That irony, of course, is layered with another irony, that while most of those groups repeatedly make claims of media bias, few would consider watching C-SPAN. Boring? You betcha. Most of life's issues are mind-numbingly dull in their complexity, especially when presented unedited and unfiltered.
Not to mention that much of what Congress does is mind-numbingly stupid in its procedural complexity and various random tactics that are commonly used all the time to slow down what's going on even further (and thus make it even more boring).
Back when I was in high school, I'd sometimes turn on C-SPAN when I came home after school after a hard day and needed a nap. It provided useful "white noise."
What I quickly learned was that aside from days when debates were happening on major issues, most of C-SPAN when Congress was in session consisted of Congressmen speaking on obscure resolutions like honoring some random person, or (better yet) delay tactics like quorum calls, invoking procedural idiocies that bog down debate in parliamentary matters, etc.
It's ironic that the service that brought Congress to the public on video resulted in Congressmen themselves hanging out in their offices rather than the chamber, thus creating not only the news soundbite (nobody's usually there listening anyway, so everybody's trying to score a place on the evening news on camera), but also the creation of novel ways of slowing down business. I can remember entire afternoons consisting of quorum calls, where everyone would file into the chamber for attendance purposes that would waste a half hour, file out, and then someone else would "note the absence of a quorum," and the whole process would start all over again.
This is the wrong approach. Rather than a maze of vague and inconsistent "implied licenses", it should simply be recognized that copyright restrictions cannot apply unless and until the copies are distributed to others who do not already possess an equivalent copy.
I don't think this contradicts the GP's point. An "implied license" in copyright terms often comes with certain allowable uses bundled in, and despite current DRM technologies, the right of a person to make copies of a copyrighted work that he/she owns for his/her own personal use is generally covered by fair use. (In fact, fair use often applies even for limited copies made for personal use of copyrighted materials not owned personally, as long as it is done for research purposes, etc.)
In other words, an implied license of this sort would undoubtedly come with an implied right to make backup copies, etc.
If you already have a legal copy there can be no restrictions on making additional copies for your own use, provided all the copies remain in your possession. Anything less would be madness considering the current state of technology.
Yep. And that's generally how it works for most copyrighted materials already. The only attempts at restricting this have come through RIAA and such stuff with DRM, etc. But that's not the way copyright usually works and has worked for centuries. The RIAA and MPAA have made claims that circumventing encryption to make copies violates copyright, and there might be something to be said for that legally. But to my knowledge no one has yet been prosecuted for making backup copies of anything. They've been prosecuted for distributing these things illegally, and perhaps for making software or distributing software that breaks encryption. But that's different from prosecuting someone for making personal copies ONLY for personal use. I'd be interested to hear of any cases where that has happened. The RIAA and MPAA may discourage it or frown upon it, but I bet they'd have real trouble prosecuting someone for it without some other evidence of illegal activity (e.g., distribution, selling copies for profit, etc.).
Again, to quote what the GP did:
It is clear that a copy of the Web page is being made by the user. It is also clear that the Web page is protected against unauthorized copying by copyright law.
That would mean stuff that doesn't fall under fair use, according to copyright law. Making personal copies of something in your possession (i.e., which was licensed to you) is fair use.
And yes, many states that do this claim that there are great restrictions on its use, but as we've recently seen in Texas, this system already has been abused. I simply don't understand why the government wouldn't allow parents to request that such samples be destroyed within a reasonable amount of time, if they so desire -- unless they're up to more nefarious purposes. And don't tell me it's for overall population research only, since samples could be anonymous for that sort of thing, only retaining some basic demographic data. The only reasonable explanation is that someday, someone will want to use these samples to track you down and check up on you specifically -- whether it's for some medical purpose or law enforcement or something else.
Right now, my state only allows you to opt out if the parents have religious objections. Otherwise, the samples are required by law and will be stored indefinitely. We're already well on our way to this database.
Evidently my friend, you are following on the proud tradition of the rarely discussed precursors of Grammar Nazi's, the Order of Grammar Centurians. Your probably the type of guy that corrects mispronunciations of "Veni Vidi Vici".
I find it really ironic (intentionally?) that you felt the need to use an apostrophe when forming the plural of Nazi in "Grammar Nazis." No apostrophe necessary, my friend!;)
And by the way, perhaps you know this, but in the era before the modern Grammar Nazis, there were plenty of local pronunciations of "Veni Vidi Vici." Hence, we still pronounce "et cetera" according to the standards of normal English Latin pronunciation (with a soft 'c', which would have been the way most schoolchildren would have been taught to pronounce "Vici" in the US and UK 150 years ago). The late 19th and early 20th century saw a shift toward reconstructed classical pronunciation, but that same era also experienced a significant decrease in the importance of Latin (and classical Greek) in standard primary and secondary curricula -- later cemented when in the 1920s and 1930s average people began to be encouraged to complete high school (in the US, anyway). Latin was primarily retained in private Catholic schools, where it was often pronounced according to the Italianate way rather than the traditional English way, hence the "chee" sound in the way most people pronounce Caesar's famous phrase.
Personally, I find it silly that anyone would ever think of "correcting" something like that. You might as well "correct" people for not pronouncing old English words like Chaucer would have before the Great Vowel Shift....
Also, every major work of prose from most West European countries since the Renaissance has been translated to the languages of the others and read extensively, so that yes, "I think, therefore I am" is as much of a stock phrase as "être ou ne pas être, telle est la question" is one in French.
Your use of the phrase "has been translated to the languages of the others" in the context of this argument implies that you're giving an example of French being translated to English when you quote Descartes. Of course, Descartes actually wrote his Meditations in Latin, so I'm not sure what your example has to do with anything other than that the intellectual language of Europe in the 17th century was Latin, and important works were translated into the vernacular.
While you clearly know more about linguistics than the GP, your pedantic analysis misses the whole point. You couldn't even be having an argument about "descent" in the English language that you insist is so Proto-Germanic, since the word "descent" itself is an example of an English word that actually descends from medieval French -- which you have to admit even in your pedantic worldview of historical linguistics -- as do many vocabulary words and idioms, as the GP was asserting.
English is not "descended from French," period. It has a large proportion of vocabulary from French. To you that may sound like it makes it "descended from French," but as it turns out, that's simply irrelevant to language classification, and precisely for the reason you state as (b): languages borrow from others very easily.
Um, yeah, but did you forget about the freakin' Norman Conquest? Being ruled by a bunch of French speakers for a couple of centuries completely changed the native English language. When all of your upper class speaks a foreign language, eventually it trickles down, not only in vocabulary, but in some places in grammar as well.
Old English, which is the core of the English language, is not descended from French, but much of our Latinate vocabulary came through French.
English has a relatively recent common ancestor with German, called Proto-Germanic, and a much more distant one with French, called Proto-Indo-European.
To quote you, "No, no, NO." You're talking about language trees, and you're right about the core grammar and vocabulary of Old English as it got transferred to modern English. But you're missing a whole segment of the development of the language -- in fact, MUCH more recent than Proto-Germanic, since it dates from after 1066. That's the part of the language development that's relevant to many transfers of idioms, which is what the GP was talking about.
Only between 20 and 30 percent
of our modern English vocabulary comes from the Proto-Germanic branch. So, when you start talking about "descent," it really depends on what you mean. If you mean the source of the lexicon, a greater percentage comes from Latinate roots, and a lot of that comes through French.
English words that come from French are noise in this comparison.
Dude, do you even realize what you're saying? You're annoyed about someone using the word "descended." Fine. But the transfer of idioms like the one he was talking about are often a much more recent aspect of language than Proto-Germanic. In this case, the recent (as in the last millennium) appropriation of a bunch of vocabulary and idioms into the upper class of "English" society is a hell of a lot more relevant than Proto-Germanic.
To say that the words from French are "noise" is like a person trying to compare Windows Vista and OS X, pointing out some features that may have been borrowed into Vista from OS X, and you come along and say, "That's noise -- what's really going on is that early versions of MS Windows (2.0 through 3.0) borrowed from early versions of Mac OS." Who the hell cares when you're talking about comparing Vista with OS X in their modern incarnations? The languages changed a lot in the interim.
In addition, the fact that idioms are shared between English and French isn't particularly because English speakers borrowed the idioms from French.
For many idioms, it is. And yes, lots of major works were translated in the past few centuries, but the GP wasn't talking about how Shakespeare and Alexander Pope are the source for a bunch of modern English, but rather that there was a significant influence of French vocabulary, idioms, and ideas that got superimposed on top of the Old English core lexicon and syntax.
In sum, you're not wrong about what you say in terms of the ultimate source of the core of the languages. But I think you completely missed the point of the GP's post in your pedantry about "descent" according to historical linguistic trees. Those trees are only the starting point for languages, and the influence of French on the changes to English in the past millennium was a lot greater than Proto-Germanic or some generic idea of pan-European cultural exchange.
but I dare say the parameters are far too many and far too complicated.
Yeah, it sort of reminds me of the work in classical music by David Cope, who has been trying to use AI for decades to reproduce "new pieces" by Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Mahler, etc. While he makes grandiose claims and says that he has even fooled music faculty and graduate students at major universities (i.e., he plays them a piece by Chopin and a generated piece, and they supposedly can't tell the real one), I've always found such statements to be hard to believe. I've listened to the stuff, and his piano pieces "by Chopin" (for example) sound like a bunch of cliched chunks of Chopin-esque music chained together almost haphazardly. I can't imagine how such a piece would fool any professional classical musician, and indeed, when I've played this stuff for music professors and music graduate students, they can easily spot the "fake" one.
