning. If, in secret meetings with military and national security subcommittee members, whose minutes are classified, it is decided on the basis of genuine facts that warrant-less wiretaps are justified, so be it. On the basis of the information available to me, I don't like the amount of power a clown like GWB has at his fingertips. Heaven forfend, we're ever subjected to a C- college student, from a Big Eight instead of Ivy League school, with, say, a history of heroin & meth abuse instead of alcohol & the occasional cocaine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush_substance_abuse_controversy Admittedly, the latter is a bit of unproven speculation. Admittedly.
How would you like for me -- "some crack-pot on the Internet" to you, I'm guessing -- to have the power to make that accusation, wiretap your conversations, and piece them together, until I can make some baseless bullshit like "GWB used cocaine" stick? I admit, in the sense of your statistical argument about general totalitarianism and the loss of all rights, it's far-fetched -- in any particular case -- but I don't feel like taking on faith that everybody in the Bureau is an Angel. If they are angels, why should they resist accountability to the Judicial Branch? If they are not, why should you & I excuse them from accountability?
Touché!
Is it possible? If so, how?
Yes, that's a figure of speech I just concocted, and that's exactly what I want it to mean.
PS The preferred usage includes "willy-nilly" to emphasize that arbitrary, not valid surveillance, is the complaint.
PiSkyHi, Being a metaphysicist, I have real problems with the validity of string theory, so most of what I'm saying is not worth much to physics yet. Strike "yet" from that and replace "much" with "anything." You "have a real problem" with reality, not with the study of gravity waves. The "philosophical point of view" from which you pontificate that "gravity is not a force, it is merely a product of observing a universe changing shape, from within the universe of course" is completely invalid. The descriptions from which you derive yours are summaries of mathematical descriptions and are verbally imperfect, especially in their completeness, without the math. You clearly don't understand the math or don't respect the facts. I don't care which. Go away, read a textbook or read your navel, it doesn't matter. No need to come back and talk to me.
Meatspace has prepared me for the likelihood that some moderators will not appreciate the irony of my attention to detail on this subject. It just leaves more irony for me to enjoy.