"Advertising in general, or at least the way it is currently done, is something that I believe a more enlightened society would view as either a great evil or at least a corrupting influence."
More enlightened society does view it as a corrupting influence, 'evil' being a term that's generally avoided in said society. If you look at trends in comtemporary philosophy/cultural theory you'll find a number of critics of this, a part of what they label as 'the culture of capitalism' or 'late capitalism', from Theodor Adorno (stanford encyclopedia of philosophy entry) to Fredric Jameson.
Interestingly, society is neither enlightened nor interested in becoming enlightened (the criticism is there and instead of either reacting and modifying the system to fix the problems or replacing the system completely, whatever floats your boat, we are in denial about the existance of what's literally in our face every day), so this is what we're stuck with.
Not necessarily. Now I don't know anything about elephant axons, but, I'm a neuroscience student and I know something about neurons in general. The size of neurons and their axons and dendtrites determines the speed at which a signal can be transmitted through said axon/dendrite. At the same time though cells are small for a reason (to facilitate chemical transport through the membrane, surface area increases arithmetically as volume increases geometrically or something like that, large cells dying cause problems too with lots of waste contaminating an area, etc. so cells tend to be small as a sort of convenience). When there are evolutionary pressures to counter act the benefits of small cells you find large axons/dendrites and neurons. This is the case in giant squid axons (which are visible to the naked eye) for example. They're used to initiate the squid's escape response (a water based jet propulsion system). In light of this framework, I can't imagine any reason why an elephant would need larger axons than usual.
The laws of suppy and demand guarnatee that in a competitive market profits will always be reduced to zero as price is eroded to the level of cost of production. One party will develop a product and sell at some margin above cost, a second company will come in and sell for a bit less winning over the entire market and still sell at a slight margin above cost (though a smaller margin than the first company). The first company then responds and drops its prices and so on. Ultimately the price balances out at the cost of production. In OSS the cost of production is $0 because labor is volunteered labor, and there are no material costs, so ultimately the value of software is reduced to zero.
The way this is avoided in other industries is through innovation and patent rights. Actually there's considerable evidence that patent rights are responsible for developing our society into what it is today. The industrial revolution is attributed by some scholars to the establishment of modern style patent rights in Great Britain towards the end of the 16th century, and these same rights are what create an incentive for development in most industries today. So short of pattenting your software, yes, all you can do is inovate to stay ahead, and like everyone else here seems to be saying, that's nothing new.
Keep in mind there may be multiple routes to creating intelligence or consciousness (if consciousness is required). We could easily invent a completely novel form, that isn't a replication of how we think, in AI. In fact, we could theoretically even create AI that has greater cognitive ability than we do, basically, create machines that are smarter than we are, in every way. And I'd imagine this is the goal.
We already get slave labor from the third world, why waste our time making machines that can only do the same things another person can when we could just by that person from southeast asia for a fraction of the price?
Actually I have a friend that was developing software a while back that basically cralled the web to get product feedback for developers based on what customers said on their blogs. The idea was to create a system that crawled the web and automatically compiled recommendations for the producer, so there's nothing all that shocking in this. It's just good business.
We actually become more like the USSR every day, actually I know people that lived in the soviet bloc for most of their lives, and when I ask them about resemblances between the US and their (basically) communist dictatorships they have a lot to say. For example, they see mass media in the US as an echo of media propoganda in the eastern bloc and such. It's pretty crazy, but our country is going to shit in more ways than one.
Why is this necessarily extending government jurisidiction into space?
The law applies to people who are still based in the US when the pictures are taken, e.g. someone controlling a satellite, so in that sense, the law applies to the actions of people on the ground on US territory. Not to mention, you don't get arrested in space, you get arrested on the ground as soon as pictures become available/known of (again) on the ground. When we have the legal framework for arresting people in space you can claim we're extending our jurisdiction, but until then, this is no different in terms of jurisidiction from requiring that no US citizen join the military of a different country (thing of dual citizens with mandatory military service in their second country). Its a requirement of the US government on actions of it's citizens outside of it's jurisidiction, but all actions the government actually takes in response to an infraction have ramifications exclusively within it's jurisidiction (you lose your citizenship here/you get arrested here in the US).
Lol. My only comfort is that there's a long way to go on the corruption scale from biased favoring of evidence that supports your position (something we do often) all the way to manufacturing evidence when there is none (something we don't do so often, in fact, I can't think of any examples), and there are HUGE liabilities associated with the latter. People would hang for that if it were ever discovered. I don't know too many politicians with those kind of balls.
How exactly is the market fair if you create structural forces (laws, unions, etc.) to prevent a large segment of the workforce (indians) from working simply because it means you'll get fired? That sounds more like a monopoly than free trade to me (actually, monopsony would be the right word).
You're missing the point. They'll never stick to their words unless we make them, and we can only do that by voting for the other candidates in response to their lies. Unfortunately somoeone thinking of voting for obama can't bring themselves to vote for mccain and vise versa, so what we need is in fact voting for third parties.