And I should also mention that the generated pieces that he shows off are always pre-selected by him. So, out of a dozen or more pieces generated by his AI algorithm, only one of them gets to be on the CD with his newest book -- and even those are pretty bad.
That's not to say that AI will never get there, and perhaps these guys have figured out something the Cope hasn't (as well as half a dozen other researchers) in decades of trying. But in the end, the biggest issue is that the output will succeed at modeling the parameters that the researcher understands, and from the view in the classical world, it's pretty clear that the standard music theoretical models don't do too well (as yet) at such tasks.
The small sample they provide is beautiful, but to the layman appears as a kind of meandering, simple decoration.
Indeed. Without some further explanation, the images look like these could simply be something like decorated eggs. Lots of cultures have done it over many millennia, and the patterns you often see are quite complex. My grandmother used to make a Russian/Ukrainian form of them, and she clearly "evolved" patterns of lines by varying those made by her mother and other women in her community.
I'm not saying the researchers don't know what they're talking about. Just from the description of "repetitive patterns" and the images, it's hard to see the difference between language and decoration in this case.
I wish they'd stay focused on usability and 'ergonomic' issues, and not waste time on colors and wallpapers and other bubblegum that half of the user base will be guaranteed not to like anyway.[...] Too much time wasted on fluff that doesn't matter much.
Although I agree with you in principle, have you read any Slashdot stories on Ubuntu in the past few years? EVERY time Ubuntu comes up, there's some thread going on (and usually multiple threads) about the damn color scheme. You rarely see any such comments about Kubuntu or Xubuntu and their color scheme. It's always complaining about the default Gnome colors. I don't remember such vociferous objections being raised over so many years about a color scheme on any other topic here.
The only explanation I can come up with is that this color scheme pisses a lot of people off. I don't know why. I don't particularly like it myself (though I do like earth tones in general), but I don't feel the compulsive need to bitch about it to everyone... if I don't like it, I simply change it. (What's so hard?) But it nevertheless seems to produce a greater response in many, many users.
Anyhow, the point is -- the default theme seems to be a major barrier for a lot of people. So, maybe they should spend a little time on it.
It's not an evasion. It's a very solid, concrete answer to the question.
In the normal sense of the question in physics, I completely agree with you.
People get caught up on the question of "what is time?", but in reality, the question is no more deep or metaphysical than the question "what is length?". Both are equally distracting quagmires of philosophy and both are neatly (and appropriately) dealt with in physics by simply defining them to be something that is measured by a device, as a multiple of some defined quantity. [...] and so physics and science can proceed, while philosophy remains in its quagmire.
I also completely agree with your assessment of the role of "time" in standard formulations of physics.
However, I do think that your emphasis on scientific definition and measurement misses something important about the question "What is time?" The question is not simply, "How is time measured?" That is an interesting question, and perhaps it's the most concise and important one to answer when considering the use of time in physics, but it only scratches the surface of "What is time?" And for all your dismissiveness toward "philosophical quagmires," the fact is that the vast majority of the time, the vast majority of the people in the world don't deal in the wondrous abstraction of time as defined as a measurement in physics. To most people, "time" is something we experience.
"Time" existed before people measured it, and therefore it is quite productive to ask the question of what it means without a measuring device. Our understanding of the human experience of "time" may in fact be useful in understanding, for example, the workings of the mind.
To give a simple comparison, think about temperature. No doubt, you'd define it just as you defined length or time. But that's not what most people in most situations mean by "temperature." They instead have in mind something about how cold it feels outside or how hot a pan is. More meteorologically-inclined people might realize that "wind chill" and "heat index" give a better sense of how it feels than the measurement of temperature alone, but many people still think of temperature primarily when they think about how they experience the world.
And yet we don't experience temperature directly. At best, we experience rate of heat transfer. How "cold" it feels depends on temperature, humidity, wind speed, whether the sun is shining on us with radiative heat, etc. A coin on my desk will feel "colder" than a piece of paper, because metal has a greater transfer rate for heat than paper. I could burn myself on a metal pan at a particular temperature and yet quickly move around a hot piece of wood at the same temperature without injury. None of this downplays the usefulness of temperature as an abstract measurement in science, but it isn't really a practical way of dealing with our direct experience of the world. Abstract temperature is simply not relevant to most people under most circumstances.
In a similar way, I think by asking the question "What is time?", we can begin to think about the phenomenological aspects of the experience of time and what that might tell us about the way we interact with the world. You might think of such questions as "soft" or "philosophical meanderings," but if you simply dismiss them in favor of an abstract physical concept (which has little direct impact on our experience of the world), you might be missing out on some significant aspects of what time is -- at least to humans.
And, ultimately, isn't that what really matters for most people? Evolution created an amazing apparatus that experiences something called "time," and your physical measurement definition doesn't model that apparatus well at all. So maybe, rather than just begrudging such "philosophical meanderings," perhaps -- if you care at all about humanity and how humans work within their environment -- a better understanding of such a question could really be useful for advancing science. After all, science is a human endeavor, based on our human experience of the world. Might we not become more efficient or better in working within science if we understand ourselves better?
Personally, I view profanity as an issue of decorum. There are circumstances where various behaviors are inappropriate, as some have said, perhaps around children, or grandmothers who might be offended, or whatever. In the same way, it would be usually be inappropriate to walk into a nice restaurant wearing ripped jeans and a tee-shirt with profanity on it. And it would be inappropriate to go around yelling obscenities in such a restaurant. You'd be ruining the nice quiet dinners of other people around you. Part of polite social conduct is respecting the people around you, even if they sometimes place arbitrary limits on behavior. If you don't want to socialize with those people, go to a different restaurant, or don't hang around the kids if you feel a compulsive need to swear continuously.
But, regarding laws, I generally prefer that the government mind its own business. If you don't want to hear profanity on television, watch another channel. If you don't want to buy liquor on Sunday, don't buy it. But generally the government should stay out of such things.
And yet I also can't quite object to a local government that decides to enforce local community standards, as long as they don't interfere with fundamental rights. You don't have the right to buy liquor on Sunday -- hell, you don't have a fundamental right to buy liquor at all. Hence, there are dry communities and counties within the US. Personally, I don't think such laws work (and there are some studies to prove it), but that's the local community's business. Just like you have the freedom to watch another channel if you don't like it, you also have the freedom to vote people out of office who pass laws you don't like (or, as a last resort, to move to another community without such restrictions -- the federal government should have nothing to do with such legislation).
Getting back to the question of swearing, I have to admit that I don't understand those who object to profanity out of hand either. I respect their wishes, but I've often seen inconsistencies in their behavior. For example, I had a friend a few years back who was actually someone that would tell you that she was offended if you used profanity in her presence. And yet, she also had her own "profanity" -- namely, she'd yell "APPLES, ORANGES, AND PEAS!" when she was really mad about something. I kid you not -- that's really what she'd say. So I pointed out to her that essentially she had her own phrase that did most of the things that profanity typically does for most people, so why shouldn't I be offended by her use of that phrase? I find the same issue with another friend who says "dag gommit" instead of "god dammit" -- again, I'm not sure I understand how this gets around his religious objection to "god dammit." It strikes me as a weird kind of technicality to get out of the "Lord's name in vain" issue. Isn't the dividing line arbitrary for these people? Don't the words that they end up using have the same force and effect that profanity has for others?
But in the end, all language is about arbitrary conventions for communication. Profanity is very effective at communicating certain things to certain people, while it offends other people (and thus fails to communicate to them), and its overuse can detract from its power of communication. So I don't tend to use it a lot myself (erring on the side of caution), except when it is useful as a precise way to communicate a particular expression or emotion in the right context.
If you bothered to get to know me, then you'd know I'm not dangerous at all.
Perhaps, but you also have a choice as a customer for a company that uses such data. If you want a small bank who will give you a loan because the guy who runs the bank "knows you" because you live in a small town, or your dad is his friend, or whatever, that's your choice. Or you can choose a large bank that only gives loans to people who aren't "high-risk" according to certain aggregate data. The fact is that most banks that do the latter will often perform more efficiently by "profiling" than banks that just make "gut decisions" based on "knowing you," and thus they can offer better rates than the former bank that "knows you." Thus, more people flock to the bigger bank, and eventually the small bank goes out of business.
Same with insurance. You can try to find an insurance company that would treat you as an "individual," but all that really means is that the people insuring you would be taking a guess about how much it would take to insure you rather than using statistical data. In the long run, the company that uses statistics will make more money and thus offer better rates... so companies that ignore data in favor of gut decisions will go out of business.
People should be treated as *individuals* and not pre-judged or pre-punished when they haven't done anything wrong.
That's a wonderful ideal, but it simply doesn't happen in the real world. Whether people make decisions based on some statistics -- which are obviously always limited -- or whether they make some "gut decision" based on some general feeling they have from "knowing you," they will always be making such decisions based on some sort of prejudice. Perhaps that insurance adjuster just (by chance) saw a cluster of major accidents that happened involving studious, straight-A, 16-year-old programmers, so by knowing you as an "individual," he/she might decide to raise your rate further. How would you feel about this? Or they could look at the data statistically and perhaps come to a different conclusion and give you a lower rate.
