And which one of them is the dictator who can make a law that the member countries are required to implement without having
1) The agreement and consent of the European Parliament (which you DID elect representatives to) 2) Countries possibly saying they would rather leave the union than make the law
?
Oh wait, none of them. Nobody in the EU has absolute power. Now granted the system needs some reform and improvement. The E.C. should be a LOT more democratic and have a LOT less power (ideally ALL - it's decisions should have to be ratified by the European parliament before implementation), but the suggestion that Europe is under some massive semi-world-government that they have no power over and no checks-and-balances and no vote in as the GP did is er... stupid.
Now what's REALLY scary is that I care who wins the American election in November. I am South African. I have NO vote in that election. But who wins will determine America's foreign policy. My country is officially a friend of the USA but in practise we're just too damn tiny to actually matter to them - but the foreign policy they pursue elsewhere will ultimately have a MASSIVE impact on my life (and my quality of life) - and I have ZERO power to influence what that policy will be.
Example: the day G.W. Bush invaded Iraq our fuel prices almost doubled, within a week - so did the price of food in my country (food has to be moved on roads).
Effectively, the American president has power over my life - and I have no elective power over his selection, now THAT is scary.
That's why Mit Romney scares me so much - his rhetoric about "American Excellence" is really just a thinly veiled declaration that America SHOULD rule and police the world, that it's RIGHT for them to remove other country's democratically elected leaders and replace them with brutal dictators if the leaders won't play nice with American corporations (you know - maybe actually try to pleas their voting citizens).
Frankly whether the Americans elect Mit Romney or Obama in November will probably have MORE impact on YOUR quality of life than EVERYTHING Herman Van Rompuy does over the next four years taken together. You really should be more worried about that...
>Some unelected pan-government gets to write the laws,
The EU is run by a parliament - who is ELECTED by votes in all the member countries. Countries have seats on the parliament, they hold elections and citizens in those countries choose who will represent them in that parliament.
>Some of them are put up by the artists, some by their labels, some by aggregating services like vevo or whatever their role is, and some by fans. Some of these aren't legally uploaded, other's are. It's not my place as a viewer to know the difference, because that would require me to actually read the contracts between each artist and their label and their distributor and so on...
That's not even counting derivative work issues. Some are fair use, some are not. All affect copyright but only some are illegal (where there isn't consent). Weird Al loved a fan music video of "white and nerdy" so much that he massively promoted it. Blizzard actively encourages machinima using WoW models - to the point of having a yearly competition for the best such work that they sponsor and give prizes at. So clearly these works are legal - even though they use copyrighted works. Those copyrighted images are actually even grayer in themselves since blizzard actually allows you to copy the game and makes it available for free download (their revenue is subscriptions - not game sales in this case). So clearly many mashup videos are in fact legal - but many others are not. Parody's are always legal (fair use exception) but how many copyright-bots wouldn't be able to tell you changed the lyrics ? What about examples where the parody doesn't involve a change to the MUSIC but to the acompanying video (compare the missheard rammstein lyrics videos on youtube with the deliberately wrong but sound-alike subtitles).
And those are contrasted on the other extreme by mothers getting sued for putting up a home video of their three year old dancing to a prince song - because you can hear the radio playing the prince song in the background.
This is seriously complicated stuff. Actually complying with copyright law is no longer POSSIBLE. Not for ANYBODY who is online at all.
It just cannot be done. Which is prove enough that it needs a reform. The law is supposed to try and force criminals to become honest men - it's not supposed to turn all the honest people into criminals.
>Thousands of years of human progress, magically washed away! And after everything's settled down, you'd better hope that you get to be in the tribe of cavemen with the one allowed copy of fire! And... pants.
Just so long as I'm not in the the tribe with the one allowed copy of skirts.
I lol'd at your joke (hence my continuation) but do realize though that in practise pants (and skirts) would not be affected. Those have no laws over reproduction even today. You cannot copyright a fashion design, or patent one, or trademark one - they are explicitly excluded under a class of goods that are "basic requirements of life" - along with things like recipes (because food is a basic requirement) (you can copyright the pictures in a recipe book - but not the recipes themselves).
To counter a joke with sad facts. The truth is that study after study has found that nobody is immune to advertising -even as we all think we are (that's part of WHY we aren't).
Ask people - nearly all of them will tell you they look at products in the store and buy the best value product as determined primarily by the price.
Let them buy and not know you are watching: 85% of them will consistently buy the thing with the most appealing packaging even if it costs significantly more. If asked afterward, they rationalize it as believing it was better quality (without any actual reason for this belief).