That's the perception we got last time when we invaded Iraq, and learned in the aftermath that it was a misperception. I doubt people will buy it this time around if he tries the same thing again. More likely, they're setting up for a McCain led invasion of Iran since people are more likely to trust him if he says "Iran attacked us" than if Bush says it (not that either scenario is likely).
"Introduction to Quantum Mechanics" by David Griffiths.
This author has been mentioned elsewhere in these posts regarding his "introduction to electrodynamics" book, but his book on quantum mechanics is great too and from what I've been able to pick up, a standard quantum mechanics book for mathematically rigorous quantum classes in Universities across the US.
If he votes against this bill, he loses far more votes in the middle of America (both the literal and political middle) than he's going to lose from the left (and the coasts) by voting FOR the bill.
I don't buy this at all.
I think people really overestimate public concern about terrorism. The general impression I've gotten based on day to day interactions and recent news coverage is that Americans are getting sick of the politics of fear of the past eight years, and polling confirms this.
At the same time you're probably underestimating the backlash from left in response to this vote. Either way, it's significant enough to merrit serious media coverage. Notice the number of articles this past week commenting on the backlash against obama from his former supporters, often with titles such as Obama's surveillance vote spurs blogging backlash.
Lastly, the assumption that the vote only alienates the left is bogus. Allow me to point you to this article documenting the results of a study conducted by a slightly right-leaning polling agency (the mellman group). Here's an excerpt to wet your appetite,
Voters overwhelmingly oppose key elements of the Bush Administrationâ(TM)s FISA agenda--voters oppose warrantless wiretaps, oppose blanket warrants, and oppose amnesty for telecommunication companies that may have broken the law. Large majorities across almost
every demographic subgroup of American voters oppose all three of these proposals. Moreover, voters do not trust President Bush either on protecting the country from terrorism or on protecting our constitutional rights. As a result, Members who stand in defense of constitutional rights have little to fear from their constituents.
The issue here is not that Obama is afraid of alienating his grassroots and average-citizen supporters. Why he's doing it is definitely a question that needs to be answered, but lets not waste anymore time thinking it's because he cares what the average american voter thinks. My guess would be rather that he's afraid of alienating corporate sponsors. Even as a sell-out though, I'd still rather have him as president than McCain. The things McCain says just scare the shit out of me.
You also need to realize that a "felnoy" charge doesn't inherently indicate anything regarding the seriousness of the crime, it only indicates jurisdiction. For example, if you trespass on some railroad tracks when there are signs indicating it's prohibited you can be charged with a felony simply because the railroad falls within the scope of "interstate transport" and therefore is under federal jurisidction, regardless of the magnitude of the crime itself.
So there are really two issues here: 1. that a precedent is being set for excessive sanctions against a normally victimless offense, and 2. that felony charges are viewed as so serious by employeers (and everyone else for that matter, but only the employeers really matter) apparently regardless of what the offense itself is.
The caimpaign contributers and lobbyists aren't the factor here, but that's not to say the media isn't subservient to big business (music industry) in this instance. The mass media get's the loyalty of politicans because it dictates what the people think. If politicians don't submit to the demands of the media establishment they're just not going to get elected again. It's as simple as that. It may not even take any lobbyists at all if the music industry has any professional connections with the journalists in a country (not so unlikely, they could be owned by a common parent company for example). Alternatively, the music industry makes up a significant advertising force, and the media makes its money off of advertising. If a company refuses to advertise while the messages of a political opponent are being broadcast those messages are likely to be marginalized (read: not broadcast at all in exchange for broadcasting a more profitable message) the same effect is acheived as with direct influence over the mass media (via parent company example or lobbyists).
There's not even anything to blame the politicians for in their behavior, it's what any person could be expected to do. The mass media on the other hand, in particular the music industry pushing for this legislation are to blame. They're visibly trying to force laws onto a people without democratic consent to those laws (this is a good example of fascism btw). That's morally inexcusable, and in response to legislation like this the opposition, and anyone who values democracy for that matter, should be protesting the media conglomerates that are responsible, if not flat out boycotting them for their fascist ways. This sort of behavior makes me want to download and distribute as many copywrit things as I can. It would be a very effective form of protest. All the power of a boycott and more (because data distribution actually promotes the spread of the boycott) without sacrificing anything as the consumer.
Companies need to be told who's boss and it's not their CEO's or boardmembers or shareholders. It's the consumer. If we don't want to pay for their product we're not going to, and they can't make us do so against our will. They need to be sent this message loud and clear, and maybe then there will be some convergence between the desires of the market (those who are downloading illegally) and what the market actually provides (e.g. iTunes is a step in the right direction).
The market clearly needs to be restructured and digital rights clearly need to be redefined to accomodate for the desires of the market (music piracy constitutes a significant portion of the market, which testifies to the need for reform to coopt that market), but that's not going to happen until we show the music industry that they can't bend us to their will through legislative loopholes and tricks.
Until the democrats wake up from their sleep and do what? Check the power of the republicans you're now voting for in retaliation? Wouldn't it be easier to just vote for a third party?