Basically, for every characteristic of yourself that you could possibly single out to justify a lower rate, you're implicitly making an argument to profile you based on such characteristics rather than other ones that you think are discriminatory (age, etc.). Whether you want the lower rate based on statistics or based on a "gut instinct," you're only going to get it based on a prejudice that rates you by other criteria rather than the ones you are declaring invalid. You're not arguing to be treated as an individual, but rather arguing for profiling based on different criteria... and no amount of meaningful description of yourself on your part will ever get you out of that paradox.
So, the alternative is to give people all the same rate, regardless of ANY factors. The problem with this is that a relatively small amount of the riskiest people cost the insurance company a disproportionate amount, so MOST people wouldn't be in favor of such a thing, and thus they'd like to go to a company that discriminates in their favor and charges them less.
Just take a look at states that are highly regulated in their insurance in order to reduce the kinds of discrimination you complain about. If you don't live in such a state, I guarantee you that you'd probably pay an even higher premium there than you are now.
The weather reports are worthless. The dudes that give them to us are basically just flimflam men. If we got our weather predictions by rolling dice, they'd be just as reliable. I say we stop paying for this nonsense and tell the meteorologists to get a real job.
I agree with your criticism of the GP's post. Weather reports are pretty bad, and they aren't really getting much better. Nevertheless, they aren't quite as bad as you imply. If you'd like to get a sense of the relative accuracy for various weather forecasting organizations in your area, you might want to check out:
There have been studies on this, and depending on how you interpret the data, your local TV weatherman is probably useful for 24-36 hours of forecasting. (Some really aren't much better than chance, but most can at least give a prediction somewhat better than chance for the weather on the next day.) Beyond that, you'd be better off consulting some national service. The error rate gets bigger and bigger, but basically once you get somewhere between 5-8 days out, the predictions really aren't any better than chance. So don't believe 10-day or 14-day forecasts -- they are just nonsense. Basically, for anything more than a few days out, consult climate data for your region and go from that.
In any case, weather prediction isn't that great, but it is better than chance, at least for short time frames.
I should point out that nowhere in my post was I claiming that I objected to the usage. (For the record, I don't. Except in cases where the gender is actually clear, e.g., where a specific person is being referred to, or the pool of persons that the sentence is referring to have only one gender.) I was asking on what authority you claim to tell other people how to write.
The irony of these style guides is that they historically came into existence primarily as a tool to train middle class workers how to sound like upper class. They have largely outgrown their utility.
Hmm... so I guess all those editors and guidelines for submissions to journals and such that refer writers to such guidebooks are in error. Note I included things like the Chicago Manual; I could also add things like the APA style guide to this list. You can believe what you want, but if you want your writing to be respected by people who use such guides and editors who point you to such guides, you'd better follow their rules.
These days, if you want to know what words to use, you might be better served asking a linguist instead of pointing a grammar nanny finger through a book written by a stodgy academe out of touch with the actually speakers of the language that he is pretending to be an authority of.
I have to disagree. If you want to know what words are in use, ask a linguist. If you want to know what words to use, you should consult whatever persons set the standards for what you're trying to do. I think even the most descriptive linguist would agree that there are rulemakers in communities that do serve to police certain aspects of usage. For writers, style guides such as the ones I've referred to are still respected by many editors and publishers. They don't care what your linguist friend says; they only care about what their standards are, and they get to determine them.
And for the record, a lot of these style guides have introductions addressing the very issue of prescriptive/descriptive linguistics you bring up. In general, the goal of most modern books like this is not to police usage, but to provide a writer with advice about what the accepted stylistic norms are. And from my experience with editors and educated people in general, I have to say they avoid the usage you promote, at least in edited prose. Even if you argue such usage is colloquial, again any descriptive linguist will admit that there are different registers and different usages appropriate for different contexts. Your claim, on the other hand, was not nuanced in this way.
Did it hurt your head that I ended my sentence with a preposition? *chortle chortle*
Yeah, have fun laughing at me. I'm perfectly aware that most grammatical rules, including the preposition nonsense, were made up, mostly by grammarians in the 18th and 19th centuries. Thus, I'm happy to split an infinitive or end a sentence with a preposition or even use "they" as a singular pronoun when necessary. However, I also am aware of the expected standards of many editors (and the readership communities they represent), and they are often not as nuanced in their perspective on such issues. Yes, they are ignorant. But if you're writing for them, you have to choose when to respect their norms and when to break them. But if you simply ignore them and pretend that descriptive linguistics is the only way to go... well, be ready to be branded as ignorant yourself.
In sum, it's all a construction. There are no "rules." So what? But you live in a society, and you need to be aware of those standards.
By the way, you were pontificating yourself in your original post -- implicitly claiming to set up a rule that you believed to be acceptable in all circumstances (which it clearly is not). So, in doing so, what makes you different from those "stodgy academes" except for the fact that less people care what you think?
While I shall assume you are attempting to be humorous, the parlance of the English language allows the use of "their" for the singular gender-neutral possessive.
While this may be your opinion, what are your sources for "the parlance of the English language"? You speak with such authority about what the English language "allows," but I wonder what other experts have to say on this question.
Basically, all the common style guides I have at hand at the moment say to avoid such usage in formal English. The latest edition of The Chicago Manual of Style encourages writers to recast a sentence when such usage would be required. The latest edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage provides useful historical commentary from the OED that demonstrates the long history of such a practice, but continues to lament (albeit somewhat half-heartedly) that it is becoming more commonplace. The Columbia Guide to Standard American English says that the practice seems to be acceptable in informal contexts, but in "Oratorical and Edited English" it should be avoided by rephrasing the sentence. Garner's Modern American Usage admits that it's a great solution to a problem of sexist language, but warns that using it may cause readers to "doubt your literacy" and refers to the practice as "sloppiness." Again, it recommends avoiding the problem by rephrasing when possible. I could go on.
In sum, while almost all usage guides agree that the practice is common in colloquial English, all seem to recommend avoiding the use of "they, their, theirs" for a singular pronoun (some only in formal contexts or writing). So what are your credentials for dictating what is proper "parlance of the English language"?
There are very good reasons why the Federal government grew in power at the expense of states: because state governments often proved corrupt and hostile to liberty and justice.
No, the federal government grew in power primarily due to the Great Depression. FDR wanted to create massive federal legislation that would require a rather novel interpretation of the Constitution, and he threatened to enlarge the Supreme Court and appoint a majority of his own cronies if the Court didn't follow him. The court caved, and soon this new Constitutional interpretation was in place.
As for "liberty and justice," those protections were guaranteed by the amendments passed after the Civil War. They didn't lead to great increase in federal power other than the ability to prevent certain kinds of abuses of rights. The Supreme Court, by the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, was now used to the precedents its established in the 1930s and 40s, and was then persuaded to enforce even greater interventions in the name of those old amendments... including, for example, making up a "right to privacy" that should be in the Constitution, but actually isn't.
The Feds can quite Constitutionally put a $2,500 tax on everyone who does not have a health insurance plan.
As the GP said, this is actually a novel idea to require citizens to buy a service from a private company or else be fined. I personally am in favor of a better health-care system, but I believe this really raises novel Constitutional issues... which are potentially a dangerous precedent.
And the argument has been made successfully for a great number of federal programs in the interest of "the pursuit of happiness", among other provisions in the constitution.
Funny... I've never seen the phrase "the pursuit of happiness" in the Constitution.
That's because it isn't. It's from the Declaration of Independence, which is not the supreme law of the land. Moreover, an analysis of the Declaration shows that the frequently-quoted "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" clause was part of asserting a right to revolution, i.e., establishing a rationale for overthrowing government. It was hardly meant to be used as a basis for establishing laws within a new government. And even if you did think it was, note that the Declaration was drafted fairly quickly by a small committee in order to assert grievances, while the Constitution (which was meant to be the basis for law) was debated in great detail over every clause.
There are some provisions in the Constitution that seem to be close to your "pursuit of happiness," particularly in the preamble, but they are rarely if ever used as the sole basis for laws... which usually, if not grounded in the enumerated powers, tend to come out of the expanded interpretation of the Commerce Clause (which was much restricted until the early 20th century) or out of various provisions for protection of rights. The idea that laws are passed willy-nilly with some vague rationale about "happiness" is ludicrous. Instead, they are passed often with novel interpretations of Constitutional provisions that mostly grew out of a desire for a bigger federal government to help out people during the Great Depression... a trend that was never reversed subsequently.
Seriously: what state do you live in where you can finance a home the way most folks do (20% or less down) w/o somebody requiring that you insure the property? Or are you just shooting off your mouth with no factual basis? Oh, wait: I forgot this is/.
Most, if not all states, have no such law.
Do you not understand the distinction between what the government can require of you by law versus what a corporation you're doing business with can require of you as a condition of doing business with you?
You're arguing about a bank's right to protect its investment. Sure, as a matter of business policy, it can require you to do a lot of things in order to get that mortgage. For example, it can ask you about your income, credit history, employment history, etc. as well. Do you think a policeman or random government agent should be able to show up at your house and ask you the same questions about your private life with no probable cause?
Oh, and while this is not logically related to the argument, your idea that "the way most folks do" should become the only way possible is severely flawed. Most people may put both socks on and then both shoes, instead of doing both on one foot at a time, but that doesn't mean that the government can pass a law requiring it. And even if there were some way to justify a law under LIMITED CONDITIONS (like 20% or less down), that doesn't mean that the authority should follow to be able to pass a law requiring something in general. Just like I'm not required to have a driver's license, I'm not required to purchase a house with a small down payment. Neither set of my grandparents had a mortgage on any of the houses they bought, and one set of them were recent immigrants... they just saved their money and bought things when they saved, rather than living off credit and being enslaved to credit companies, as most people seem to do today.
