Depends on the car, there are cars you won't even realize you're going at 100mph and cars that at 75mph feel like they're falling apart.
Exactly. Also, one has to consider the age. I'm not sure how long "back when I was in college" was for GP's anecdote, but stability at high speeds has increased significantly (in my experience) for "normal" cars in recent years.
If you drove most cars 25 years ago at 85 mph, they would feel jittery, handle poorly, engine would feel taxed, etc. If you drove a luxury sedan 15 years ago, you might get a smooth ride at 85mph, but your average car would still feel like it was falling apart or at least taxed.
Nowadays, if you drive a "normal" sedan at 85mph, it often feels as smooth as that luxury car did 15 years ago. And you can easily go up to 90-100mph in many "normal" cars while barely noticing it.
This has actually been done. It only took about 40 years or so.
No it hasn't. You're probably thinking of the Miller-Urey experiment or something similar. These experiments have shown that some conditions assumed to be like early Earth can produce some amino acids and other important organic compounds which are found in most living things.
That's all very interesting. But it's a FAR cry from evolving an actual living thing (like a single-cell organism) in a lab. There are lots of theories about how self-replicating molecules come into being (and how they gradually combine in larger structures, some of which has been done in lab experiments) and then how various stages in abiogenesis might work, but we are quite far from being able to demonstrate all the stages in a lab... let alone do an entire evolutionary process from basic chemicals to a living cell or something.
I often compare the inherent error in the "free will is an illusion" conclusion with a normal decision by committee or an election. We often have a pretty good idea of the result of an election before the actual election happens, but we don't see it as a problem of the free will of the electorate. They still can vote how they want.
So, you point out "the inherent error" by making another inappropriate analogy? Basically, you presume that "elections" have "free will" because the people who make them up have "free will," even though there seem to be somewhat deterministic predictors that usually drive the results.
But that's just postponing the argument. It's like one of those arguments that there must be a God because all things have a cause -- so what caused the universe? Answer: God! But the problem is -- what caused God? Why does the requirement to have a cause apply to the universe but not God?
Similarly, your argument argues that elections are the result of free will because individual humans have free will. But do humans have free will? Ultimately, you keep picking out smaller and smaller bits -- neurons in the brain, then individual parts of cells, then you get to individual atoms.
Do atoms have "free will"? I don't think most people would think so. (And don't go to "quantum mechanics" and indeterminism, because that random quantum fluctuations isn't what most people mean when they invoke "free will," which most people assume isn't random. And there's no evidence that consciousness can drive quantum fluctuations to make them less random.)
So, if atoms don't have "free will," why do people?
You're left with two choices: either (1) the universe is basically deterministic (with some quantum fluctuations) on the microscopic level meaning "free will" is a macroscopic illusion, or (2) there's something magical about consciousness or a "soul" or whatever that manipulates things so it's not really deterministic on a microscopic level (or the "soul"/consciousness is somehow a separate dualistic entity that isn't materialistic at all).
I'm always surprised at discussions of "free will" on Slashdot, since lots of people seem to object if someone says we don't have it, but when we have a discussion on "consciousness" or whatever, people also object if someone wants to claim there's a magical "soul" or something that isn't materialistic. These arguments don't work together. Most definitions of "free will" require magical non-materialistic explanations if you really think about them... otherwise, you can just accept that things are more determined that we notice, but an "emergent quality" makes it LOOK like we a concept of "free will." (And that wouldn't be surprising at all, since humans are very bad about being able to recognize where emergent phenomena aren't consciously intended but are rather simply the product of random chance or deterministic algorithms.)
What I find funny about this discussion is that our whole mathematical proof that extra-terrestrial life exists basically boils down to: "There's lots of places to look." Which is fine until we get to Fermi's Paradox, which reels that back in.
We assume that there's nothing too "special" about our place in the universe. And that seems to work well so far when we look at galactic structure or stars or solar systems -- as we gaze out into the universe, we find a lot of stuff that looks superficially like what we see around our "neck of the woods."
The problem is that most of those big structures are dependent on very basic physical principles -- how gravity works, how nuclear fusion works in stars, how much of various elements are present and relatively evenly distributed.
But life is pretty complicated. It could be if you make a "stew" of approximately the right mixture of stuff in the approximately right temperature and gravity conditions, life just self-organizes most of the time. Or, it could be that the "stew" and conditions were much more specific and the requirements are much more narrowly determined (enough so that life is pretty rare in the universe).
We simply can't know until we (1) observe life in other places, which will allow extrapolation and estimation of probabilities, or (2) manage to run our own "creation experiment" to evolve life ourselves in a lab, probably over millions of years -- in which case we can look at the conditions that seem to be required.
So, the ONLY reason for believing it's even worthwhile to look other places is the Principle of Mediocrity. But there's little reason to believe that the Principle of Mediocrity applies equally to patterns caused by really basic fundamental things like gravity and atomic structure vs. patterns caused by self-organizing complex life forms. Maybe it does. That'd be cool -- life everywhere in the universe. Maybe it doesn't, and we're pretty rare.
There's no "mathematical" argument to be made here at all, until we have more than one data point.
The Drake equation is perfectly sensible. The key is choosing a reasonable parameters, and the only humour to be found is how ridiculous some people's choices are.