There is no argument against going green, just lobbyists in Washington. If only the conservative schmuks here in the U.S. spouting the party line knew this. Thankfully these people also happen to be poor and make up a majority of the south so they'll feel the consequences of global warming the most. They'll be the first to go when shit hits the fan. See? The world is self regulating. Now if only we could figure out some way to get rid of the lobbyists too...
I wonder if our society's attitude towards renewable energy isn't a lot like societies attitude in the US towards slavery in the first half of the 19th century. There's on camp with a vested economic interest in a morally unacceptable behavior, and another camp protesting the moral (people die) and practical (we die) consequences of this behavior. The only difference being that our problem is time critical.
The following are responses to your arguments, respectively:
I was never claiming she lied. I was claiming she violated her journalistic standard of ethics because she was biased. I then claimed the New York Times violated it's journalistic standard of ethics because it was biased.
How does a person claiming something in the national press justify broadcasting those claims - and exagerated versions of those claims - without scrutiny, and doing so systematically? The quality of the information they broadcast is entrusted to those broadcasting the information, if their information is misleading (contrary what's justified by the evidence) then they are culpable. That they take those claims and exagerage them without first scrutinizing them indicates clear bias, an unbiased media would have approached the situation with an open mind and thus required scrutiny of the claims, the fact that a single side was taken systematically without this scrutiny, or rather despite it (because there were people criticising the claims publicly), indicates bias.
If you follow up the story that led to that retraction, and the criticism they recieved for Miller article(s) you'll see that the retraction was in response to those statements, and those are the statements referred to when they say "In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged." If you need a starting place to find this information, the "full story" link from that previous post has some stuff, and it's linked against other places so follow the link trail. But yes, the New York Times does actually agree they're at fault, or at least that's what they admitted to here.
An objective media would have given the unwarranted US detainment of Iranian diplomats to Iraq greater coverage than the Iranian detainment of several British marines in questionable territory.
This is the only statement that could be considered opinion in my argument. You would question this claim? If yes, do so. I'd like to see how exactly you go about it.
No, this is fact. Negotiators really took their time before contacting the Iranians. There literally was no information to be able to acertain the truth of the cituation with enough certainty to even objectively take a side, any side on any issue in this incedent. The mainstream press took a side without presenting any evidence to back it up.
Thank you, if you accept the facts you must now understand why I say there's media bias.
Whaaa----!? wai- Hold up a minute. So my warrant is factual but my claim is opinion? How does my claim go from fact to opinion in transition? What's making my claim opinon exactly?
If simply reporting the facts presents what you think is biased information, it is more of a sign of your political views more then any purposful intent.
The problem is they did MORE than "simply reporting the facts". They reported the facts and them use them to systematically prop up a single view of those facts and a single political point of view on those events (really the facts were just reported in such a way as to imply these political views, but presenting it as two seperate events should clarify it for you). I claim an unbiased media would have presented all sides of the debate, most of all the side that had the backing of the international community and the rule of law, law's the United States had bound itself to abide by.
Fuck this. You intentionally try to dodge my facts by telling me they're opinion, even when the "opinion" itself is morally incontestible (e.g. Iran, pt 5. After all, this is why you dismiss it as "opinion" rather than contest any of it directly). You haven't made a single worthwhile response yet, I'm not even reading the rest of
The oath Bush took when he took office required him to uphold the constitution to the best of his abilities. Unless he wants to argue that he is incapable of opening an email, that makes this EPA incedent an impeachable offense. In the former instance he could still have asked to have it faxed to his office, he chose not to, so it's still impeachable. There's no way out of this. If Congress only indicted him (Cheny first, so that he didn't become president), Bush would be out. The problem is Congress refuses to indict him.
Normally yes, this would be contempt of court. Normal people would be arrested by the police in this case. The problem is that the "police" in this case are congress (ironically), since only they can punish the president in any way (impeachment), and they have refused to punish him, and bared attempts at his impeachment. This told Bush that he could do whatever the fuck he wanted, and heard the message loud and clear.
"IANAL" - but we should all just file a class action lawsuit against the members of the current administration after they leave and bankrupt them all, Bush, Cheny and everyone else, then give all their money to the EPA and (accompanied by an appology) the Iraqi people. Wouldn't be much, but at least we'd be fucking them as badly as they're fucking us. To bad no judge would ever want to set that precident.
You see, because you say so does not make them right.
Maybe not, but you not saying otherwise does. The only time you can actually ignore an argument flat out is when the argument in question is truly irrelevant to the debate. I'll list a number of arguments I would have liked you to respond to at the end of this email, arguments that are relevant, but not favorable to your responses. That will clarify what I mean by "running in circles". Leaving these arguments unaddressed undermines your position considerably, or rather I think they do, so I'd at least like to hear why they don't matter to you.
In your critique of my opinion verses fact, you totally ignore the complexed sentence structure where you actually combined two sentences ("everybody knows" with "He blatantly lied") in a way that went beyond what is real to exaggerate the context.
Granted, I'm a douche and use loaded rhetoric, you're quite capable of seeing beyond it though, so seriously, let this die.
I keep saying that it isn't their job to take a side nor it is their job to push an agenda.