>>>Oh, and the US code of commerce, yes it very well CAN regulate commerce inside of a state.
Incorrect. The U.S. Constitution says "among" the States. That does not include the power to regulate within the States. Maybe you ought to read the Constitution sometime, especially Amendments 9 and 10. It's become clear that you never have.
Yeah, while I agree with you about the real meaning of the Constitution, you'd have to overturn Wickard v. Filburn (and a whole set of preceding case law from the 1930s) to get back to that interpretation. At present time, Congress does have the authority, under the way the Constitution is currently interpreted, to regulate commerce within a state.
Incidentally, I am amazed that more people don't know about Wickard v. Filburn and what it did for federal power. The idea that the federal government has the authority to force you to destroy food grown on your own land for the purposes of feeding your own family and animals... all in the name of regulating "interstate commerce" because your actions resulted in your *not* buying grain from others... my God. We lost the liberty you're looking for 70 years ago... it's just that the abuses have been getting progressively worse lately. There's only a tiny step from Wickard to the kind of fines you're arguing against.
>>>Congress has Constitutional authority to pretty much tax anyone for anything.
Yes tax. Not fine.
I just wanted to say thank you to you for being such a strong voice about Constitutional issues like this. I simply cannot fathom how we now seem to have a Congress who takes an oath to uphold the Constitution and then ignores it. One of the worst moments in the federal government in recent history for me was when Pelosi was asked about the constitutionality of health care, and she simply said, "Are you serious?"
Yes. It's a very serious question to ask what the Constitution says (or does not say) about a law you're proposing to enact. Her reaction seems to indicate to me that we no longer live in a Constitutional republic. We live in some sort of pseudo-representational oligarchy with no effective limits on our leaders' power... well, until people start standing up at the ballot box.
By the way, just to be clear, I should note that the particular bug did not appear to be the fault of the proprietary driver, but rather something that broke in the newer version of Ubuntu and got carried into Linux Mint.
Comparing a Linux distro without non-free components to Windows in ease of install for beginners is only relevant if all the hardware has open-source support
While I understand this philosophy, I don't think it applies to all or even most Linux distributions. Most Linux distros make some concession to at least allow the possibility of proprietary drivers written for Linux. If Ubuntu or -- perhaps for an even better example -- Linux Mint make claims that they should work out of the box, even for products that require proprietary (Linux) drivers, users ideally shouldn't have to delve into the bowels of Linux to sort out a problem with Linux and proprietary drivers that are supposedly written for Linux.
Case in point -- less than two months ago, a friend bought a new Dell netbook and decided to install Linux Mint. Everything seemed to work great out of the box, except for the proprietary wireless driver, which Linux Mint actually offered to install for him. It wouldn't work. After a bit of fiddling with GUI settings, in which he found he could get it to work by reinstalling the driver, but it would stop working after reboot, he gave up and called me. After a short bit of playing around, I discovered that some kernel module wasn't getting loaded at startup. A couple commands, and it then started to work. A quick and easy fix for someone who understands the underpinnings of the system. But for someone who has never played around at the command line in Linux or Windows before??
Because I was curious, I looked at some online forums dealing with this network driver. This particular problem was identified, but there seemed to be about a half dozen other bugs people were having with this and similar chipsets, which are quite common. So, a new user who's trying to troubleshoot this thing has a couple options: (1) try out the fixes he found blindly, with some risk to screwing up his system further, or (2) post his problem in a naive manner and risk getting a bunch of "haven't you done searches" or "please post the output of these commands, you idiot" replies. Even if he does the latter, since it's clear that there were a number of different bugs for this device, any responses he got might set him on the wrong track, or might not consider the particular issue -- particularly if he hadn't been diligent enough to notice that he could get the thing working by reinstalling the driver, but it stopped working upon reboot.
I've never encountered something that required this level of sophistication to solve on a Windows install just to get a basic system component working. I've seen things like this often, though, on Linux installs. It's not only obscure or new hardware (this particular chipset had been around for over a year), and as is clear from the fact that Mint volunteered the driver, it clearly detected and claimed to support his hardware. Different problems occur when comparing Gentoo versus Debian versus something like Linux Mint, but I have seen such problems frequently.
But you're right, by carefully choosing hardware, one should be able to avoid such a problem. And yet, this was a very common Dell netbook, and someone doing casual searches on it would see that Linux supposedly supported all the hardware.
(1) I love how you turned this into a rant about viruses. I don't disagree at all that Windows is crappy in many ways. Note that in my post I said I use Linux as my primary OS now and have for years... that's because I dislike Windows and Microsoft's philosophy, and I like a lot of things about Linux. But I was making a claim about the ease of installation, not about which system works better.
(2) Oh... and I love the bit about the network driver. Every Linux fan always seems to have problems with the network driver on Windows. Personally, I've never had this be a problem, and I don't see how it could be a problem for most users if they have the Windows OS CD plus the driver CD (or whatever media) that came with their network card. Well, if you were doing an upgrade to a new version of Windows and the old drivers aren't supported, I guess this could be a problem if the card isn't autodetected. This could catch an unwary user, I admit, but a power user should be prepared for such a thing (by grabbing appropriate drivers in advance).
That said, I believe the thread was originally dealing with an issue of a reinstall, in which case a user should at least theoretically have the driver CD laying around somewhere, so this is a moot point.
In any case, you make this mistake once, and you know how to fix it and/or prepare for it on your next install. It's not a difficult issue compared to troubleshooting many common Linux problems.
When I do a Windows install, it takes me long enough even for just one machine that I like to make an image. With a Fedora system, I just save the kickstart file somewhere.
(3) Yeah, see you have a different metric for installation because you understand more than the putative "average desktop user" I was talking about. Most desktop users don't do installations enough to try to optimize them. They just want to be able to do something that they can actually figure out. If you asked which installation generally takes longer for power users, I completely agree that Windows sucks in this regard. But for the average desktop user (which is what I was referring to), what generally would matter if they had to do the one install they do in three or five years is whether they can easily figure it out and figure out how to fix things that are broken... rather than how efficient the process is.
Windows installations may be a pain, but I submit that when things go wrong in Linux, they are more likely to go wrong in a disruptive way, and they are more likely to require skills beyond the average desktop user to fix. And, drawing on my own experience, the experience of a number of friends, and the people I encounter when reading forums and bug reports about the problems I encounter, these problems are more common than your glowing picture seems to suggest.
My apologies if my post upset you. But my criticism of part of what you wrote - that which I quoted, stands.
No prob. I was unclear, and I realize I may have overstated my case. I guess I get tired of hearing the "Windows and Linux are equally hard" thing said around here. I'm a big fan of Linux, and I fully support its goals, but I think Windows, though poorly designed in many ways, tends to be more tolerant to beginners. Specifically, in this discussion, to inexperienced users doing an install. It can still be a pain, and yes it can require a lot of reboots, and if something goes wrong, that's often the easiest solution. For power users, I'd definitely agree that doing a Windows install is much more of a pain than a typical Linux install.
However -- my experience, and that of quite a few of my friends who have experience doing a lot of such installs, seems to be that when a Linux install goes wrong, it goes wrong in ways that require less-than-obvious solutions and/or in ways that are much more disruptive to the basic user experience. That's what stops me from putting Linux on my parents' computer, for example. Windows may be less efficient and it might break in lots of subtle ways all the time, but the OS usually seems to keep chugging along with basic functionality (even when broken under the hood)... and if not, a reboot and/or driver reinstall often is all that is needed to get that basic functionality back.
With Linux, on the other hand, I've uniformly had some major configuration issue whenever I tried installing a new distro or installing it on a new machine... something that I couldn't walk my parents through easily or even tell them how to expect or fix such a thing. It might take me five minutes or less to figure out and fix, but I'm not around to do that for them. And I've had lots of things break on upgrades to new distro versions; again, I can't be around to handle such things for inexperienced users.
Maybe I've just had bad luck, but my experience has all been major distros on common hardware. The only exotic thing I've tried was installing Linux on a convertible ultraportable a few years back, and that was actually one of the easier computers to get most of the hardware working. But when I have gone searching for people with similar problems with standard hardware on forums or bug reports occasionally, I still see (even in the last few months) lots of people complaining about getting basic elements of their system working... so I don't think it is all just my bad luck.
Hey, you just quoted something I wrote about the "typical Linux install for the average desktop user", and then bash me. I wasn't claiming this was my typical experience. But most people who try to install Linux have this experience.
If you want to be in denial about the typical experience for the average desktop user, fine. I'm telling you what I see from people I talk to, forums I read, etc. I had an experience something like that when I first started, too, but -- as you'll note at the beginning of my post -- I actually use Linux primarily now, because I like it, and after many hours of troubleshooting and learning all the ins and outs, I no longer have these crazy problems and/or I've figured out how to solve them efficiently.
My point was -- my experience is now different from the one I described, but only because I've invested many, many hours in learning how the system works. On the other hand, my 8-year-old niece could very easily figure out how to download and install drivers in a couple minutes.