The small 15% who really DO manage to consciously and deliberately override advertising (no, they are NOT immune, they just learned to recognize the response and deliberately ignore it - like choosing NOT to wank when you're horny) - are the same kind of people who shop with a calculator in hand and make damn sure they don't go over-budget - and dont' buy anything not on the list unless there were enough specials to put them UNDER budget by more than the extra costs. Those people DO exist- and they are the reason shops have no-name brands. The same product in plain packaging bought in bulk and sold cheaper.
Those people buy the no-name (I'm one of them, most of the time anyway) stuff because we know it's the better value - but the more expensive pretty packaging stuff is stocked right next to it, and the vast majority of people buy THOSE.
The science simply disproves most of our free will illusions. I won't discount it's existence entirely - but make no mistake, the vast majority of our lives are responding to ancient urges without us ever actually rationally thinking about and questioning those actions - let alone choosing to do otherwise (though we can apparently). People who figured out what those urges are CAN and DO exploit this tendency.
Well I did say "all but", I didn't say it entirely destroyed it. I'm aware that HAM enthusiasts are still out there, just that the potential for new recruits have diminished now that global communication can be had on a medium that's much cheaper to access and doesn't require sitting a licensing exam first.
On second thought, if you DID have to do a licensing exam before getting on the internet, it may have been a better place....
>And yet still today there are people running around saying that trickle down doesn't work, and has never worked.
Scientific trickle-down has always worked, and all of us acknowledge it. It's corporate trickle down of the "tax breaks for the rich" variety that doesn't and has never, worked.
Those two things are not equivalent. The biggest differences are: 1) Science (all REAL science) is NOT a profit driven venture but a KNOWLEDGE-seeking venture. It seeks not monetary return but LEARNING. Often scientists are forced to show that WHAT they are learning may ALSO have monetary value but that is not the goal of science, that's merely a means to an end. 2) Science is furthermore a non-profit charity in the currency it DOES seek. Science does not hoard knowledge, it does not seek to keep it's discoveries secret and secure market advantage. That's industrialism and it may use people trained in science but they aren't scientists. It's only science when you give your work away freely so that OTHER scientists can question it, test it and most importantly build NEW science from it. The only reward for giving away your knowledge is that when others build new knowledge from it - that knowledge is available to you to build further on. That is the scientific contract - knowledge for knowledge. Anything else isn't science.
THIS is why there is no such thing as truly private science - science to comply with it's most basic driving forces HAS to be socialistically or charitably funded. In practical terms there hasn't yet been a society where enough people saw the value of scientific knowledge for voluntary charity to fund it properly, tax-based science remains the only viable type that has ever existed. Even at the height of the industrial revolution - the SCIENTISTS were working in tax-funded universities.
Actually the genetic studies have proven that the people who migrated out of Africa initially were not LESS than a hundred thousand. We don't have a viable upper-limit at present that can be supported by the available data.
Either way- YOUR figure is off by an order of magnitude.
>In 50 years your kids will be a lot better off than you are
That is hardly axiomatic. Were the Jewish kids born in Germany in the 1930's better off in their teens than their Grandparents who lived there in the 1890s ?
Were the Afrikaans children in the concentration camps in 1902 better off than their grandparents who worried about the power of the British empire and moved away from it in 1838 ?
There are both good and bad times in history. Nobody has absolute control over what comes, but we definitely DO have an influence on the future. We can help make it better or help make it worse. We can play a role toward a future that is an improvement over our lives, or one where the freedoms and technology we have has been lost.
Every society comes to an end. Every empire falls. The great western empire is showing many of the signs that other great empires showed in their final days. It could be that the end of our civilization is close by. If it is, would you prefer it be replaced by a better or a worse one ? History is full of either.
Actually, 20 years ago lots of satelites were launched by private citizens without any great financial expense. There are loads of satelites up there that were designed, built and launch by ham radio clubs for example.
The trick was - they didn't use their own trips. NASA being public meant they were quite open to ways of helping ordinary taxpaying citizens get some benefit from space expenses and most of those satelites would hitch a ride on other planned launches. Since you're flying up anyway, and a small hammy satellite weighs almost nothing it didn't add any real cost to take it up along and put it in orbit while you're up there anyway, so they did it. Generally it wasn't added on to commercial launches as that would amount to making the customer pay for the (tiny) extra cost - but academic launches (like weather satellites) were fair game.
Of course Ham radio has all but gone the way of the dodo in the past 2 decades so I honestly don't know if this is still common practise today.
That bonobo's have adult/young sexual behaviour ? That children play doctor ? That dolphin's gang-rape ? That babies have been seen masturbating in the womb ?
These are not "assertions" - they are simple, verifiable facts which has been observed by scientists over and over.