I agree, my examples were supposed to show how they in fact do take a side, and I claim that's bad.
You don't want some journalist risking the lives of the people helping you.
If you don't consider the terms to be significant you should. LOOK AT WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED! Miller aggrees to the terms of accredition because someone is trying to protect a group of soldiers, she motivates an entire country to go to war, we go to war and thousands of other American soldiers die and millions of Iraqis (but based on US media coverage of Iraqi deaths apparently nobody cares about them anymore, so why did I even mentioning them?). She is responsible for those deaths, granted only partially responsible, but even a fraction of responsibility still amounts to thousands or hundreds of thousands of deaths. While the person at the Department of Defense that came up with the terms of accredition might not have recognized this danger, a journalist does, and normally doesn't report on an issue if it requires agreeing to these kinds of terms, ESPECIALLY WHEN THE REPORTING HAS THE POTENTIAL TO LEAD US TO WAR. In this case, had Miller acted ethically, she would have refused to do the report with MET Alpha. Had the New York Times behaved ethically it would have thrown out Miller's story the second she put it on the editors metaphorical desk. This is why Shafer indicts the New York Times editors for allowing for the article to be published. My argument here would be that they agreed to accept the terms of accredition because the New York Times took a side on the issue, and allowed their opinions to compromise their ethics, same goes for that bitch Miller (WARNING: I mixed in some opinion here, don't struggle with it too much). Chomsky would even go a step further to claim they allowed their standards to be compromised because it was either economically favorable for them to do so (aka they whored themselves out), or because "flak" demanded it.
My point wasn't that 1979 was a busy year, it was that there are more important things to Americans then people half way across the [world].
(corrected it for you, let me know if I guessed wrong). Right, such as a different group of people that were half way around the world (the Cambodians)? I'll address this some more with my list of arguments at the end of this post.
The mere presence of stories like that today comes solely from increased communications abilities and 24 hour news channels with the ability to fill more time then what was once possible.
Are you implying we didn't know what was happening? Because there was an article on Dec 7th 1975 (or maybe a few days later) in the New York Times that mentioned Indonesia invading East Timor. There wasn't another article in the NYT on E. Timor for four years.
Look man, I feel we're running in circles here. You keep arguing basically the same things with a misunderstanding of my criticisms (you change your arguments slightly, but not enough to escape just as slight and predictable of a modification of my own arguments). I keep attacking these positions, and showing you why your approach to this problem is COMPLETELY wrong, and then you just come and talk like you haven't heard anything I've said. I don't know what it is, but I'm not going to waste my time repeating myself. If something in what I say is unclear to you, let me know, but for now, I'm going to just ignore a lot of what you said, because we're clearly not getting anywhere with it.
You've made this easier in one regard though. You realize the three examples I gave make everything that precedes them entirely irrelevant right? If those three examples stand, it's enough to prove my point, that the media does not report honestly. This is made especially clear at the point where I make an explicit distinction between the examples (as rigorous) and the fox news and un stuff (which qualifies as off the cuff, not so rigorous, "my two cents" kind of thing). In that moment when I made that distinction between those three examples and the examples before them though, I did one more thing. I labeled the fox and bush stuff I had been focusing on before as "my two cents" and "not rigorous" meaning that not only were they not NECESSARY for my position, they were USELESS for my position. Why would you waste three pages responding to something OTHER than the three examples? I'm going to just disregard everything you said up until you tried to refute those examples.
1. You're either an idiot, or didn't read the "full story" I linked you to. I tend to assume people here aren't idiots (true idiots aren't as common on slashdot as most places) so I'm going to conclude you didn't read the article I linked you to. What are you doing responding to my first argument? Go back, read the full story, and pay particular attention to the discussion surrounding the "terms of accreditation" she accepted from the U.S. Military. These were unacceptable, both for her as a journalist to accept them, and for the New York Times editors to accept her story once they knew of how it was aquired. Also take a close look at how exactly the U.S. media took the initial story she published and without any further evidence, twisted what had initially been a very week case - presenting uncorroberated evidence of WMD precursers - into a story that told of ACTUAL WMD's and was supposedly corroberated by multiple scientists. This is inexcusable.
2. I'm criticising the opinion for having been presented here, arguing that there was no place for it, much less ONLY ONE OPINION ACROSS THE ENTIRE US PRESS! Go back and reread. I could cut off arbitrary halves of this second example and it would still conclusively prove the systematic bias of the media in this instance. This is not a point you can dispute, or rather, if you do, you need to go and get me some statistics to contradict the source analysis, because it's pretty damning right there. But then again, the comparison of March and January detentions is pretty damning to, so if you're trying to contest this point you might want to consider responding to it too. (why am I here teaching you how to debate? is this honestly necessary? Don't make me do this again.).