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That irony, of course, is layered with another irony, that while most of those groups repeatedly make claims of media bias, few would consider watching C-SPAN. Boring? You betcha. Most of life's issues are mind-numbingly dull in their complexity, especially when presented unedited and unfiltered.
Not to mention that much of what Congress does is mind-numbingly stupid in its procedural complexity and various random tactics that are commonly used all the time to slow down what's going on even further (and thus make it even more boring).
Back when I was in high school, I'd sometimes turn on C-SPAN when I came home after school after a hard day and needed a nap. It provided useful "white noise."
What I quickly learned was that aside from days when debates were happening on major issues, most of C-SPAN when Congress was in session consisted of Congressmen speaking on obscure resolutions like honoring some random person, or (better yet) delay tactics like quorum calls, invoking procedural idiocies that bog down debate in parliamentary matters, etc.
It's ironic that the service that brought Congress to the public on video resulted in Congressmen themselves hanging out in their offices rather than the chamber, thus creating not only the news soundbite (nobody's usually there listening anyway, so everybody's trying to score a place on the evening news on camera), but also the creation of novel ways of slowing down business. I can remember entire afternoons consisting of quorum calls, where everyone would file into the chamber for attendance purposes that would waste a half hour, file out, and then someone else would "note the absence of a quorum," and the whole process would start all over again.
Your tax dollars at work....
This is the wrong approach. Rather than a maze of vague and inconsistent "implied licenses", it should simply be recognized that copyright restrictions cannot apply unless and until the copies are distributed to others who do not already possess an equivalent copy.
I don't think this contradicts the GP's point. An "implied license" in copyright terms often comes with certain allowable uses bundled in, and despite current DRM technologies, the right of a person to make copies of a copyrighted work that he/she owns for his/her own personal use is generally covered by fair use. (In fact, fair use often applies even for limited copies made for personal use of copyrighted materials not owned personally, as long as it is done for research purposes, etc.)
In other words, an implied license of this sort would undoubtedly come with an implied right to make backup copies, etc.
If you already have a legal copy there can be no restrictions on making additional copies for your own use, provided all the copies remain in your possession. Anything less would be madness considering the current state of technology.
Yep. And that's generally how it works for most copyrighted materials already. The only attempts at restricting this have come through RIAA and such stuff with DRM, etc. But that's not the way copyright usually works and has worked for centuries. The RIAA and MPAA have made claims that circumventing encryption to make copies violates copyright, and there might be something to be said for that legally. But to my knowledge no one has yet been prosecuted for making backup copies of anything. They've been prosecuted for distributing these things illegally, and perhaps for making software or distributing software that breaks encryption. But that's different from prosecuting someone for making personal copies ONLY for personal use. I'd be interested to hear of any cases where that has happened. The RIAA and MPAA may discourage it or frown upon it, but I bet they'd have real trouble prosecuting someone for it without some other evidence of illegal activity (e.g., distribution, selling copies for profit, etc.).
Again, to quote what the GP did:
It is clear that a copy of the Web page is being made by the user. It is also clear that the Web page is protected against unauthorized copying by copyright law.
That would mean stuff that doesn't fall under fair use, according to copyright law. Making personal copies of something in your possession (i.e., which was licensed to you) is fair use.
Yes, and as we know, we're already keeping biological samples from infants in many states indefinitely.
And yes, many states that do this claim that there are great restrictions on its use, but as we've recently seen in Texas, this system already has been abused. I simply don't understand why the government wouldn't allow parents to request that such samples be destroyed within a reasonable amount of time, if they so desire -- unless they're up to more nefarious purposes. And don't tell me it's for overall population research only, since samples could be anonymous for that sort of thing, only retaining some basic demographic data. The only reasonable explanation is that someday, someone will want to use these samples to track you down and check up on you specifically -- whether it's for some medical purpose or law enforcement or something else.
Right now, my state only allows you to opt out if the parents have religious objections. Otherwise, the samples are required by law and will be stored indefinitely. We're already well on our way to this database.
Evidently my friend, you are following on the proud tradition of the rarely discussed precursors of Grammar Nazi's, the Order of Grammar Centurians. Your probably the type of guy that corrects mispronunciations of "Veni Vidi Vici".
I find it really ironic (intentionally?) that you felt the need to use an apostrophe when forming the plural of Nazi in "Grammar Nazis." No apostrophe necessary, my friend! ;)
And by the way, perhaps you know this, but in the era before the modern Grammar Nazis, there were plenty of local pronunciations of "Veni Vidi Vici." Hence, we still pronounce "et cetera" according to the standards of normal English Latin pronunciation (with a soft 'c', which would have been the way most schoolchildren would have been taught to pronounce "Vici" in the US and UK 150 years ago). The late 19th and early 20th century saw a shift toward reconstructed classical pronunciation, but that same era also experienced a significant decrease in the importance of Latin (and classical Greek) in standard primary and secondary curricula -- later cemented when in the 1920s and 1930s average people began to be encouraged to complete high school (in the US, anyway). Latin was primarily retained in private Catholic schools, where it was often pronounced according to the Italianate way rather than the traditional English way, hence the "chee" sound in the way most people pronounce Caesar's famous phrase.
Personally, I find it silly that anyone would ever think of "correcting" something like that. You might as well "correct" people for not pronouncing old English words like Chaucer would have before the Great Vowel Shift....
Also, every major work of prose from most West European countries since the Renaissance has been translated to the languages of the others and read extensively, so that yes, "I think, therefore I am" is as much of a stock phrase as "être ou ne pas être, telle est la question" is one in French.
Your use of the phrase "has been translated to the languages of the others" in the context of this argument implies that you're giving an example of French being translated to English when you quote Descartes. Of course, Descartes actually wrote his Meditations in Latin, so I'm not sure what your example has to do with anything other than that the intellectual language of Europe in the 17th century was Latin, and important works were translated into the vernacular.
While you clearly know more about linguistics than the GP, your pedantic analysis misses the whole point. You couldn't even be having an argument about "descent" in the English language that you insist is so Proto-Germanic, since the word "descent" itself is an example of an English word that actually descends from medieval French -- which you have to admit even in your pedantic worldview of historical linguistics -- as do many vocabulary words and idioms, as the GP was asserting.
English is not "descended from French," period. It has a large proportion of vocabulary from French. To you that may sound like it makes it "descended from French," but as it turns out, that's simply irrelevant to language classification, and precisely for the reason you state as (b): languages borrow from others very easily.
Um, yeah, but did you forget about the freakin' Norman Conquest? Being ruled by a bunch of French speakers for a couple of centuries completely changed the native English language. When all of your upper class speaks a foreign language, eventually it trickles down, not only in vocabulary, but in some places in grammar as well.
Old English, which is the core of the English language, is not descended from French, but much of our Latinate vocabulary came through French.
English has a relatively recent common ancestor with German, called Proto-Germanic, and a much more distant one with French, called Proto-Indo-European.
To quote you, "No, no, NO." You're talking about language trees, and you're right about the core grammar and vocabulary of Old English as it got transferred to modern English. But you're missing a whole segment of the development of the language -- in fact, MUCH more recent than Proto-Germanic, since it dates from after 1066. That's the part of the language development that's relevant to many transfers of idioms, which is what the GP was talking about.
Only between 20 and 30 percent
of our modern English vocabulary comes from the Proto-Germanic branch. So, when you start talking about "descent," it really depends on what you mean. If you mean the source of the lexicon, a greater percentage comes from Latinate roots, and a lot of that comes through French.
English words that come from French are noise in this comparison.
Dude, do you even realize what you're saying? You're annoyed about someone using the word "descended." Fine. But the transfer of idioms like the one he was talking about are often a much more recent aspect of language than Proto-Germanic. In this case, the recent (as in the last millennium) appropriation of a bunch of vocabulary and idioms into the upper class of "English" society is a hell of a lot more relevant than Proto-Germanic.
To say that the words from French are "noise" is like a person trying to compare Windows Vista and OS X, pointing out some features that may have been borrowed into Vista from OS X, and you come along and say, "That's noise -- what's really going on is that early versions of MS Windows (2.0 through 3.0) borrowed from early versions of Mac OS." Who the hell cares when you're talking about comparing Vista with OS X in their modern incarnations? The languages changed a lot in the interim.
In addition, the fact that idioms are shared between English and French isn't particularly because English speakers borrowed the idioms from French.
For many idioms, it is. And yes, lots of major works were translated in the past few centuries, but the GP wasn't talking about how Shakespeare and Alexander Pope are the source for a bunch of modern English, but rather that there was a significant influence of French vocabulary, idioms, and ideas that got superimposed on top of the Old English core lexicon and syntax.
In sum, you're not wrong about what you say in terms of the ultimate source of the core of the languages. But I think you completely missed the point of the GP's post in your pedantry about "descent" according to historical linguistic trees. Those trees are only the starting point for languages, and the influence of French on the changes to English in the past millennium was a lot greater than Proto-Germanic or some generic idea of pan-European cultural exchange.
but I dare say the parameters are far too many and far too complicated.
Yeah, it sort of reminds me of the work in classical music by David Cope, who has been trying to use AI for decades to reproduce "new pieces" by Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Mahler, etc. While he makes grandiose claims and says that he has even fooled music faculty and graduate students at major universities (i.e., he plays them a piece by Chopin and a generated piece, and they supposedly can't tell the real one), I've always found such statements to be hard to believe. I've listened to the stuff, and his piano pieces "by Chopin" (for example) sound like a bunch of cliched chunks of Chopin-esque music chained together almost haphazardly. I can't imagine how such a piece would fool any professional classical musician, and indeed, when I've played this stuff for music professors and music graduate students, they can easily spot the "fake" one.