No, the key isn't choosing "reasonable parameters." The key is choosing parameters that actually describe how to calculate probability for intelligent life.
And the problem is that we have absolutely no clue what those parameters might be, since we are only one kind of intelligent life, and perhaps intelligent life can evolve in vastly different conditions that we just wouldn't even consider the mechanism for because it's so different from our own. It took the human race millennia of civilization before we came close to realizing that there might even be a mechanism to drive our own evolution, and we have the hubris to think that we could come up with all parameters necessary to evaluate the possible evolution of ALL POSSIBLE life in the universe after merely a century of so of even contemplating our own evolution??
So, we can narrow down the Drake equation and say, well, it's really about life evolving in situations something like our own. Okay, fine.
Except then, again, we have no idea what the relevant parameters might be, not to mention their relative likelihood. It all comes down to a futile attempt to extrapolate probability from one data point.
Maybe there's some step in the process that's really hard to overcome in abiogenesis. Maybe it requires a very specific mix of materials, much more specific than we imagine. Or maybe there's something else about the conditions that need to be really specific. Or maybe if you just get something roughly the right mix and let it stew for a billion years, life will always evolve.
We simply don't know. We don't know the relevant parameters, because we only have one place where we have observed life evolve, and even then, we didn't observe it -- we are trying to extrapolate evidence of what happened billions of years ago from a time where there are no fossil records.
Personally, I think it'd be really cool if life just popped up on any planet with roughly the right conditions. But it could also be that there's some step in those parameters which makes it rare enough that we're the only life in the galaxy or even in the observable universe. I may think that sounds unlikely -- but there's absolutely no evidence to base such an assumption on.
It's like you're presented with a number: 235759345. And you're told that there's something generating numbers. How rare is "that kind" of number. You have no idea. Maybe the constraint is "all numbers divisible by 5," in which case that number's pretty common. But maybe the constraint is "all numbers that end in 5759345," in which suddenly the constraint is pretty specific. Regardless -- with only ONE number (one exemplar) you just have no idea how hard or easy it is to find that number among the generated ones.
Of course, if you allow eggs or cheese then this is no problem.
The debate was about the cost of meat vs. the cost of not eating meat NOT veganism. I'm happy to include eggs or cheese or whatever to supplement nutrients as needed.
But the costs of a vegetarian diet cannot be simply mapped onto the costs of vegetables in an omnivorous diet.
Absolutely true. But there is still a significant cost difference between a (balanced) vegetarian diet vs. a diet studded with quite a bit of meat. I wasn't giving a full analysis, only noting that even "cheap meat" isn't so cheap compared to alternatives.
Unless you live in a place where meat is very scarce, you only eat filet or ribeye every night, or insist on grass fed free range low stress hand massaged beef the financial impact of meat vs no meat is very minimal.
I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm not sure you're familiar with what it takes to live on an extremely low budget. If you're looking for cheap protein sources, the amount of protein per dollar you get with dried beans or lentils is generally anywhere from 50% more to double the amount of protein per dollar you'd get from the cheapest chicken. For other meats, that disparity is generally quite a bit more.
And of course that's only protein. If you take into account calories per dollar, meat is incredibly expensive compared to legumes, not to mention bulk grains, flour, etc.
There's a very good reason the poor in the past generally lived on bread and other starches (often supplemented with legumes for protein) as their staples for calories -- they're incredibly cheap... much cheaper even that the cheapest factory farm meat you can buy in the U.S. today.
And if you're at all concerned about source of meat, welfare, sustainability, quality, etc., then the premium for "better" meat goes WAY up compared to the added cost for "better" legumes/grains.
(If you want to start a response by noting the high cost of vegetables, note that you should be eating vegetables for a balanced diet regardless of whether you're eating meat or not. The replacement for meat in a diet is other protein, not more vegetables. And vegetable protein sources are simply a LOT cheaper than animal protein sources overall.)
The purpose of copyright is to protect the artist from exactly what just happened. If that protection is lost, or blatant violations are not prosecutable, artists will stop releasing their work.
No, they won't.
What will happen is that art that actually requires skill or craft or long-term investment or training will become harder to find.
You can always find people to post their latest recording of their friends in a basement on Youtube, perhaps singing an original song (frequently awful). You can always depend on people to post random landscape photos of their vacation on social media. Just like you can always make reality TV shows and other cheap entertainment.
So no, art will NOT "dry up." What does happen without copyright protection is that fewer people would want to invest in QUALITY artworks. This was the original justification for copyright protection back when it started in Italy in the late 1400s. Basically, this was a pivotal moment of the Renaissance when ancient Greek texts were rediscovered and people started translating them into modern languages (first Latin, and then vernacular languages like Italian). The problem was the printing press -- you'd have an expert translator (few people knew Greek in Western Europe at that time) who'd spend a few months doing a superior translation, and a printer would invest in having typesetters do all the text arrangement by hand... and after they sold one copy, the print shop down the street could buy it and re-typeset it, and there'd be a bastardized edition on the streets within a week. And the new shop didn't have to pay the translator and figure out the original layout, etc., so they could sell it cheaper.
At this point, the local government was faced with a problem. If cheap knock-offs became standard, why would any translator invest months of his life producing a quality translation? Learned leaders in places like Florence and Venice thus decided that the best solution was to grant a copying privilege for a short time (usually 5-10 years), so the printers and the translators could get paid for producing a QUALITY work. This was to assist in the creation of quality knowledge and its transmission for the general public. Obviously copyright has been abused by Disney and others since then, as copyright terms have ballooned to ridiculous proportions.