When I tell you that I have frequently watched baboons masturbate and that they don't leave the group but do it smack in the middle of it - THAT is an assertion - I am claiming PERSONALLY having observed something. Unless I can show that scientists have also observed it, or some sort of proof (like a video) then you are right. The above are not assertions but scientific facts which have long been established.
Seriously. There isn't a single thing in there that hasn't been confirmed by MULTIPLE studies and you can find dozens of references to every thing I said with a quick google. From mainstream media to peer reviewed journals.
If you want to determine the veracity of the information I gave, or give counter evidence for other positions - then do you own damn homework. Citation needed is a valid point on wikipedia where the cite has no direct credibility but obtains it indirectly by only including information from citable sources. This is a discussion - I am not obliged to tell you where I learned something, if you want to question it, the obligation is on YOU to find and read the research yourself.
>For those who are seasoned and thick-skinned, we have developed the habit of using our brain, instead of letting others to think for us
Yeah but you guys aren't even in the target-group for any politicians anywhere. Politicians don't care about appealing to independent thinkers because even in a tight race there aren't enough of those around to make any real difference and trying to appeal to them means speaking intelligently which will alienate the entire REST of your voting base. You know, all those unwashed - they don't like politicians who are visibly smarter than themselves and they never vote for anything that can't fit on a bumper sticker.
> It seems clear from observation of other, closely related species (like mammals in general), that it is not a natural state of affairs when adults have sex with immature young
Sexual behavior between adults and immature young is extremely common in Bonobo societies. They are probably our closest relatives.
If you're going to use animals to measure "natural" behavior then you must at least limit it to those animals who, like humans, have sex for pleasure and not just procreation. That is chimps, bonobos, dolphins and the like.
Dolphins have been observed engaging in gang-rape.
It seems more like a downside of sex-for-pleasure level of intelligence is that sometimes the pursuit of that pleasure crosses the boundaries of another person's rights. This happens in nature - but since animals don't have a concept of rights nobody complains. In human society we DO have a concept of rights and THAT is what our response must be built upon. If you intrude on the rights of others then you are going too far. A very young child clearly has not got the knowledge or maturity to make an informed consentual decision about sexual behavior with an adult who does, THAT's why they cannot GIVE consent and why we punish adults who take advantage of this. On the other hand, children DO (ALL children) engage in sexual experimentation at a young age - without adult influence. Most adults forget that they did that. Unborn babies (of both sexes) have been observed on sonar masturbating in the womb. We may be largely in denial about it - but we're secretly so aware of children's sexual experimentation with each other that we even have a NAME for it. We call it 'playing doctor'.
That's a natural and normal part of growing up - indeed we all did it even if most of us cannot remember it now, it's part of how we became normal human beings.
So your position is wrong, but the end result is much the same.
That's why good statisticians work out the likely error-margins on them - accounting for things like lying and such. They are by no means infallible - but if the real result is significantly different from the exit polls then something is very much amiss. That something requires explaining. If there is a sensible explanation (your Tory example works) then great, but in the absence of such an explanation with solid evidence Occams razor suggests the most likely reason for the discrepancy is fraud.
You say never underestimate the propensity of people to lie - I say -remember that this propensity is magnified many times over in politicians. Never underestimate the willingness of people to game the system in order to get ahead - and by definition a politician is somebody with a higher than average ability and willingness to do so.
Some people would lie, there are statistical means by which one can predict the likelihood by considering factors that play into it. Exit polls are the international standard that America uses to when asked to monitor foreign elections to determine if the election should be deemed fair. They don't apply it to themselves. Whatever else you may say - that is hypocrisy. Even so - a much more interesting case was the 2000 election. Where exit polls were so strongly against Bush in Florida that every news station in the country called it for Gore - yet somehow he suddenly won.
An election on which there are numerous over major question marks mind you. Senator Kennedy before his untimely death made a pretty convincing case that there had been fraud in that election - notably in Florida. Having the elections run by the local state government when the governor of the state is the brother of a candidate is probably a bad idea anyway.
That said - everything I read about the Tories - well i can't imagine why anybody WOULD vote for them - but I sure can imagine why those who do would lie about it. Most recently, they had an MP who had voted against marriage equality, she had voted against a bill to allow gays to adopt, she had voted against a bill that would allow lesbian couples to get fertility treatment, she had voted for a bill to declare racist and homophobic hate-speech NOT a crime.
The Tories just made her the minister of Equality.
Seriously ? That's like making Hitler the prime minister of Israel !
Here is the weird thing -worldwide election standards hold that if exit polls differ from results then it's ASSUMED the election was rigged America enforces this standard when it is asked to monitor elections in foreign countries - but apparently does not enforce the same standard on themselves.