And I should also mention that the generated pieces that he shows off are always pre-selected by him. So, out of a dozen or more pieces generated by his AI algorithm, only one of them gets to be on the CD with his newest book -- and even those are pretty bad.
That's not to say that AI will never get there, and perhaps these guys have figured out something the Cope hasn't (as well as half a dozen other researchers) in decades of trying. But in the end, the biggest issue is that the output will succeed at modeling the parameters that the researcher understands, and from the view in the classical world, it's pretty clear that the standard music theoretical models don't do too well (as yet) at such tasks.
The small sample they provide is beautiful, but to the layman appears as a kind of meandering, simple decoration.
Indeed. Without some further explanation, the images look like these could simply be something like decorated eggs. Lots of cultures have done it over many millennia, and the patterns you often see are quite complex. My grandmother used to make a Russian/Ukrainian form of them, and she clearly "evolved" patterns of lines by varying those made by her mother and other women in her community.
I'm not saying the researchers don't know what they're talking about. Just from the description of "repetitive patterns" and the images, it's hard to see the difference between language and decoration in this case.
I wish they'd stay focused on usability and 'ergonomic' issues, and not waste time on colors and wallpapers and other bubblegum that half of the user base will be guaranteed not to like anyway.[...] Too much time wasted on fluff that doesn't matter much.
Although I agree with you in principle, have you read any Slashdot stories on Ubuntu in the past few years? EVERY time Ubuntu comes up, there's some thread going on (and usually multiple threads) about the damn color scheme. You rarely see any such comments about Kubuntu or Xubuntu and their color scheme. It's always complaining about the default Gnome colors. I don't remember such vociferous objections being raised over so many years about a color scheme on any other topic here.
The only explanation I can come up with is that this color scheme pisses a lot of people off. I don't know why. I don't particularly like it myself (though I do like earth tones in general), but I don't feel the compulsive need to bitch about it to everyone... if I don't like it, I simply change it. (What's so hard?) But it nevertheless seems to produce a greater response in many, many users.
Anyhow, the point is -- the default theme seems to be a major barrier for a lot of people. So, maybe they should spend a little time on it.
It's not an evasion. It's a very solid, concrete answer to the question.
In the normal sense of the question in physics, I completely agree with you.
People get caught up on the question of "what is time?", but in reality, the question is no more deep or metaphysical than the question "what is length?". Both are equally distracting quagmires of philosophy and both are neatly (and appropriately) dealt with in physics by simply defining them to be something that is measured by a device, as a multiple of some defined quantity. [...] and so physics and science can proceed, while philosophy remains in its quagmire.
I also completely agree with your assessment of the role of "time" in standard formulations of physics.
However, I do think that your emphasis on scientific definition and measurement misses something important about the question "What is time?" The question is not simply, "How is time measured?" That is an interesting question, and perhaps it's the most concise and important one to answer when considering the use of time in physics, but it only scratches the surface of "What is time?" And for all your dismissiveness toward "philosophical quagmires," the fact is that the vast majority of the time, the vast majority of the people in the world don't deal in the wondrous abstraction of time as defined as a measurement in physics. To most people, "time" is something we experience.
"Time" existed before people measured it, and therefore it is quite productive to ask the question of what it means without a measuring device. Our understanding of the human experience of "time" may in fact be useful in understanding, for example, the workings of the mind.
To give a simple comparison, think about temperature. No doubt, you'd define it just as you defined length or time. But that's not what most people in most situations mean by "temperature." They instead have in mind something about how cold it feels outside or how hot a pan is. More meteorologically-inclined people might realize that "wind chill" and "heat index" give a better sense of how it feels than the measurement of temperature alone, but many people still think of temperature primarily when they think about how they experience the world.
And yet we don't experience temperature directly. At best, we experience rate of heat transfer. How "cold" it feels depends on temperature, humidity, wind speed, whether the sun is shining on us with radiative heat, etc. A coin on my desk will feel "colder" than a piece of paper, because metal has a greater transfer rate for heat than paper. I could burn myself on a metal pan at a particular temperature and yet quickly move around a hot piece of wood at the same temperature without injury. None of this downplays the usefulness of temperature as an abstract measurement in science, but it isn't really a practical way of dealing with our direct experience of the world. Abstract temperature is simply not relevant to most people under most circumstances.
In a similar way, I think by asking the question "What is time?", we can begin to think about the phenomenological aspects of the experience of time and what that might tell us about the way we interact with the world. You might think of such questions as "soft" or "philosophical meanderings," but if you simply dismiss them in favor of an abstract physical concept (which has little direct impact on our experience of the world), you might be missing out on some significant aspects of what time is -- at least to humans.
And, ultimately, isn't that what really matters for most people? Evolution created an amazing apparatus that experiences something called "time," and your physical measurement definition doesn't model that apparatus well at all. So maybe, rather than just begrudging such "philosophical meanderings," perhaps -- if you care at all about humanity and how humans work within their environment -- a better understanding of such a question could really be useful for advancing science. After all, science is a human endeavor, based on our human experience of the world. Might we not become more efficient or better in working within science if we understand ourselves better?
Personally, I view profanity as an issue of decorum. There are circumstances where various behaviors are inappropriate, as some have said, perhaps around children, or grandmothers who might be offended, or whatever. In the same way, it would be usually be inappropriate to walk into a nice restaurant wearing ripped jeans and a tee-shirt with profanity on it. And it would be inappropriate to go around yelling obscenities in such a restaurant. You'd be ruining the nice quiet dinners of other people around you. Part of polite social conduct is respecting the people around you, even if they sometimes place arbitrary limits on behavior. If you don't want to socialize with those people, go to a different restaurant, or don't hang around the kids if you feel a compulsive need to swear continuously.
But, regarding laws, I generally prefer that the government mind its own business. If you don't want to hear profanity on television, watch another channel. If you don't want to buy liquor on Sunday, don't buy it. But generally the government should stay out of such things.
And yet I also can't quite object to a local government that decides to enforce local community standards, as long as they don't interfere with fundamental rights. You don't have the right to buy liquor on Sunday -- hell, you don't have a fundamental right to buy liquor at all. Hence, there are dry communities and counties within the US. Personally, I don't think such laws work (and there are some studies to prove it), but that's the local community's business. Just like you have the freedom to watch another channel if you don't like it, you also have the freedom to vote people out of office who pass laws you don't like (or, as a last resort, to move to another community without such restrictions -- the federal government should have nothing to do with such legislation).
Getting back to the question of swearing, I have to admit that I don't understand those who object to profanity out of hand either. I respect their wishes, but I've often seen inconsistencies in their behavior. For example, I had a friend a few years back who was actually someone that would tell you that she was offended if you used profanity in her presence. And yet, she also had her own "profanity" -- namely, she'd yell "APPLES, ORANGES, AND PEAS!" when she was really mad about something. I kid you not -- that's really what she'd say. So I pointed out to her that essentially she had her own phrase that did most of the things that profanity typically does for most people, so why shouldn't I be offended by her use of that phrase? I find the same issue with another friend who says "dag gommit" instead of "god dammit" -- again, I'm not sure I understand how this gets around his religious objection to "god dammit." It strikes me as a weird kind of technicality to get out of the "Lord's name in vain" issue. Isn't the dividing line arbitrary for these people? Don't the words that they end up using have the same force and effect that profanity has for others?
But in the end, all language is about arbitrary conventions for communication. Profanity is very effective at communicating certain things to certain people, while it offends other people (and thus fails to communicate to them), and its overuse can detract from its power of communication. So I don't tend to use it a lot myself (erring on the side of caution), except when it is useful as a precise way to communicate a particular expression or emotion in the right context.
If you bothered to get to know me, then you'd know I'm not dangerous at all.
Perhaps, but you also have a choice as a customer for a company that uses such data. If you want a small bank who will give you a loan because the guy who runs the bank "knows you" because you live in a small town, or your dad is his friend, or whatever, that's your choice. Or you can choose a large bank that only gives loans to people who aren't "high-risk" according to certain aggregate data. The fact is that most banks that do the latter will often perform more efficiently by "profiling" than banks that just make "gut decisions" based on "knowing you," and thus they can offer better rates than the former bank that "knows you." Thus, more people flock to the bigger bank, and eventually the small bank goes out of business.
Same with insurance. You can try to find an insurance company that would treat you as an "individual," but all that really means is that the people insuring you would be taking a guess about how much it would take to insure you rather than using statistical data. In the long run, the company that uses statistics will make more money and thus offer better rates... so companies that ignore data in favor of gut decisions will go out of business.
People should be treated as *individuals* and not pre-judged or pre-punished when they haven't done anything wrong.
That's a wonderful ideal, but it simply doesn't happen in the real world. Whether people make decisions based on some statistics -- which are obviously always limited -- or whether they make some "gut decision" based on some general feeling they have from "knowing you," they will always be making such decisions based on some sort of prejudice. Perhaps that insurance adjuster just (by chance) saw a cluster of major accidents that happened involving studious, straight-A, 16-year-old programmers, so by knowing you as an "individual," he/she might decide to raise your rate further. How would you feel about this? Or they could look at the data statistically and perhaps come to a different conclusion and give you a lower rate.