On Slashdot, there's often an assertion that artists just have this "drive" to make art and will keep doing it no matter what. But some things require skill -- like producing a good translation. Why should someone invest years in acquiring that skill if they can't make money off of it due to piracy? Why should someone spend a few years of his/her life researching an investigative book or a quality research book if there's no possibility of getting paid back? Or, to bring this back to the present discussion, why bother learning how to take great photos (learning about lighting, angles for shots, staging and presentation for commercial photos, etc.) if there's no reward for it?
The answer heard on Slashdot is often two things -- (1) "Artists can find other ways to make money -- musicians can play live rather than make money off of recordings, etc." or (2) "Well, the good artists can just be paid as a work-for-hire, like anyone else." The first only works for some types of art, and even then we're essentially saying, "We want artists to make product X for free, but they have to subsidize it by doing Y too." In that case, less people will try to produce quality X.
And for (2), that's great for established people with reputations. But for new artists without established reputations, they often need to put out significant investment first. No publisher, for example, is going to pay an advance to write a book for someone who has never written a book before... and even if a draft looks great, they likely wo
The thing is -- this bill really doesn't do anything new. Bison have appeared on American currency a number of times, perhaps most famously on the "buffalo nickel" but also on the well-known 1901 $10 bill.
I can't think of another animal other than the eagle that has been granted such a prominent place in American symbolism. So, it's already been the de facto "national mammal," even without this bill. In principle, I don't see the big deal one way or another in passing something like this.
My larger concern is that in many states these sort of bills turn into the "5th-grade class project" thing: "Let's learn how a bill is passed by getting our state legislature to approve an official State Horned Reptile or an official State BBQ Sidedish" or whatever. If you look at how many "official" state things there are in most states, it's just ridiculous... and they often aren't very representative of anything about the state, most often some 75-year-old stereotype about the state's residents.
So do we really want Congress getting in on this sort of nonsense? Pretty soon we'll have Mrs. Smith's 5th-grade class trying to pass a bill to get the mosquito designated the U.S. National Annoying Insect... after which we get to have a debate of senators rallying around whether gnats or black flies deserve the designation instead.
I should also clarify that, as I understand it, Congress has passed previous legislation that automatically allows rules changes to go into effect after a certain time unless Congress acts further. This is a common procedure for various departments within the federal government: they are required by law to notify Congress of changes in policies, but unless Congress objects, the proposed administrative changes go into effect after a period. (Otherwise, we'd have Congress micromanaging all parts of the government.)
Could someone please explain to me exactly what the Supreme Court does? I didn't even know that they do this kind of thing. I thought they heard cases and made rulings on the cases.
The title here is somewhat misleading -- SCOTUS didn't really do anything here, other than to be a stage in a multistage approval process that ultimately ends with Congressional approval.
You can easily find this information with a search engine, but basically the rules of court procedure are approved through a long process. There is a standing committee consisting of the Chief Justice of SCOTUS, the chief justices of all circuits in the U.S., and representative judges of the district courts. I believe they have subcommittees overseeing the various elements of procedure -- civil, criminal, etc. So, a rule change is generally (1) proposed and drafted in that subcommittee, then (2) approved by the whole standing committee with representatives from all federal courts, then (3) approved by SCOTUS -- the stage mentioned in TFA, then (4) sent to Congress for final approval. At any stage of the process, a group could reject proposals or ask for changes -- and that can still happen for Congress here.
This is the process for rule changes that Congress created through legislation. SCOTUS has other random powers, too, also granted by Congress. Most of them are necessary to allow SCOTUS to administer itself on a day-to-day basis, and the major ones generally require Congressional approval for major changes (such as judicial rules of procedure).
So, TFS is a bit misleading because SCOTUS didn't really "give" the FBI any "power." It played a part in passing along some changes to rules about warrants that had been approved by a delegation of the federal courts and has sent those proposed changes to Congress, who actually has the power to enact them.
Duverger's Law is frequently misunderstood. It says there is a tendency toward two-party systems in plurality voting. However, there is no guarantee that those two parties will always be the same, nor that they will remain stable in their platforms. Strong movements outside the system can therefore move the major parties politically or in a severe shift even replace a major party.
Do I blame the Republicans or Democrats and their leaderships for being dominant parties? No. But they have gone far beyond the natural tendencies in Duverger's Law: they have recently sought to exclude alternative movements that threaten them by increasingly undemocratic means. The Republicans really raised the bars after Perot's movements in 1992 and 1996. The Dems did it too after their narrative of blaming Nader for Gore's weak candidacy in 2000. These parties have sought to exclude other choices by increasing thresholds to get on ballots (usually signatures, but also other requirements), increasing thresholds for other parties to be involves in debates, etc.
There are lots of other subtle ways the major parties have entrenched their monopoly in the past few decades. And THAT is something they should be blamed for. Just like you don't begrudge a business for becoming a monopoly if it sells a good product, but when it starts trying to drive other superior products out of business through unfair business practices, you should note the behavior is unjust. Dems and Reps deserve to be called out for trying to build in ways to suppress current and future challenges to their duopoly.