3. You focus on 1979 to explain why it's predictable that we wouldn't hear about E. Timore. Why? You do realize that the only special thing about 1979 is that that's the only time we actually did report on them? This is, despite the fact that according to you it was a busy year. The New York Times had five years to report on them. In this period they had the time to report on Cambodia, but NOT on E Timor:
between 1975 and 1979 there were 1,175 column inches of New York Times articles dedicated to Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge's atrocities, and 70 column inches of coverage o
Slashdot Mirror
"Advertising in general, or at least the way it is currently done, is something that I believe a more enlightened society would view as either a great evil or at least a corrupting influence."
More enlightened society does view it as a corrupting influence, 'evil' being a term that's generally avoided in said society. If you look at trends in comtemporary philosophy/cultural theory you'll find a number of critics of this, a part of what they label as 'the culture of capitalism' or 'late capitalism', from Theodor Adorno (stanford encyclopedia of philosophy entry) to Fredric Jameson.
Interestingly, society is neither enlightened nor interested in becoming enlightened (the criticism is there and instead of either reacting and modifying the system to fix the problems or replacing the system completely, whatever floats your boat, we are in denial about the existance of what's literally in our face every day), so this is what we're stuck with.
Not necessarily. Now I don't know anything about elephant axons, but, I'm a neuroscience student and I know something about neurons in general. The size of neurons and their axons and dendtrites determines the speed at which a signal can be transmitted through said axon/dendrite. At the same time though cells are small for a reason (to facilitate chemical transport through the membrane, surface area increases arithmetically as volume increases geometrically or something like that, large cells dying cause problems too with lots of waste contaminating an area, etc. so cells tend to be small as a sort of convenience). When there are evolutionary pressures to counter act the benefits of small cells you find large axons/dendrites and neurons. This is the case in giant squid axons (which are visible to the naked eye) for example. They're used to initiate the squid's escape response (a water based jet propulsion system). In light of this framework, I can't imagine any reason why an elephant would need larger axons than usual.
The laws of suppy and demand guarnatee that in a competitive market profits will always be reduced to zero as price is eroded to the level of cost of production. One party will develop a product and sell at some margin above cost, a second company will come in and sell for a bit less winning over the entire market and still sell at a slight margin above cost (though a smaller margin than the first company). The first company then responds and drops its prices and so on. Ultimately the price balances out at the cost of production. In OSS the cost of production is $0 because labor is volunteered labor, and there are no material costs, so ultimately the value of software is reduced to zero.
The way this is avoided in other industries is through innovation and patent rights. Actually there's considerable evidence that patent rights are responsible for developing our society into what it is today. The industrial revolution is attributed by some scholars to the establishment of modern style patent rights in Great Britain towards the end of the 16th century, and these same rights are what create an incentive for development in most industries today. So short of pattenting your software, yes, all you can do is inovate to stay ahead, and like everyone else here seems to be saying, that's nothing new.
Keep in mind there may be multiple routes to creating intelligence or consciousness (if consciousness is required). We could easily invent a completely novel form, that isn't a replication of how we think, in AI. In fact, we could theoretically even create AI that has greater cognitive ability than we do, basically, create machines that are smarter than we are, in every way. And I'd imagine this is the goal.
We already get slave labor from the third world, why waste our time making machines that can only do the same things another person can when we could just by that person from southeast asia for a fraction of the price?
Actually I have a friend that was developing software a while back that basically cralled the web to get product feedback for developers based on what customers said on their blogs. The idea was to create a system that crawled the web and automatically compiled recommendations for the producer, so there's nothing all that shocking in this. It's just good business.
We actually become more like the USSR every day, actually I know people that lived in the soviet bloc for most of their lives, and when I ask them about resemblances between the US and their (basically) communist dictatorships they have a lot to say. For example, they see mass media in the US as an echo of media propoganda in the eastern bloc and such. It's pretty crazy, but our country is going to shit in more ways than one.
Why is this necessarily extending government jurisidiction into space?
The law applies to people who are still based in the US when the pictures are taken, e.g. someone controlling a satellite, so in that sense, the law applies to the actions of people on the ground on US territory. Not to mention, you don't get arrested in space, you get arrested on the ground as soon as pictures become available/known of (again) on the ground. When we have the legal framework for arresting people in space you can claim we're extending our jurisdiction, but until then, this is no different in terms of jurisidiction from requiring that no US citizen join the military of a different country (thing of dual citizens with mandatory military service in their second country). Its a requirement of the US government on actions of it's citizens outside of it's jurisidiction, but all actions the government actually takes in response to an infraction have ramifications exclusively within it's jurisidiction (you lose your citizenship here/you get arrested here in the US).
That was never the perception. That's part of what they tried to sell us.
You sir, greatly overestimate the intelligence of your fellow citizens.
Lol. My only comfort is that there's a long way to go on the corruption scale from biased favoring of evidence that supports your position (something we do often) all the way to manufacturing evidence when there is none (something we don't do so often, in fact, I can't think of any examples), and there are HUGE liabilities associated with the latter. People would hang for that if it were ever discovered. I don't know too many politicians with those kind of balls.
How exactly is the market fair if you create structural forces (laws, unions, etc.) to prevent a large segment of the workforce (indians) from working simply because it means you'll get fired? That sounds more like a monopoly than free trade to me (actually, monopsony would be the right word).