Basically, for every characteristic of yourself that you could possibly single out to justify a lower rate, you're implicitly making an argument to profile you based on such characteristics rather than other ones that you think are discriminatory (age, etc.). Whether you want the lower rate based on statistics or based on a "gut instinct," you're only going to get it based on a prejudice that rates you by other criteria rather than the ones you are declaring invalid. You're not arguing to be treated as an individual, but rather arguing for profiling based on different criteria... and no amount of meaningful description of yourself on your part will ever get you out of that paradox.
So, the alternative is to give people all the same rate, regardless of ANY factors. The problem with this is that a relatively small amount of the riskiest people cost the insurance company a disproportionate amount, so MOST people wouldn't be in favor of such a thing, and thus they'd like to go to a company that discriminates in their favor and charges them less.
Just take a look at states that are highly regulated in their insurance in order to reduce the kinds of discrimination you complain about. If you don't live in such a state, I guarantee you that you'd probably pay an even higher premium there than you are now.
The weather reports are worthless. The dudes that give them to us are basically just flimflam men. If we got our weather predictions by rolling dice, they'd be just as reliable. I say we stop paying for this nonsense and tell the meteorologists to get a real job.
I agree with your criticism of the GP's post. Weather reports are pretty bad, and they aren't really getting much better. Nevertheless, they aren't quite as bad as you imply. If you'd like to get a sense of the relative accuracy for various weather forecasting organizations in your area, you might want to check out:
http://www.forecastadvisor.com/
There have been studies on this, and depending on how you interpret the data, your local TV weatherman is probably useful for 24-36 hours of forecasting. (Some really aren't much better than chance, but most can at least give a prediction somewhat better than chance for the weather on the next day.) Beyond that, you'd be better off consulting some national service. The error rate gets bigger and bigger, but basically once you get somewhere between 5-8 days out, the predictions really aren't any better than chance. So don't believe 10-day or 14-day forecasts -- they are just nonsense. Basically, for anything more than a few days out, consult climate data for your region and go from that.
In any case, weather prediction isn't that great, but it is better than chance, at least for short time frames.
I should point out that nowhere in my post was I claiming that I objected to the usage. (For the record, I don't. Except in cases where the gender is actually clear, e.g., where a specific person is being referred to, or the pool of persons that the sentence is referring to have only one gender.) I was asking on what authority you claim to tell other people how to write.
The irony of these style guides is that they historically came into existence primarily as a tool to train middle class workers how to sound like upper class. They have largely outgrown their utility.
Hmm... so I guess all those editors and guidelines for submissions to journals and such that refer writers to such guidebooks are in error. Note I included things like the Chicago Manual; I could also add things like the APA style guide to this list. You can believe what you want, but if you want your writing to be respected by people who use such guides and editors who point you to such guides, you'd better follow their rules.
These days, if you want to know what words to use, you might be better served asking a linguist instead of pointing a grammar nanny finger through a book written by a stodgy academe out of touch with the actually speakers of the language that he is pretending to be an authority of.
I have to disagree. If you want to know what words are in use, ask a linguist. If you want to know what words to use, you should consult whatever persons set the standards for what you're trying to do. I think even the most descriptive linguist would agree that there are rulemakers in communities that do serve to police certain aspects of usage. For writers, style guides such as the ones I've referred to are still respected by many editors and publishers. They don't care what your linguist friend says; they only care about what their standards are, and they get to determine them.
And for the record, a lot of these style guides have introductions addressing the very issue of prescriptive/descriptive linguistics you bring up. In general, the goal of most modern books like this is not to police usage, but to provide a writer with advice about what the accepted stylistic norms are. And from my experience with editors and educated people in general, I have to say they avoid the usage you promote, at least in edited prose. Even if you argue such usage is colloquial, again any descriptive linguist will admit that there are different registers and different usages appropriate for different contexts. Your claim, on the other hand, was not nuanced in this way.
Did it hurt your head that I ended my sentence with a preposition? *chortle chortle*
Yeah, have fun laughing at me. I'm perfectly aware that most grammatical rules, including the preposition nonsense, were made up, mostly by grammarians in the 18th and 19th centuries. Thus, I'm happy to split an infinitive or end a sentence with a preposition or even use "they" as a singular pronoun when necessary. However, I also am aware of the expected standards of many editors (and the readership communities they represent), and they are often not as nuanced in their perspective on such issues. Yes, they are ignorant. But if you're writing for them, you have to choose when to respect their norms and when to break them. But if you simply ignore them and pretend that descriptive linguistics is the only way to go... well, be ready to be branded as ignorant yourself.
In sum, it's all a construction. There are no "rules." So what? But you live in a society, and you need to be aware of those standards.
By the way, you were pontificating yourself in your original post -- implicitly claiming to set up a rule that you believed to be acceptable in all circumstances (which it clearly is not). So, in doing so, what makes you different from those "stodgy academes" except for the fact that less people care what you think?
While I shall assume you are attempting to be humorous, the parlance of the English language allows the use of "their" for the singular gender-neutral possessive.
While this may be your opinion, what are your sources for "the parlance of the English language"? You speak with such authority about what the English language "allows," but I wonder what other experts have to say on this question.
Basically, all the common style guides I have at hand at the moment say to avoid such usage in formal English. The latest edition of The Chicago Manual of Style encourages writers to recast a sentence when such usage would be required. The latest edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage provides useful historical commentary from the OED that demonstrates the long history of such a practice, but continues to lament (albeit somewhat half-heartedly) that it is becoming more commonplace. The Columbia Guide to Standard American English says that the practice seems to be acceptable in informal contexts, but in "Oratorical and Edited English" it should be avoided by rephrasing the sentence. Garner's Modern American Usage admits that it's a great solution to a problem of sexist language, but warns that using it may cause readers to "doubt your literacy" and refers to the practice as "sloppiness." Again, it recommends avoiding the problem by rephrasing when possible. I could go on.
In sum, while almost all usage guides agree that the practice is common in colloquial English, all seem to recommend avoiding the use of "they, their, theirs" for a singular pronoun (some only in formal contexts or writing). So what are your credentials for dictating what is proper "parlance of the English language"?
Sorry, but get your facts right.
There are very good reasons why the Federal government grew in power at the expense of states: because state governments often proved corrupt and hostile to liberty and justice.
No, the federal government grew in power primarily due to the Great Depression. FDR wanted to create massive federal legislation that would require a rather novel interpretation of the Constitution, and he threatened to enlarge the Supreme Court and appoint a majority of his own cronies if the Court didn't follow him. The court caved, and soon this new Constitutional interpretation was in place.
As for "liberty and justice," those protections were guaranteed by the amendments passed after the Civil War. They didn't lead to great increase in federal power other than the ability to prevent certain kinds of abuses of rights. The Supreme Court, by the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, was now used to the precedents its established in the 1930s and 40s, and was then persuaded to enforce even greater interventions in the name of those old amendments... including, for example, making up a "right to privacy" that should be in the Constitution, but actually isn't.
The Feds can quite Constitutionally put a $2,500 tax on everyone who does not have a health insurance plan.
As the GP said, this is actually a novel idea to require citizens to buy a service from a private company or else be fined. I personally am in favor of a better health-care system, but I believe this really raises novel Constitutional issues... which are potentially a dangerous precedent.
And the argument has been made successfully for a great number of federal programs in the interest of "the pursuit of happiness", among other provisions in the constitution.
Funny... I've never seen the phrase "the pursuit of happiness" in the Constitution.
That's because it isn't. It's from the Declaration of Independence, which is not the supreme law of the land. Moreover, an analysis of the Declaration shows that the frequently-quoted "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" clause was part of asserting a right to revolution, i.e., establishing a rationale for overthrowing government. It was hardly meant to be used as a basis for establishing laws within a new government. And even if you did think it was, note that the Declaration was drafted fairly quickly by a small committee in order to assert grievances, while the Constitution (which was meant to be the basis for law) was debated in great detail over every clause.
There are some provisions in the Constitution that seem to be close to your "pursuit of happiness," particularly in the preamble, but they are rarely if ever used as the sole basis for laws... which usually, if not grounded in the enumerated powers, tend to come out of the expanded interpretation of the Commerce Clause (which was much restricted until the early 20th century) or out of various provisions for protection of rights. The idea that laws are passed willy-nilly with some vague rationale about "happiness" is ludicrous. Instead, they are passed often with novel interpretations of Constitutional provisions that mostly grew out of a desire for a bigger federal government to help out people during the Great Depression... a trend that was never reversed subsequently.
Seriously: what state do you live in where you can finance a home the way most folks do (20% or less down) w/o somebody requiring that you insure the property? Or are you just shooting off your mouth with no factual basis? Oh, wait: I forgot this is /.
Most, if not all states, have no such law. Do you not understand the distinction between what the government can require of you by law versus what a corporation you're doing business with can require of you as a condition of doing business with you?
You're arguing about a bank's right to protect its investment. Sure, as a matter of business policy, it can require you to do a lot of things in order to get that mortgage. For example, it can ask you about your income, credit history, employment history, etc. as well. Do you think a policeman or random government agent should be able to show up at your house and ask you the same questions about your private life with no probable cause?