Statisticians consider exit polls to be the most accurate indicator of expected results and believe that in a fair election they CANNOT differ from the actual outcome by more than a tiny number. People KNOW who they voted for 5 seconds ago and they cannot change their minds anymore.
When did I say 'provided' by ME ? It's what you're supposed to be paid for working. It's earned. If you don't get paid enough for at least most of those (the vehicle isn't so needed methinks) then you're being ripped off.
>So how do I get all that? What magical government program will swoop in and magically raise MY standard of living?
Why do you keep saying government should do it ? I never did. I said that your salary should at least be enough that you can invest in some additional education - so you can work your way up, until you can afford that with what you are paid. Or save up some capital and start your own business.
I'm all for people doing it WITHOUT government assistance - hence I'm against allowing companies to keep people so poor that they have no possible opportunity to do so.
The clencher? I'm a fucking anarchist. In my concept of an ideal world - there IS no government. People themselves should have a DIRECT vote on all laws. We should get an EQUAL say in the laws we live under. I consider that a basic human right.
So where in THAT system do you see this government you're so afraid off ? I don't believe anybody should have power over another person. This applies to politicians - but unlike those idiotic American versions of libertarianism (which aren't libertarian at all because they only ever read economists version of a POLITICAL philosophy and none of them have ever read an actual philosophy treatise on it) - I realize that a corporate CEO is JUST as scary as a politician. I believe we can do without the politicians entirely - we can't do without the businesses, but we need to keep their power limited.
That great bastion of the free market: Adam Smith, wrote that the only stable form of capitalism is one where labour the most expensive resource in the market, because high profit margins for business is entirely and exclusively bad for society, but high wages for workers is entirely and exclusively good for society. I think Smith knew more than people like you do - even as American libertarians LOVE to quote him - none of them actually know what the guy REALLY said. Here's a hint: Smith proposed a pension system similar to America's social security more than 200 years before you had one. He didn't JUST declare it a sound economic concept, he also called it a moral imperative if a society is to be free.
So stop attacking the strawman of state-socialism because it doesn't apply to me. I'm a left-libertarian. I believe in the absense of government, in the destruction of authority and the equality of man. Washington thought the only legitimate government was done with the consent of the governed. I take it a step further: the only legitimate government is the CONSENSUS of the governed themselves.
>That's right, poor people should learn to enjoy being poor, and stay poor, rather than try to rise and challenge the supremacy of the ruling class.
The way to do that is not to accept their bullshit and destroy every OTHER aspect of your life trying to earn a living. It's to demand, by all the means available to us (including strike action and unionisation for collective bargaining) to demand decent living wages.
> Tough, no healthcare for you I merely said that you shouldn't be able to get healthcare I pay for if your disease is self-inflicted. By the same token I oppose helmet laws, but if you get into an accident without one - you should only be allowed to get private medical care. If you were wearing your helmet, I'll be happy to have the state-hospital I help fund get you better.
> no car for you I said no "driving while severely fatigued" that IS intruding on MY liberties. I have the right to expect that every driver on the road is sober and capable of relatively safe driving. Driver fatigue has been shown to be at least as dangerous as drunk driving. That's my life you're risking. I have a right to deny you the opportunity to do so.
> didn't want to depend on the benevolent largesse of a government handout to determine your standard of living
There is no such thing. However, if you wish to make use a government hand-up to help improve your quality of life, I am happy that a share of my taxes helps you to do that.
>Really, I'm with you friend - I also think that poor people should learn to be happy with whatever money they HAPPEN to earn in their 40 hours of drudgery each week, and should stop whining about wanting to "get ahead" with an "education" and a "better home" and a "better standard of living for their family."
If workers need to work MORE than 40 hours a week to have enough money to invest in things like education and self-improvement. that in itself is exploitation.
Okay, so some of them wouldn't actually do it ? Have you got any evidence for how many ?
Any reason to believe it's not enough ?
What if it was voluntary ? Down here KFC has a program where you can voluntarily donate an extra R2 with your meal which gets given to a hunger charity (that's about 10% of a typical meal).
So if Apple gave you this as an OPTION - you don't HAVE to pay the extra 20%, but if you do - they guarantee it will be paid to the workers who worked on your device - how many people would opt-in ? I would. Maybe not 90%, but maybe enough to make a tangible difference ?
Slashdot Mirror
And which one of them is the dictator who can make a law that the member countries are required to implement without having
1) The agreement and consent of the European Parliament (which you DID elect representatives to)
2) Countries possibly saying they would rather leave the union than make the law
?
Oh wait, none of them. Nobody in the EU has absolute power. Now granted the system needs some reform and improvement. The E.C. should be a LOT more democratic and have a LOT less power (ideally ALL - it's decisions should have to be ratified by the European parliament before implementation), but the suggestion that Europe is under some massive semi-world-government that they have no power over and no checks-and-balances and no vote in as the GP did is er... stupid.