You're missing the point. They'll never stick to their words unless we make them, and we can only do that by voting for the other candidates in response to their lies. Unfortunately somoeone thinking of voting for obama can't bring themselves to vote for mccain and vise versa, so what we need is in fact voting for third parties.
That's the perception we got last time when we invaded Iraq, and learned in the aftermath that it was a misperception. I doubt people will buy it this time around if he tries the same thing again. More likely, they're setting up for a McCain led invasion of Iran since people are more likely to trust him if he says "Iran attacked us" than if Bush says it (not that either scenario is likely).
"Introduction to Quantum Mechanics" by David Griffiths.
This author has been mentioned elsewhere in these posts regarding his "introduction to electrodynamics" book, but his book on quantum mechanics is great too and from what I've been able to pick up, a standard quantum mechanics book for mathematically rigorous quantum classes in Universities across the US.
They're all foreign-owned, so for these Congressmen to make that claim is more than a little disingenuous.
It also makes their protection at the expense of the welfare of American citizens a bit treasonous.
If he votes against this bill, he loses far more votes in the middle of America (both the literal and political middle) than he's going to lose from the left (and the coasts) by voting FOR the bill.
I don't buy this at all.
I think people really overestimate public concern about terrorism. The general impression I've gotten based on day to day interactions and recent news coverage is that Americans are getting sick of the politics of fear of the past eight years, and polling confirms this.
At the same time you're probably underestimating the backlash from left in response to this vote. Either way, it's significant enough to merrit serious media coverage. Notice the number of articles this past week commenting on the backlash against obama from his former supporters, often with titles such as Obama's surveillance vote spurs blogging backlash.
Lastly, the assumption that the vote only alienates the left is bogus. Allow me to point you to this article documenting the results of a study conducted by a slightly right-leaning polling agency (the mellman group). Here's an excerpt to wet your appetite,
Voters overwhelmingly oppose key elements of the Bush Administrationâ(TM)s FISA agenda--voters oppose warrantless wiretaps, oppose blanket warrants, and oppose amnesty for telecommunication companies that may have broken the law. Large majorities across almost every demographic subgroup of American voters oppose all three of these proposals. Moreover, voters do not trust President Bush either on protecting the country from terrorism or on protecting our constitutional rights. As a result, Members who stand in defense of constitutional rights have little to fear from their constituents.
The issue here is not that Obama is afraid of alienating his grassroots and average-citizen supporters. Why he's doing it is definitely a question that needs to be answered, but lets not waste anymore time thinking it's because he cares what the average american voter thinks. My guess would be rather that he's afraid of alienating corporate sponsors. Even as a sell-out though, I'd still rather have him as president than McCain. The things McCain says just scare the shit out of me.
You also need to realize that a "felnoy" charge doesn't inherently indicate anything regarding the seriousness of the crime, it only indicates jurisdiction. For example, if you trespass on some railroad tracks when there are signs indicating it's prohibited you can be charged with a felony simply because the railroad falls within the scope of "interstate transport" and therefore is under federal jurisidction, regardless of the magnitude of the crime itself.
So there are really two issues here: 1. that a precedent is being set for excessive sanctions against a normally victimless offense, and 2. that felony charges are viewed as so serious by employeers (and everyone else for that matter, but only the employeers really matter) apparently regardless of what the offense itself is.
The caimpaign contributers and lobbyists aren't the factor here, but that's not to say the media isn't subservient to big business (music industry) in this instance. The mass media get's the loyalty of politicans because it dictates what the people think. If politicians don't submit to the demands of the media establishment they're just not going to get elected again. It's as simple as that. It may not even take any lobbyists at all if the music industry has any professional connections with the journalists in a country (not so unlikely, they could be owned by a common parent company for example). Alternatively, the music industry makes up a significant advertising force, and the media makes its money off of advertising. If a company refuses to advertise while the messages of a political opponent are being broadcast those messages are likely to be marginalized (read: not broadcast at all in exchange for broadcasting a more profitable message) the same effect is acheived as with direct influence over the mass media (via parent company example or lobbyists).
There's not even anything to blame the politicians for in their behavior, it's what any person could be expected to do. The mass media on the other hand, in particular the music industry pushing for this legislation are to blame. They're visibly trying to force laws onto a people without democratic consent to those laws (this is a good example of fascism btw). That's morally inexcusable, and in response to legislation like this the opposition, and anyone who values democracy for that matter, should be protesting the media conglomerates that are responsible, if not flat out boycotting them for their fascist ways. This sort of behavior makes me want to download and distribute as many copywrit things as I can. It would be a very effective form of protest. All the power of a boycott and more (because data distribution actually promotes the spread of the boycott) without sacrificing anything as the consumer.
Companies need to be told who's boss and it's not their CEO's or boardmembers or shareholders. It's the consumer. If we don't want to pay for their product we're not going to, and they can't make us do so against our will. They need to be sent this message loud and clear, and maybe then there will be some convergence between the desires of the market (those who are downloading illegally) and what the market actually provides (e.g. iTunes is a step in the right direction).