Oh, and while this is not logically related to the argument, your idea that "the way most folks do" should become the only way possible is severely flawed. Most people may put both socks on and then both shoes, instead of doing both on one foot at a time, but that doesn't mean that the government can pass a law requiring it. And even if there were some way to justify a law under LIMITED CONDITIONS (like 20% or less down), that doesn't mean that the authority should follow to be able to pass a law requiring something in general. Just like I'm not required to have a driver's license, I'm not required to purchase a house with a small down payment. Neither set of my grandparents had a mortgage on any of the houses they bought, and one set of them were recent immigrants... they just saved their money and bought things when they saved, rather than living off credit and being enslaved to credit companies, as most people seem to do today.
>>>Oh, and the US code of commerce, yes it very well CAN regulate commerce inside of a state.
Incorrect. The U.S. Constitution says "among" the States. That does not include the power to regulate within the States. Maybe you ought to read the Constitution sometime, especially Amendments 9 and 10. It's become clear that you never have.
Yeah, while I agree with you about the real meaning of the Constitution, you'd have to overturn Wickard v. Filburn (and a whole set of preceding case law from the 1930s) to get back to that interpretation. At present time, Congress does have the authority, under the way the Constitution is currently interpreted, to regulate commerce within a state.
Incidentally, I am amazed that more people don't know about Wickard v. Filburn and what it did for federal power. The idea that the federal government has the authority to force you to destroy food grown on your own land for the purposes of feeding your own family and animals... all in the name of regulating "interstate commerce" because your actions resulted in your *not* buying grain from others... my God. We lost the liberty you're looking for 70 years ago... it's just that the abuses have been getting progressively worse lately. There's only a tiny step from Wickard to the kind of fines you're arguing against.
>>>Congress has Constitutional authority to pretty much tax anyone for anything.
Yes tax. Not fine.
I just wanted to say thank you to you for being such a strong voice about Constitutional issues like this. I simply cannot fathom how we now seem to have a Congress who takes an oath to uphold the Constitution and then ignores it. One of the worst moments in the federal government in recent history for me was when Pelosi was asked about the constitutionality of health care, and she simply said, "Are you serious?"
Yes. It's a very serious question to ask what the Constitution says (or does not say) about a law you're proposing to enact. Her reaction seems to indicate to me that we no longer live in a Constitutional republic. We live in some sort of pseudo-representational oligarchy with no effective limits on our leaders' power... well, until people start standing up at the ballot box.
By the way, just to be clear, I should note that the particular bug did not appear to be the fault of the proprietary driver, but rather something that broke in the newer version of Ubuntu and got carried into Linux Mint.
Comparing a Linux distro without non-free components to Windows in ease of install for beginners is only relevant if all the hardware has open-source support
While I understand this philosophy, I don't think it applies to all or even most Linux distributions. Most Linux distros make some concession to at least allow the possibility of proprietary drivers written for Linux. If Ubuntu or -- perhaps for an even better example -- Linux Mint make claims that they should work out of the box, even for products that require proprietary (Linux) drivers, users ideally shouldn't have to delve into the bowels of Linux to sort out a problem with Linux and proprietary drivers that are supposedly written for Linux.
Case in point -- less than two months ago, a friend bought a new Dell netbook and decided to install Linux Mint. Everything seemed to work great out of the box, except for the proprietary wireless driver, which Linux Mint actually offered to install for him. It wouldn't work. After a bit of fiddling with GUI settings, in which he found he could get it to work by reinstalling the driver, but it would stop working after reboot, he gave up and called me. After a short bit of playing around, I discovered that some kernel module wasn't getting loaded at startup. A couple commands, and it then started to work. A quick and easy fix for someone who understands the underpinnings of the system. But for someone who has never played around at the command line in Linux or Windows before??
Because I was curious, I looked at some online forums dealing with this network driver. This particular problem was identified, but there seemed to be about a half dozen other bugs people were having with this and similar chipsets, which are quite common. So, a new user who's trying to troubleshoot this thing has a couple options: (1) try out the fixes he found blindly, with some risk to screwing up his system further, or (2) post his problem in a naive manner and risk getting a bunch of "haven't you done searches" or "please post the output of these commands, you idiot" replies. Even if he does the latter, since it's clear that there were a number of different bugs for this device, any responses he got might set him on the wrong track, or might not consider the particular issue -- particularly if he hadn't been diligent enough to notice that he could get the thing working by reinstalling the driver, but it stopped working upon reboot.
I've never encountered something that required this level of sophistication to solve on a Windows install just to get a basic system component working. I've seen things like this often, though, on Linux installs. It's not only obscure or new hardware (this particular chipset had been around for over a year), and as is clear from the fact that Mint volunteered the driver, it clearly detected and claimed to support his hardware. Different problems occur when comparing Gentoo versus Debian versus something like Linux Mint, but I have seen such problems frequently.
But you're right, by carefully choosing hardware, one should be able to avoid such a problem. And yet, this was a very common Dell netbook, and someone doing casual searches on it would see that Linux supposedly supported all the hardware.
Three responses:
(1) I love how you turned this into a rant about viruses. I don't disagree at all that Windows is crappy in many ways. Note that in my post I said I use Linux as my primary OS now and have for years... that's because I dislike Windows and Microsoft's philosophy, and I like a lot of things about Linux. But I was making a claim about the ease of installation, not about which system works better.
(2) Oh... and I love the bit about the network driver. Every Linux fan always seems to have problems with the network driver on Windows. Personally, I've never had this be a problem, and I don't see how it could be a problem for most users if they have the Windows OS CD plus the driver CD (or whatever media) that came with their network card. Well, if you were doing an upgrade to a new version of Windows and the old drivers aren't supported, I guess this could be a problem if the card isn't autodetected. This could catch an unwary user, I admit, but a power user should be prepared for such a thing (by grabbing appropriate drivers in advance).
That said, I believe the thread was originally dealing with an issue of a reinstall, in which case a user should at least theoretically have the driver CD laying around somewhere, so this is a moot point.
In any case, you make this mistake once, and you know how to fix it and/or prepare for it on your next install. It's not a difficult issue compared to troubleshooting many common Linux problems.
When I do a Windows install, it takes me long enough even for just one machine that I like to make an image. With a Fedora system, I just save the kickstart file somewhere.
(3) Yeah, see you have a different metric for installation because you understand more than the putative "average desktop user" I was talking about. Most desktop users don't do installations enough to try to optimize them. They just want to be able to do something that they can actually figure out. If you asked which installation generally takes longer for power users, I completely agree that Windows sucks in this regard. But for the average desktop user (which is what I was referring to), what generally would matter if they had to do the one install they do in three or five years is whether they can easily figure it out and figure out how to fix things that are broken... rather than how efficient the process is.
Windows installations may be a pain, but I submit that when things go wrong in Linux, they are more likely to go wrong in a disruptive way, and they are more likely to require skills beyond the average desktop user to fix. And, drawing on my own experience, the experience of a number of friends, and the people I encounter when reading forums and bug reports about the problems I encounter, these problems are more common than your glowing picture seems to suggest.
My apologies if my post upset you. But my criticism of part of what you wrote - that which I quoted, stands.
No prob. I was unclear, and I realize I may have overstated my case. I guess I get tired of hearing the "Windows and Linux are equally hard" thing said around here. I'm a big fan of Linux, and I fully support its goals, but I think Windows, though poorly designed in many ways, tends to be more tolerant to beginners. Specifically, in this discussion, to inexperienced users doing an install. It can still be a pain, and yes it can require a lot of reboots, and if something goes wrong, that's often the easiest solution. For power users, I'd definitely agree that doing a Windows install is much more of a pain than a typical Linux install.
However -- my experience, and that of quite a few of my friends who have experience doing a lot of such installs, seems to be that when a Linux install goes wrong, it goes wrong in ways that require less-than-obvious solutions and/or in ways that are much more disruptive to the basic user experience. That's what stops me from putting Linux on my parents' computer, for example. Windows may be less efficient and it might break in lots of subtle ways all the time, but the OS usually seems to keep chugging along with basic functionality (even when broken under the hood)... and if not, a reboot and/or driver reinstall often is all that is needed to get that basic functionality back.
With Linux, on the other hand, I've uniformly had some major configuration issue whenever I tried installing a new distro or installing it on a new machine... something that I couldn't walk my parents through easily or even tell them how to expect or fix such a thing. It might take me five minutes or less to figure out and fix, but I'm not around to do that for them. And I've had lots of things break on upgrades to new distro versions; again, I can't be around to handle such things for inexperienced users.
Maybe I've just had bad luck, but my experience has all been major distros on common hardware. The only exotic thing I've tried was installing Linux on a convertible ultraportable a few years back, and that was actually one of the easier computers to get most of the hardware working. But when I have gone searching for people with similar problems with standard hardware on forums or bug reports occasionally, I still see (even in the last few months) lots of people complaining about getting basic elements of their system working... so I don't think it is all just my bad luck.
I suppose you think you are cool...
Hey, you just quoted something I wrote about the "typical Linux install for the average desktop user", and then bash me. I wasn't claiming this was my typical experience. But most people who try to install Linux have this experience.
If you want to be in denial about the typical experience for the average desktop user, fine. I'm telling you what I see from people I talk to, forums I read, etc. I had an experience something like that when I first started, too, but -- as you'll note at the beginning of my post -- I actually use Linux primarily now, because I like it, and after many hours of troubleshooting and learning all the ins and outs, I no longer have these crazy problems and/or I've figured out how to solve them efficiently.
My point was -- my experience is now different from the one I described, but only because I've invested many, many hours in learning how the system works. On the other hand, my 8-year-old niece could very easily figure out how to download and install drivers in a couple minutes.