Now what's REALLY scary is that I care who wins the American election in November. I am South African. I have NO vote in that election. But who wins will determine America's foreign policy. My country is officially a friend of the USA but in practise we're just too damn tiny to actually matter to them - but the foreign policy they pursue elsewhere will ultimately have a MASSIVE impact on my life (and my quality of life) - and I have ZERO power to influence what that policy will be.
Example: the day G.W. Bush invaded Iraq our fuel prices almost doubled, within a week - so did the price of food in my country (food has to be moved on roads).
Effectively, the American president has power over my life - and I have no elective power over his selection, now THAT is scary.
That's why Mit Romney scares me so much - his rhetoric about "American Excellence" is really just a thinly veiled declaration that America SHOULD rule and police the world, that it's RIGHT for them to remove other country's democratically elected leaders and replace them with brutal dictators if the leaders won't play nice with American corporations (you know - maybe actually try to pleas their voting citizens).
Frankly whether the Americans elect Mit Romney or Obama in November will probably have MORE impact on YOUR quality of life than EVERYTHING Herman Van Rompuy does over the next four years taken together.
You really should be more worried about that...
>Some unelected pan-government gets to write the laws,
The EU is run by a parliament - who is ELECTED by votes in all the member countries. Countries have seats on the parliament, they hold elections and citizens in those countries choose who will represent them in that parliament.
>Some of them are put up by the artists, some by their labels, some by aggregating services like vevo or whatever their role is, and some by fans. Some of these aren't legally uploaded, other's are. It's not my place as a viewer to know the difference, because that would require me to actually read the contracts between each artist and their label and their distributor and so on...
That's not even counting derivative work issues. Some are fair use, some are not. All affect copyright but only some are illegal (where there isn't consent).
Weird Al loved a fan music video of "white and nerdy" so much that he massively promoted it. Blizzard actively encourages machinima using WoW models - to the point of having a yearly competition for the best such work that they sponsor and give prizes at. So clearly these works are legal - even though they use copyrighted works. Those copyrighted images are actually even grayer in themselves since blizzard actually allows you to copy the game and makes it available for free download (their revenue is subscriptions - not game sales in this case).
So clearly many mashup videos are in fact legal - but many others are not. Parody's are always legal (fair use exception) but how many copyright-bots wouldn't be able to tell you changed the lyrics ? What about examples where the parody doesn't involve a change to the MUSIC but to the acompanying video (compare the missheard rammstein lyrics videos on youtube with the deliberately wrong but sound-alike subtitles).
And those are contrasted on the other extreme by mothers getting sued for putting up a home video of their three year old dancing to a prince song - because you can hear the radio playing the prince song in the background.
This is seriously complicated stuff. Actually complying with copyright law is no longer POSSIBLE. Not for ANYBODY who is online at all.
It just cannot be done. Which is prove enough that it needs a reform. The law is supposed to try and force criminals to become honest men - it's not supposed to turn all the honest people into criminals.
>Thousands of years of human progress, magically washed away! And after everything's settled down, you'd better hope that you get to be in the tribe of cavemen with the one allowed copy of fire! And... pants.
Just so long as I'm not in the the tribe with the one allowed copy of skirts.
I lol'd at your joke (hence my continuation) but do realize though that in practise pants (and skirts) would not be affected. Those have no laws over reproduction even today. You cannot copyright a fashion design, or patent one, or trademark one - they are explicitly excluded under a class of goods that are "basic requirements of life" - along with things like recipes (because food is a basic requirement) (you can copyright the pictures in a recipe book - but not the recipes themselves).
To counter a joke with sad facts.
The truth is that study after study has found that nobody is immune to advertising -even as we all think we are (that's part of WHY we aren't).
Ask people - nearly all of them will tell you they look at products in the store and buy the best value product as determined primarily by the price.
Let them buy and not know you are watching: 85% of them will consistently buy the thing with the most appealing packaging even if it costs significantly more. If asked afterward, they rationalize it as believing it was better quality (without any actual reason for this belief).
The small 15% who really DO manage to consciously and deliberately override advertising (no, they are NOT immune, they just learned to recognize the response and deliberately ignore it - like choosing NOT to wank when you're horny) - are the same kind of people who shop with a calculator in hand and make damn sure they don't go over-budget - and dont' buy anything not on the list unless there were enough specials to put them UNDER budget by more than the extra costs.
Those people DO exist- and they are the reason shops have no-name brands. The same product in plain packaging bought in bulk and sold cheaper.