I.E. By default, a new Amazon fire tablet... like... the kids version for $79 that I bought the other day directly from amazon... comes already linked to the credit cards on my amazon account and I had to specifically go add an account to the device and restrict it from being able to purchase.
It gets worse. There are various settings available on different places on devices -- the "1-click ordering" setting, the "do you need a password setting to purchase at all" setting, the "in-apps purchase" setting, etc. All of these seem buried under different menus.
And whenever you buy a new device, they ALWAYS default to ON, even if you've previously disabled them repeatedly. Moreover, you often need to enter your Amazon account password, not a tablet password, just to disable them. (...which is a pain for me, because I use a password manager with a 30-character string of meaningless characters or whatever... and I'm not going to install the password manager client on a Fire tablet I intend for a kid just to edit these settings.) These settings should all be OFF by default.
And heaven help you when you try to leave the Amazon ecosystem (as I did after my first Fire purchase) and want to make use of all the apps you bought at the Amazon appstore on a new non-Amazon Android tablet. Amazon Freetime (which manages kids accounts) doesn't work right on other non-Amazon tablets, but you have to be logged into the Amazon appstore and have some no-password purchasing options enabled by default to make use of many Amazon apps on a non-Amazon Android device. The requirement to be logged in means if you create a "kids account" on your 3rd-party tablet, you won't be able to access the Amazon apps.
Basically, you end up in a situation where you are forced to let your tablet open to kids making some random purchases on 3rd-party tablets, or you give up all the purchased apps you already bought on Amazon's appstore. (There are some 3rd-party apps that try to create kids accounts on Android but generally don't work well with the Amazon app.)
Maybe some of these settings have changed recently, but I know a year or so ago I spent a couple hours trying to find a setting in either my Amazon account or the Amazon appstore app which would allow me to BOTH continue to use a bunch of apps I had purchased AND not allow a small child to make random purchases all the time. I think I finally found something that kind of worked, but it required me to find the setting again and toggle it on and off anytime I wanted to interact with Amazon.
Perhaps there are ways around some of these issues (though at the time I was trying to solve them, there were dozens of complaints on Amazon online help about it).
Regardless -- it's very clear that Amazon has fought again and again to make its tablets, apps, and appstore by default allow people to make accidental purchases. That is a problem. I have no problem with having one-click ordering and no-password purchases and whatever as OPTIONS for people who want them, but they should always be OFF by default.
Retroactive copyright extensions that actually do steal content from the public domain: Totally not a game rigged from the top down, apparently.
I absolutely concur with you about the ridiculous laws that have created ex post facto copyright extensions. I'm a big fan of the original copyright terms of 1790, and everything that's more than a few decades old should be in the public domain.
HOWEVER, that has little to do with GP's point. Go on any torrent site and witness the number of people who are currently downloading movies, music, tv shows, books, etc. from this year. Do the same for material of the past decade (or even 28 years, if you prefer an actual copyright term).
Now, go on the same site and look at how many people are downloading materials that are over 30 years old. Sure, there's some stuff up there, but it's tiny compared to the amount of current content being pirated.
You're right to complain about how copyrights should expire within reasonable terms. But the VAST majority of piracy is of material that would be under copyright even using the shortest copyright terms ever available historically. Piracy is therefore mostly about "I wanna have new stuff now!" and less about some sort of protest against how Mickey Mouse cartoons from 1930 should be in public domain... how many people are actually taking that stuff?
You don't indoor plumbing or electricity too, those are just luxury things we have grown accustomed to using.
While this is true on one level, removing electricity or indoor plumbing would make life a LOT more inconvenient for most people.
I have a mobile phone. On average, I'd say there's about one time per month when I'd be hugely inconvenienced if I didn't have one. On the other hand, if you took away electricity and/or indoor plumbing, I've be inconvenienced multiple times daily, and it would require me to do a lot of extra work in my life to live without them.
Without a mobile phone? Short of emergencies, mostly it just requires a little planning ahead.
But of course it also depends on your friends. If you and your friend group are the types who are glued to their phones 24/7 and can't go 5 minutes without checking Facebook or email or texts or whatever... or else you start to twitch... well, then I understand that it's more fully integrated into your life.
That's not true for me yet. Frankly, I'd love to live without a mobile phone... I mostly carry mine for emergencies, though I use it more often because it's convenient.
It's the act of taking notes that matters, not the method.
I think that's what I said. Notes instead of transcription.
I don't remember handwritten ones any better than typed notes
If you take the same notes, there probably won't be any difference. The problem is that many people tend to take different KINDS of notes while typing: more transcription, less comprehension. If you're one of the minority who takes notes in a similar way whether by hand or typing, then yes, there's probably little difference.
We'd go to a thing called a "library" where books were actually purchased, thus the author actually getting paid.
The number of books sold to libraries is so small that the authors could perhaps buy a cup of coffee with their profits.
While your statement is perhaps literally true -- authors rarely make significant royalties off of library sales -- I think you completely miss GP's point.
GP was talking about RESEARCH. Research requires those sort of heavy-duty "academic" books that are different from your typical trade paperback. They have completely different marketing and completely different systems of production/distribution.
And yes, one of the PRIMARY markets for these books is generally libraries.
As someone who has actually dealt with academic publishers (i.e., selling the kind of specialist books that one would deal with in serious research), let me explain a few things.