The market clearly needs to be restructured and digital rights clearly need to be redefined to accomodate for the desires of the market (music piracy constitutes a significant portion of the market, which testifies to the need for reform to coopt that market), but that's not going to happen until we show the music industry that they can't bend us to their will through legislative loopholes and tricks.
Until the democrats wake up from their sleep and do what? Check the power of the republicans you're now voting for in retaliation? Wouldn't it be easier to just vote for a third party?
There is no argument against going green, just lobbyists in Washington. If only the conservative schmuks here in the U.S. spouting the party line knew this. Thankfully these people also happen to be poor and make up a majority of the south so they'll feel the consequences of global warming the most. They'll be the first to go when shit hits the fan. See? The world is self regulating. Now if only we could figure out some way to get rid of the lobbyists too...
Apropo the immense global disaster of
so getting started early and possibly avoiding an immense global disaster seems only prudent.
Apparently (according to olduvai theory) energy production per capita can't keep up with energy consumption, and over the next few years we're going to see a percipitous drop in energy per capita on account of overreliance on non renuable resources. Due to our reliance on energy for things such as feeding the populations of our cities and sustaining our medical infrastructure this is predicted to result in the deaths of billions of people (in the absence of new renuable energy technologies, and I do actually mean "billions"). Here are the sources for those interested:
(10 pages) Olduvai revisited 2008
(1/2 page) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olduvai_theory#Details_of_theory>Wiki article on Olduvai theory
Footnote 2 of this article is interesting in its own right
(1/3rd of a page) wiki article applying the Malthusian catastrophe to energy consumption
Read the section titled "The Silent Lie" (p3-4) of this article Thoughts on Long-Term Energy Supplies: Scientists and the Silent Lie
I wonder if our society's attitude towards renewable energy isn't a lot like societies attitude in the US towards slavery in the first half of the 19th century. There's on camp with a vested economic interest in a morally unacceptable behavior, and another camp protesting the moral (people die) and practical (we die) consequences of this behavior. The only difference being that our problem is time critical.
The following are responses to your arguments, respectively:
An objective media would have given the unwarranted US detainment of Iranian diplomats to Iraq greater coverage than the Iranian detainment of several British marines in questionable territory.
This is the only statement that could be considered opinion in my argument. You would question this claim? If yes, do so. I'd like to see how exactly you go about it.
If simply reporting the facts presents what you think is biased information, it is more of a sign of your political views more then any purposful intent.
The problem is they did MORE than "simply reporting the facts". They reported the facts and them use them to systematically prop up a single view of those facts and a single political point of view on those events (really the facts were just reported in such a way as to imply these political views, but presenting it as two seperate events should clarify it for you). I claim an unbiased media would have presented all sides of the debate, most of all the side that had the backing of the international community and the rule of law, law's the United States had bound itself to abide by.
Fuck this. You intentionally try to dodge my facts by telling me they're opinion, even when the "opinion" itself is morally incontestible (e.g. Iran, pt 5. After all, this is why you dismiss it as "opinion" rather than contest any of it directly). You haven't made a single worthwhile response yet, I'm not even reading the rest of
The oath Bush took when he took office required him to uphold the constitution to the best of his abilities. Unless he wants to argue that he is incapable of opening an email, that makes this EPA incedent an impeachable offense. In the former instance he could still have asked to have it faxed to his office, he chose not to, so it's still impeachable. There's no way out of this. If Congress only indicted him (Cheny first, so that he didn't become president), Bush would be out. The problem is Congress refuses to indict him.
Normally yes, this would be contempt of court. Normal people would be arrested by the police in this case. The problem is that the "police" in this case are congress (ironically), since only they can punish the president in any way (impeachment), and they have refused to punish him, and bared attempts at his impeachment. This told Bush that he could do whatever the fuck he wanted, and heard the message loud and clear. "IANAL" - but we should all just file a class action lawsuit against the members of the current administration after they leave and bankrupt them all, Bush, Cheny and everyone else, then give all their money to the EPA and (accompanied by an appology) the Iraqi people. Wouldn't be much, but at least we'd be fucking them as badly as they're fucking us. To bad no judge would ever want to set that precident.
You see, because you say so does not make them right.
Maybe not, but you not saying otherwise does. The only time you can actually ignore an argument flat out is when the argument in question is truly irrelevant to the debate. I'll list a number of arguments I would have liked you to respond to at the end of this email, arguments that are relevant, but not favorable to your responses. That will clarify what I mean by "running in circles". Leaving these arguments unaddressed undermines your position considerably, or rather I think they do, so I'd at least like to hear why they don't matter to you.
In your critique of my opinion verses fact, you totally ignore the complexed sentence structure where you actually combined two sentences ("everybody knows" with "He blatantly lied") in a way that went beyond what is real to exaggerate the context.
Granted, I'm a douche and use loaded rhetoric, you're quite capable of seeing beyond it though, so seriously, let this die.
I keep saying that it isn't their job to take a side nor it is their job to push an agenda.
I agree, my examples were supposed to show how they in fact do take a side, and I claim that's bad.
You don't want some journalist risking the lives of the people helping you.