Those people buy the no-name (I'm one of them, most of the time anyway) stuff because we know it's the better value - but the more expensive pretty packaging stuff is stocked right next to it, and the vast majority of people buy THOSE.
The science simply disproves most of our free will illusions. I won't discount it's existence entirely - but make no mistake, the vast majority of our lives are responding to ancient urges without us ever actually rationally thinking about and questioning those actions - let alone choosing to do otherwise (though we can apparently). People who figured out what those urges are CAN and DO exploit this tendency.
Well I did say "all but", I didn't say it entirely destroyed it. I'm aware that HAM enthusiasts are still out there, just that the potential for new recruits have diminished now that global communication can be had on a medium that's much cheaper to access and doesn't require sitting a licensing exam first.
On second thought, if you DID have to do a licensing exam before getting on the internet, it may have been a better place....
>And yet still today there are people running around saying that trickle down doesn't work, and has never worked.
Scientific trickle-down has always worked, and all of us acknowledge it. It's corporate trickle down of the "tax breaks for the rich" variety that doesn't and has never, worked.
Those two things are not equivalent. The biggest differences are:
1) Science (all REAL science) is NOT a profit driven venture but a KNOWLEDGE-seeking venture. It seeks not monetary return but LEARNING. Often scientists are forced to show that WHAT they are learning may ALSO have monetary value but that is not the goal of science, that's merely a means to an end.
2) Science is furthermore a non-profit charity in the currency it DOES seek. Science does not hoard knowledge, it does not seek to keep it's discoveries secret and secure market advantage. That's industrialism and it may use people trained in science but they aren't scientists. It's only science when you give your work away freely so that OTHER scientists can question it, test it and most importantly build NEW science from it. The only reward for giving away your knowledge is that when others build new knowledge from it - that knowledge is available to you to build further on.
That is the scientific contract - knowledge for knowledge. Anything else isn't science.
THIS is why there is no such thing as truly private science - science to comply with it's most basic driving forces HAS to be socialistically or charitably funded. In practical terms there hasn't yet been a society where enough people saw the value of scientific knowledge for voluntary charity to fund it properly, tax-based science remains the only viable type that has ever existed.
Even at the height of the industrial revolution - the SCIENTISTS were working in tax-funded universities.
Actually the genetic studies have proven that the people who migrated out of Africa initially were not LESS than a hundred thousand. We don't have a viable upper-limit at present that can be supported by the available data.
Either way- YOUR figure is off by an order of magnitude.
>In 50 years your kids will be a lot better off than you are
That is hardly axiomatic. Were the Jewish kids born in Germany in the 1930's better off in their teens than their Grandparents who lived there in the 1890s ?
Were the Afrikaans children in the concentration camps in 1902 better off than their grandparents who worried about the power of the British empire and moved away from it in 1838 ?
There are both good and bad times in history. Nobody has absolute control over what comes, but we definitely DO have an influence on the future. We can help make it better or help make it worse. We can play a role toward a future that is an improvement over our lives, or one where the freedoms and technology we have has been lost.
Every society comes to an end. Every empire falls. The great western empire is showing many of the signs that other great empires showed in their final days. It could be that the end of our civilization is close by.
If it is, would you prefer it be replaced by a better or a worse one ? History is full of either.
Actually, 20 years ago lots of satelites were launched by private citizens without any great financial expense. There are loads of satelites up there that were designed, built and launch by ham radio clubs for example.
The trick was - they didn't use their own trips. NASA being public meant they were quite open to ways of helping ordinary taxpaying citizens get some benefit from space expenses and most of those satelites would hitch a ride on other planned launches. Since you're flying up anyway, and a small hammy satellite weighs almost nothing it didn't add any real cost to take it up along and put it in orbit while you're up there anyway, so they did it.
Generally it wasn't added on to commercial launches as that would amount to making the customer pay for the (tiny) extra cost - but academic launches (like weather satellites) were fair game.
Of course Ham radio has all but gone the way of the dodo in the past 2 decades so I honestly don't know if this is still common practise today.
Science didn't start the war. Science just won every battle, but it's religion that declared the war.
No, it wasn't difficult - which is why you should stop being pathetically lazy and do it yourself next time.
Bobobo's have adult/young sexual behavior: Biologist Jack Cohen (look him up). There are many others, he's just the one I can remember off hand.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playing_doctor
(Can I trust you to at least check the citations on the bottom fo the page yourself so I don't have to paste 20 links ?)
Sonar observations of babies masturbating in the womb. I can do better than a source - I can SHOW you it happening.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVB0qTiq5jU
Seriously - you could have just googled it.
I am not paid to correct, nor responsible for, your educational shortcomings.
And which assertion do you want proof of ?