Academic authors rarely make any money at all off of these things. They might get some tiny royalties, but for books that may only sell a few thousand or even a few hundred copies, those royalty checks will be minuscule.
Academic publishers, however, are generally interested in at least making their money back from an investment in resources (e.g., acquisitions editors who vet submissions, copyeditors, layout/design, etc.). The few exceptions are places like Oxford University Press, which subsidizes its academic offerings, allowing it to sell its books for a lot cheaper. A lot of other academic presses tend to have prices starting near $100 and going up from there for specialist books. That reflects the fact that they know they'll only sell a small number of copies, so they need to try to make their money back by setting a high price.
And who buys academic books at high prices? University and college libraries, i.e., the exact places that GP says one goes to for serious research. Publishers convince academic libraries to buy their books by being a well-established house (like OUP, CUP, Harvard, Chicago, etc.) and often through other tricks like offering "series." If you've ever looked at an academic book in the front matter and wondered, "Why is there a series of books on 'Upper Midwestern Basketweaving in Hipster Communities'?", well, it's because established academic publishers know that academic librarians are usually not specialists -- they make a lot of purchases based on stuff that seems broadly valuable. Book "series" tend to sell more, because once you get on the "list" for a particular library, they'll often plan to buy more books from that series as they come out.
Anyhow, this is probably more than you wanted to know. But the point is that serious expensive books with small print runs tend to be marketed mostly to academic libraries. And those are generally the sorts of resources researchers need the most.
(Note here that I'm explicitly NOT talking about textbooks -- textbooks are tertiary sources at best, generally summarizing research materials on a broad level. Many of those are sold at significant profits, and they can make decent money for some authors.)
I'm not arguing about whether this Google Books ruling is good or bad, only noting that libraries currently are still quite important in buying and facilitating the dissemination of small print run specialist research books. (And now they tend to subscribe to electronic copies of such books too, which often come packaged in "series" from publishers as well.)
If you remove this chain, it's difficult to see how to replace it. If publishers no longer can come close to breaking even on academic books, many will stop publishing them. And while some radicals may say, "Well, authors should still just write stuff and post it online then!"... well, you obviously haven't seen many book manuscripts. Editors are important. And perhaps even more importantly, acquisition agents are important to screen books, often enlisti
Numerous studies have shown better retention and understanding when people "take notes," as opposed to simply transcribing large chunks of what they hear.
This is a general issue with learning in general -- the more your brain "works" to understand something, the better you retain it. (Numerous studies suggest that too.) And even if you're not going for retention in your brain, if you actually listen and comprehend, then write down short "notes" (i.e., summaries), you'll probably do better than if you attempt to transcribe spottily and perhaps miss some critical detail in your transcription.
The problem is that many people type so fast that they naturally tend toward chunks of transcription, rather than processing the information and then summarizing in "notes." If you take the same kind of notes while typing that good note-takers do by hand, you'd do just as well... perhaps better, because sometimes the speed will help.
But of course there are other advantages to handwriting, especially when it comes to math, chemical formulas, drawing diagrams, flow-charts, whatever. Handwriting is still usually much faster for everything other than plain text -- and thus, it's still my preferred medium, whether on paper or with a stylus on a tablet or whatever. (Also, I don't believe in linear note-taking: connections are generally complex between ideas, and a blank sheet of paper allows a lot more flexibility in drawing various sorts of connections than text arranged in lines.)
Except an espresso machine will cost a LOT more. Also, using your own grounds costs a lot less (no more 50 cents+ for 5-10 cents of stale grounds), you can grind fresh if you want, you can use whatever coffee you want, etc. Bottom line: a lot cheaper, better for the environment, and is actually more convenient in some ways. (And if you buy a number of reusable filter inserts, you just rinse quickly and throw in the dishwasher). Personally I hate Keurigs but I was given one quite a few years back... And someone else in my house likes to use it. This is the only sensible way to use them from my perspective.
The judge makes the point that members of other religions truly believe, while members of the FSM don't. But even that's not really true. Members of the FSM truly believe in the tenets of their religion: they truly believe that making special exceptions to the rules to accommodate someone's religion is unfair and unethical. Their practices are designed to bring this perceived injustice to light and are central to their moral code.
This is a really great point.
And I'd go even further to note that many religions have a long history of disparaging the followers of other religions and/or their practices. This particular "religion" is no different in that regard. In our modern multicultural world, most people tend to ignore those aspects or downplay them... but they are often still official dogma in many religions.
Just because a religion wishes to argue against another religion through parody or satire doesn't mean that the arguments are not truly believed and felt sincerely. Many religions also have a long history of taking the symbols of another religion and mocking them or using them in inappropriate ways to disparage those other groups. Again, Pastafarians are just appropriating elements that have a long history in other religions.
In this case, the judge can only label these things as "satire" or "political statements" because of the suspicion that Pastafarians may not truly believe in the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But I know many "Christians" who do not believe in the literal existence of Jesus or at least in the literal historicity of miracles attributed to him. Should they too be denied religious status under the law? Are judges to get involved in theological disputes to determine exactly who is a "sincere Christian" and who doesn't hold the requisite number of Christian dogmatic facts as "truth"?