If you don't consider the terms to be significant you should. LOOK AT WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED! Miller aggrees to the terms of accredition because someone is trying to protect a group of soldiers, she motivates an entire country to go to war, we go to war and thousands of other American soldiers die and millions of Iraqis (but based on US media coverage of Iraqi deaths apparently nobody cares about them anymore, so why did I even mentioning them?). She is responsible for those deaths, granted only partially responsible, but even a fraction of responsibility still amounts to thousands or hundreds of thousands of deaths. While the person at the Department of Defense that came up with the terms of accredition might not have recognized this danger, a journalist does, and normally doesn't report on an issue if it requires agreeing to these kinds of terms, ESPECIALLY WHEN THE REPORTING HAS THE POTENTIAL TO LEAD US TO WAR. In this case, had Miller acted ethically, she would have refused to do the report with MET Alpha. Had the New York Times behaved ethically it would have thrown out Miller's story the second she put it on the editors metaphorical desk. This is why Shafer indicts the New York Times editors for allowing for the article to be published. My argument here would be that they agreed to accept the terms of accredition because the New York Times took a side on the issue, and allowed their opinions to compromise their ethics, same goes for that bitch Miller (WARNING: I mixed in some opinion here, don't struggle with it too much). Chomsky would even go a step further to claim they allowed their standards to be compromised because it was either economically favorable for them to do so (aka they whored themselves out), or because "flak" demanded it.
My point wasn't that 1979 was a busy year, it was that there are more important things to Americans then people half way across the [world].
(corrected it for you, let me know if I guessed wrong). Right, such as a different group of people that were half way around the world (the Cambodians)? I'll address this some more with my list of arguments at the end of this post.
The mere presence of stories like that today comes solely from increased communications abilities and 24 hour news channels with the ability to fill more time then what was once possible.
Are you implying we didn't know what was happening? Because there was an article on Dec 7th 1975 (or maybe a few days later) in the New York Times that mentioned Indonesia invading East Timor. There wasn't another article in the NYT on E. Timor for four years.
Look man, I feel we're running in circles here. You keep arguing basically the same things with a misunderstanding of my criticisms (you change your arguments slightly, but not enough to escape just as slight and predictable of a modification of my own arguments). I keep attacking these positions, and showing you why your approach to this problem is COMPLETELY wrong, and then you just come and talk like you haven't heard anything I've said. I don't know what it is, but I'm not going to waste my time repeating myself. If something in what I say is unclear to you, let me know, but for now, I'm going to just ignore a lot of what you said, because we're clearly not getting anywhere with it.
You've made this easier in one regard though. You realize the three examples I gave make everything that precedes them entirely irrelevant right? If those three examples stand, it's enough to prove my point, that the media does not report honestly. This is made especially clear at the point where I make an explicit distinction between the examples (as rigorous) and the fox news and un stuff (which qualifies as off the cuff, not so rigorous, "my two cents" kind of thing). In that moment when I made that distinction between those three examples and the examples before them though, I did one more thing. I labeled the fox and bush stuff I had been focusing on before as "my two cents" and "not rigorous" meaning that not only were they not NECESSARY for my position, they were USELESS for my position. Why would you waste three pages responding to something OTHER than the three examples? I'm going to just disregard everything you said up until you tried to refute those examples.
1. You're either an idiot, or didn't read the "full story" I linked you to. I tend to assume people here aren't idiots (true idiots aren't as common on slashdot as most places) so I'm going to conclude you didn't read the article I linked you to. What are you doing responding to my first argument? Go back, read the full story, and pay particular attention to the discussion surrounding the "terms of accreditation" she accepted from the U.S. Military. These were unacceptable, both for her as a journalist to accept them, and for the New York Times editors to accept her story once they knew of how it was aquired. Also take a close look at how exactly the U.S. media took the initial story she published and without any further evidence, twisted what had initially been a very week case - presenting uncorroberated evidence of WMD precursers - into a story that told of ACTUAL WMD's and was supposedly corroberated by multiple scientists. This is inexcusable.
2. I'm criticising the opinion for having been presented here, arguing that there was no place for it, much less ONLY ONE OPINION ACROSS THE ENTIRE US PRESS! Go back and reread. I could cut off arbitrary halves of this second example and it would still conclusively prove the systematic bias of the media in this instance. This is not a point you can dispute, or rather, if you do, you need to go and get me some statistics to contradict the source analysis, because it's pretty damning right there. But then again, the comparison of March and January detentions is pretty damning to, so if you're trying to contest this point you might want to consider responding to it too. (why am I here teaching you how to debate? is this honestly necessary? Don't make me do this again.).
3. You focus on 1979 to explain why it's predictable that we wouldn't hear about E. Timore. Why? You do realize that the only special thing about 1979 is that that's the only time we actually did report on them? This is, despite the fact that according to you it was a busy year. The New York Times had five years to report on them. In this period they had the time to report on Cambodia, but NOT on E Timor:
between 1975 and 1979 there were 1,175 column inches of New York Times articles dedicated to Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge's atrocities, and 70 column inches of coverage o