That bonobo's have adult/young sexual behaviour ? That children play doctor ? That dolphin's gang-rape ? That babies have been seen masturbating in the womb ?
These are not "assertions" - they are simple, verifiable facts which has been observed by scientists over and over.
When I tell you that I have frequently watched baboons masturbate and that they don't leave the group but do it smack in the middle of it - THAT is an assertion - I am claiming PERSONALLY having observed something. Unless I can show that scientists have also observed it, or some sort of proof (like a video) then you are right. The above are not assertions but scientific facts which have long been established.
JFGI.
Seriously. There isn't a single thing in there that hasn't been confirmed by MULTIPLE studies and you can find dozens of references to every thing I said with a quick google. From mainstream media to peer reviewed journals.
If you want to determine the veracity of the information I gave, or give counter evidence for other positions - then do you own damn homework.
Citation needed is a valid point on wikipedia where the cite has no direct credibility but obtains it indirectly by only including information from citable sources.
This is a discussion - I am not obliged to tell you where I learned something, if you want to question it, the obligation is on YOU to find and read the research yourself.
>For those who are seasoned and thick-skinned, we have developed the habit of using our brain, instead of letting others to think for us
Yeah but you guys aren't even in the target-group for any politicians anywhere.
Politicians don't care about appealing to independent thinkers because even in a tight race there aren't enough of those around to make any real difference and trying to appeal to them means speaking intelligently which will alienate the entire REST of your voting base. You know, all those unwashed - they don't like politicians who are visibly smarter than themselves and they never vote for anything that can't fit on a bumper sticker.
> It seems clear from observation of other, closely related species (like mammals in general), that it is not a natural state of affairs when adults have sex with immature young
Sexual behavior between adults and immature young is extremely common in Bonobo societies. They are probably our closest relatives.
If you're going to use animals to measure "natural" behavior then you must at least limit it to those animals who, like humans, have sex for pleasure and not just procreation.
That is chimps, bonobos, dolphins and the like.
Dolphins have been observed engaging in gang-rape.
It seems more like a downside of sex-for-pleasure level of intelligence is that sometimes the pursuit of that pleasure crosses the boundaries of another person's rights. This happens in nature - but since animals don't have a concept of rights nobody complains.
In human society we DO have a concept of rights and THAT is what our response must be built upon. If you intrude on the rights of others then you are going too far.
A very young child clearly has not got the knowledge or maturity to make an informed consentual decision about sexual behavior with an adult who does, THAT's why they cannot GIVE consent and why we punish adults who take advantage of this.
On the other hand, children DO (ALL children) engage in sexual experimentation at a young age - without adult influence. Most adults forget that they did that. Unborn babies (of both sexes) have been observed on sonar masturbating in the womb.
We may be largely in denial about it - but we're secretly so aware of children's sexual experimentation with each other that we even have a NAME for it. We call it 'playing doctor'.
That's a natural and normal part of growing up - indeed we all did it even if most of us cannot remember it now, it's part of how we became normal human beings.
So your position is wrong, but the end result is much the same.
That's why good statisticians work out the likely error-margins on them - accounting for things like lying and such.
They are by no means infallible - but if the real result is significantly different from the exit polls then something is very much amiss.
That something requires explaining. If there is a sensible explanation (your Tory example works) then great, but in the absence of such an explanation with solid evidence Occams razor suggests the most likely reason for the discrepancy is fraud.
You say never underestimate the propensity of people to lie - I say -remember that this propensity is magnified many times over in politicians. Never underestimate the willingness of people to game the system in order to get ahead - and by definition a politician is somebody with a higher than average ability and willingness to do so.
Some people would lie, there are statistical means by which one can predict the likelihood by considering factors that play into it. Exit polls are the international standard that America uses to when asked to monitor foreign elections to determine if the election should be deemed fair.
They don't apply it to themselves. Whatever else you may say - that is hypocrisy. Even so - a much more interesting case was the 2000 election. Where exit polls were so strongly against Bush in Florida that every news station in the country called it for Gore - yet somehow he suddenly won.
An election on which there are numerous over major question marks mind you. Senator Kennedy before his untimely death made a pretty convincing case that there had been fraud in that election - notably in Florida. Having the elections run by the local state government when the governor of the state is the brother of a candidate is probably a bad idea anyway.
That said - everything I read about the Tories - well i can't imagine why anybody WOULD vote for them - but I sure can imagine why those who do would lie about it.
Most recently, they had an MP who had voted against marriage equality, she had voted against a bill to allow gays to adopt, she had voted against a bill that would allow lesbian couples to get fertility treatment, she had voted for a bill to declare racist and homophobic hate-speech NOT a crime.
The Tories just made her the minister of Equality.