The fact is that Pastafarians have a coherent philosophical stance, and they take actions because they believe in their philosophical doctrine. Even if you believe the law should make exceptions for people with legitimate beliefs, the boundary line should deal with the beliefs -- no matter whether they are "religious" (whatever that means!) or philosophical or whatever.
A novel about how special agent Adam Lance is sent to steal a crystal skull from the temple of the Snake God is qualitatively different from a book professing the gospel of the Snake God as truth, and the former makes adopting religous belief inspired by the book appear less likely than the latter.
And precisely how do you tell the difference? Because one book has the subtitle "A Novel" and the other has the subtitle "A Religious Text" on the front?
Also, "truth" is problematic here. There are plenty of high-profile Christian and Jewish theologians who claim that many Bible stories were NEVER meant to be taken literally... and sometimes those stories are explicitly framed that way (e.g., New Testament parables) On the other hand, there are plenty of novels that present themselves in a tone as if they were "truth," sometimes even expressed in a first-person narration as if a diary of a real person. So, how exactly do you apply your standard that a religious text should be "professing the gospel.. as truth"?
What it really comes down to is a distinction in what people *DO* with the text, not what the text *IS*. There are plenty of examples throughout history where texts have subsequently acquired meanings and associations that were never intended by the author... but culturally their meaning is now fundamentally connected with these new ideas.
As long as the law says that religious belief should lead to a certain treatment, then it becomes necessary to distinguish between what is religious belief and what isn't.
This is the problem -- "religion" should not have any special status under the law, at least not more so than any sincerely held belief. An example would be "conscientious objector" status in a number of countries, where pacifism could be due to religious beliefs or due to a more general philosophical objection (which is not necessarily religious in nature).
(And yes, there is vagueness in sorting out whether something is a "sincerely held belief" too. But it's at least a somewhat more consistent -- if vague -- standard than granting special status to religions only, whether they are.)
You normatively assert that this should not be the case. Based on the actual judgement, it is the case.
You forgot to add:...until that judgment is appealed and perhaps clarified (or even overturned). I highly suspect that even if this judgment is upheld by higher courts, the reasoning will be clarified.
Dude, don't use religion as a reason why you're bitter about life and your dad fucked in you in the ass like a nickel whore.
This is exactly the sort of high-class, deep-thinking argumentation I love coming to Slashdot for.
[In case you don't get this, that was sarcasm.]
And in case you didn't notice this, I explicitly noted at the end that my post was meant to be satirical. In other words, I was making a joke to further an important point -- all religions tend to have some elements which can appear ridiculous to outsiders.
I make no claims about whether these Bible stories are true or false -- only that a reasonable person could apply the judge's standard in this case to the opening pages of the Bible and conclude that it was meant to be a parody and/or political satire or commentary. (In fact, in cases like the story of Lot's daughters, it probably was intended to be something like political commentary or even satire to poke fun at the origins of neighboring tribes.) Thus, while I concur with the judge's ruling that I doubt this prisoner has a "serious" religion, the actual judgment standard is pretty arbitrary and doesn't hold up to the kind of deep logical scrutiny we usually demand of legal opinions.
Forget about Scientology... that's not even the biggest problem with this reasoning. From the ruling:
The Flying Spaghetti Monster Gospel is plainly a work of satire, meant to entertain while making a pointed political statement
This "plainly" here is difficult to judge. How can we be sure any unbelievable religious text wasn't some sort of "pointed political statement" or "satire"?
For example, I now take you back a few thousand years to the drafting of the Book of Genesis:
HEAD RABBI: "Hey, you nimrods! It's time to get to work on that 'history' of our people. I expect to see some results when I get back. Make sure it's entertaining!" [exits]
RABBI A: "Okay, let's get going. God created the universe over 7 billion years."
RABBI B: "Come on. That's not very exciting. How about 7 days?!"
RABBI A: "No way. Nobody will believe that. It's just ridiculous!"
RABBI B: "But maybe that's what we need here. A touch of the ridiculous!"
RABBI A: [scribbles furiously] "Okay, fine. 7 days. And God made a beautiful paradise. And God created men and women..."
RABBI B: "Wait, wait, I got it... maybe the woman is made from the guy's RIB."
RABBI A: "Okay, that is pretty hysterical. And now we need to explain why life sucks so much, and all these stupid rules we have about not being able to eat bacon."
RABBI B: "Hmm... I love me some bacon. What to do? Well, we need God to look completely ridiculous from the start, with all sorts of arbitrary rules. How about we put a tree in paradise with lovely fruit, but the people aren't supposed to eat it for no apparent reason? And then they do, and God just says, 'Get the hell out of here!' "
RABBI A: "BRILLIANT! Hey, I got an idea. Remember that big flood they still tell stories about? What if God told a special 'chosen' guy to build a giant boat and sail around in it?"
RABBI B: "Yeah, and he packed up all the stuff in his house to save it from the flood."
RABBI A: "Wait, wait... no we need to make this even crazier. Remember, we gotta make this silly and entertaining, or nobody will read it. How about the flood covers everything, so the guy has to save all the animals. So he packs up two of everything on his boat!"
RABBI B: "That's insane... and hilarious. Everyone's going to crack up at the ridiculousness of that. And then when they land the boat after the flood, the guy gets all drunk and naked... and his family has to come in and cover him up."