Seriously ? That's like making Hitler the prime minister of Israel !
Here is the weird thing -worldwide election standards hold that if exit polls differ from results then it's ASSUMED the election was rigged
America enforces this standard when it is asked to monitor elections in foreign countries - but apparently does not enforce the same standard on themselves.
Statisticians consider exit polls to be the most accurate indicator of expected results and believe that in a fair election they CANNOT differ from the actual outcome by more than a tiny number.
People KNOW who they voted for 5 seconds ago and they cannot change their minds anymore.
>Great, so you've "provided me" with that.
When did I say 'provided' by ME ? It's what you're supposed to be paid for working. It's earned. If you don't get paid enough for at least most of those (the vehicle isn't so needed methinks) then you're being ripped off.
>So how do I get all that? What magical government program will swoop in and magically raise MY standard of living?
Why do you keep saying government should do it ? I never did. I said that your salary should at least be enough that you can invest in some additional education - so you can work your way up, until you can afford that with what you are paid. Or save up some capital and start your own business.
I'm all for people doing it WITHOUT government assistance - hence I'm against allowing companies to keep people so poor that they have no possible opportunity to do so.
The clencher? I'm a fucking anarchist. In my concept of an ideal world - there IS no government. People themselves should have a DIRECT vote on all laws. We should get an EQUAL say in the laws we live under.
I consider that a basic human right.
So where in THAT system do you see this government you're so afraid off ? I don't believe anybody should have power over another person. This applies to politicians - but unlike those idiotic American versions of libertarianism (which aren't libertarian at all because they only ever read economists version of a POLITICAL philosophy and none of them have ever read an actual philosophy treatise on it) - I realize that a corporate CEO is JUST as scary as a politician.
I believe we can do without the politicians entirely - we can't do without the businesses, but we need to keep their power limited.
That great bastion of the free market: Adam Smith, wrote that the only stable form of capitalism is one where labour the most expensive resource in the market, because high profit margins for business is entirely and exclusively bad for society, but high wages for workers is entirely and exclusively good for society.
I think Smith knew more than people like you do - even as American libertarians LOVE to quote him - none of them actually know what the guy REALLY said.
Here's a hint: Smith proposed a pension system similar to America's social security more than 200 years before you had one. He didn't JUST declare it a sound economic concept, he also called it a moral imperative if a society is to be free.
So stop attacking the strawman of state-socialism because it doesn't apply to me. I'm a left-libertarian. I believe in the absense of government, in the destruction of authority and the equality of man.
Washington thought the only legitimate government was done with the consent of the governed.
I take it a step further: the only legitimate government is the CONSENSUS of the governed themselves.
>That's right, poor people should learn to enjoy being poor, and stay poor, rather than try to rise and challenge the supremacy of the ruling class.
The way to do that is not to accept their bullshit and destroy every OTHER aspect of your life trying to earn a living. It's to demand, by all the means available to us (including strike action and unionisation for collective bargaining) to demand decent living wages.
> Tough, no healthcare for you
I merely said that you shouldn't be able to get healthcare I pay for if your disease is self-inflicted. By the same token I oppose helmet laws, but if you get into an accident without one - you should only be allowed to get private medical care. If you were wearing your helmet, I'll be happy to have the state-hospital I help fund get you better.
> no car for you
I said no "driving while severely fatigued" that IS intruding on MY liberties. I have the right to expect that every driver on the road is sober and capable of relatively safe driving. Driver fatigue has been shown to be at least as dangerous as drunk driving. That's my life you're risking. I have a right to deny you the opportunity to do so.
> didn't want to depend on the benevolent largesse of a government handout to determine your standard of living
There is no such thing. However, if you wish to make use a government hand-up to help improve your quality of life, I am happy that a share of my taxes helps you to do that.
>Really, I'm with you friend - I also think that poor people should learn to be happy with whatever money they HAPPEN to earn in their 40 hours of drudgery each week, and should stop whining about wanting to "get ahead" with an "education" and a "better home" and a "better standard of living for their family."
If workers need to work MORE than 40 hours a week to have enough money to invest in things like education and self-improvement. that in itself is exploitation.
Okay, so some of them wouldn't actually do it ? Have you got any evidence for how many ?
Any reason to believe it's not enough ?
What if it was voluntary ?
Down here KFC has a program where you can voluntarily donate an extra R2 with your meal which gets given to a hunger charity (that's about 10% of a typical meal).
So if Apple gave you this as an OPTION - you don't HAVE to pay the extra 20%, but if you do - they guarantee it will be paid to the workers who worked on your device - how many people would opt-in ?
I would. Maybe not 90%, but maybe enough to make a tangible difference ?
Do you have ANY evidence to suggest otherwise ?