RABBI A: "But, but... he's all drunk and curses the guy who saw him, and thus we can justify serfdom and slavery for millennia!"
RABBI B: "Fantastic! But what are we gonna call the people who get cursed?"
RABBI A: "Well, they keep telling us we can't have bacon. Let's call him HAM!"
RABBI B: "Okay, where do we go now? Well, there's that guy everybody brings up as the founder of our people -- Abram."
RABBI A: "No, when he gets called by God, you gotta add more bacon jokes -- he's AbraHAM... get it?"
RABBI B: "That's really hamming it up..."
RABBI A: [groan]
RABBI B: "Okay, let's say this Abram... er, no... AbraHAM has a guy in his family that lives in a city that needs to be cured."
RABBI A: "Cured? Like bacon! Well you'll need some salt."
RABBI B: "Yeah -- so the guy flees the city, and his wife turns into a giant pillar of salt!"
RABBI A: "That's going too far. This is getting preposterous."
RABBI B: "No, no. Hear me out. And his daughters are so stupid, that after they fle
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Source: I live here.
And where is that, exactly? Maryland? The U.S.? China? Mars? A library where they have books with facts on U.S. states?
Oh, I live "here" too. I expect most people do... except when they are traveling. :)
Depends on the car, there are cars you won't even realize you're going at 100mph and cars that at 75mph feel like they're falling apart.
Exactly. Also, one has to consider the age. I'm not sure how long "back when I was in college" was for GP's anecdote, but stability at high speeds has increased significantly (in my experience) for "normal" cars in recent years.
If you drove most cars 25 years ago at 85 mph, they would feel jittery, handle poorly, engine would feel taxed, etc. If you drove a luxury sedan 15 years ago, you might get a smooth ride at 85mph, but your average car would still feel like it was falling apart or at least taxed.
Nowadays, if you drive a "normal" sedan at 85mph, it often feels as smooth as that luxury car did 15 years ago. And you can easily go up to 90-100mph in many "normal" cars while barely noticing it.
This has actually been done. It only took about 40 years or so.
No it hasn't. You're probably thinking of the Miller-Urey experiment or something similar. These experiments have shown that some conditions assumed to be like early Earth can produce some amino acids and other important organic compounds which are found in most living things.
That's all very interesting. But it's a FAR cry from evolving an actual living thing (like a single-cell organism) in a lab. There are lots of theories about how self-replicating molecules come into being (and how they gradually combine in larger structures, some of which has been done in lab experiments) and then how various stages in abiogenesis might work, but we are quite far from being able to demonstrate all the stages in a lab... let alone do an entire evolutionary process from basic chemicals to a living cell or something.
I often compare the inherent error in the "free will is an illusion" conclusion with a normal decision by committee or an election. We often have a pretty good idea of the result of an election before the actual election happens, but we don't see it as a problem of the free will of the electorate. They still can vote how they want.
So, you point out "the inherent error" by making another inappropriate analogy? Basically, you presume that "elections" have "free will" because the people who make them up have "free will," even though there seem to be somewhat deterministic predictors that usually drive the results.
But that's just postponing the argument. It's like one of those arguments that there must be a God because all things have a cause -- so what caused the universe? Answer: God! But the problem is -- what caused God? Why does the requirement to have a cause apply to the universe but not God?
Similarly, your argument argues that elections are the result of free will because individual humans have free will. But do humans have free will? Ultimately, you keep picking out smaller and smaller bits -- neurons in the brain, then individual parts of cells, then you get to individual atoms.
Do atoms have "free will"? I don't think most people would think so. (And don't go to "quantum mechanics" and indeterminism, because that random quantum fluctuations isn't what most people mean when they invoke "free will," which most people assume isn't random. And there's no evidence that consciousness can drive quantum fluctuations to make them less random.)
So, if atoms don't have "free will," why do people?
You're left with two choices: either (1) the universe is basically deterministic (with some quantum fluctuations) on the microscopic level meaning "free will" is a macroscopic illusion, or (2) there's something magical about consciousness or a "soul" or whatever that manipulates things so it's not really deterministic on a microscopic level (or the "soul"/consciousness is somehow a separate dualistic entity that isn't materialistic at all).
I'm always surprised at discussions of "free will" on Slashdot, since lots of people seem to object if someone says we don't have it, but when we have a discussion on "consciousness" or whatever, people also object if someone wants to claim there's a magical "soul" or something that isn't materialistic. These arguments don't work together. Most definitions of "free will" require magical non-materialistic explanations if you really think about them... otherwise, you can just accept that things are more determined that we notice, but an "emergent quality" makes it LOOK like we a concept of "free will." (And that wouldn't be surprising at all, since humans are very bad about being able to recognize where emergent phenomena aren't consciously intended but are rather simply the product of random chance or deterministic algorithms.)
What I find funny about this discussion is that our whole mathematical proof that extra-terrestrial life exists basically boils down to: "There's lots of places to look." Which is fine until we get to Fermi's Paradox, which reels that back in.
Actually, I'd say the argument really boils down to the Principle of Mediocrity.
We assume that there's nothing too "special" about our place in the universe. And that seems to work well so far when we look at galactic structure or stars or solar systems -- as we gaze out into the universe, we find a lot of stuff that looks superficially like what we see around our "neck of the woods."
The problem is that most of those big structures are dependent on very basic physical principles -- how gravity works, how nuclear fusion works in stars, how much of various elements are present and relatively evenly distributed.
But life is pretty complicated. It could be if you make a "stew" of approximately the right mixture of stuff in the approximately right temperature and gravity conditions, life just self-organizes most of the time. Or, it could be that the "stew" and conditions were much more specific and the requirements are much more narrowly determined (enough so that life is pretty rare in the universe).
We simply can't know until we (1) observe life in other places, which will allow extrapolation and estimation of probabilities, or (2) manage to run our own "creation experiment" to evolve life ourselves in a lab, probably over millions of years -- in which case we can look at the conditions that seem to be required.
So, the ONLY reason for believing it's even worthwhile to look other places is the Principle of Mediocrity. But there's little reason to believe that the Principle of Mediocrity applies equally to patterns caused by really basic fundamental things like gravity and atomic structure vs. patterns caused by self-organizing complex life forms. Maybe it does. That'd be cool -- life everywhere in the universe. Maybe it doesn't, and we're pretty rare.
There's no "mathematical" argument to be made here at all, until we have more than one data point.
The Drake equation is perfectly sensible. The key is choosing a reasonable parameters, and the only humour to be found is how ridiculous some people's choices are.
No, the key isn't choosing "reasonable parameters." The key is choosing parameters that actually describe how to calculate probability for intelligent life.
And the problem is that we have absolutely no clue what those parameters might be, since we are only one kind of intelligent life, and perhaps intelligent life can evolve in vastly different conditions that we just wouldn't even consider the mechanism for because it's so different from our own. It took the human race millennia of civilization before we came close to realizing that there might even be a mechanism to drive our own evolution, and we have the hubris to think that we could come up with all parameters necessary to evaluate the possible evolution of ALL POSSIBLE life in the universe after merely a century of so of even contemplating our own evolution??
So, we can narrow down the Drake equation and say, well, it's really about life evolving in situations something like our own. Okay, fine.
Except then, again, we have no idea what the relevant parameters might be, not to mention their relative likelihood. It all comes down to a futile attempt to extrapolate probability from one data point.
Maybe there's some step in the process that's really hard to overcome in abiogenesis. Maybe it requires a very specific mix of materials, much more specific than we imagine. Or maybe there's something else about the conditions that need to be really specific. Or maybe if you just get something roughly the right mix and let it stew for a billion years, life will always evolve.
We simply don't know. We don't know the relevant parameters, because we only have one place where we have observed life evolve, and even then, we didn't observe it -- we are trying to extrapolate evidence of what happened billions of years ago from a time where there are no fossil records.
Personally, I think it'd be really cool if life just popped up on any planet with roughly the right conditions. But it could also be that there's some step in those parameters which makes it rare enough that we're the only life in the galaxy or even in the observable universe. I may think that sounds unlikely -- but there's absolutely no evidence to base such an assumption on.
It's like you're presented with a number: 235759345. And you're told that there's something generating numbers. How rare is "that kind" of number. You have no idea. Maybe the constraint is "all numbers divisible by 5," in which case that number's pretty common. But maybe the constraint is "all numbers that end in 5759345," in which suddenly the constraint is pretty specific. Regardless -- with only ONE number (one exemplar) you just have no idea how hard or easy it is to find that number among the generated ones.
You can't extrapolate from a single data point.
Of course, if you allow eggs or cheese then this is no problem.
The debate was about the cost of meat vs. the cost of not eating meat NOT veganism. I'm happy to include eggs or cheese or whatever to supplement nutrients as needed.
But the costs of a vegetarian diet cannot be simply mapped onto the costs of vegetables in an omnivorous diet.
Absolutely true. But there is still a significant cost difference between a (balanced) vegetarian diet vs. a diet studded with quite a bit of meat. I wasn't giving a full analysis, only noting that even "cheap meat" isn't so cheap compared to alternatives.
Unless you live in a place where meat is very scarce, you only eat filet or ribeye every night, or insist on grass fed free range low stress hand massaged beef the financial impact of meat vs no meat is very minimal.
I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm not sure you're familiar with what it takes to live on an extremely low budget. If you're looking for cheap protein sources, the amount of protein per dollar you get with dried beans or lentils is generally anywhere from 50% more to double the amount of protein per dollar you'd get from the cheapest chicken. For other meats, that disparity is generally quite a bit more.
And of course that's only protein. If you take into account calories per dollar, meat is incredibly expensive compared to legumes, not to mention bulk grains, flour, etc.
There's a very good reason the poor in the past generally lived on bread and other starches (often supplemented with legumes for protein) as their staples for calories -- they're incredibly cheap... much cheaper even that the cheapest factory farm meat you can buy in the U.S. today.
And if you're at all concerned about source of meat, welfare, sustainability, quality, etc., then the premium for "better" meat goes WAY up compared to the added cost for "better" legumes/grains.
(If you want to start a response by noting the high cost of vegetables, note that you should be eating vegetables for a balanced diet regardless of whether you're eating meat or not. The replacement for meat in a diet is other protein, not more vegetables. And vegetable protein sources are simply a LOT cheaper than animal protein sources overall.)
Without a monopoly, art will dry up.
No, it won't.
The purpose of copyright is to protect the artist from exactly what just happened. If that protection is lost, or blatant violations are not prosecutable, artists will stop releasing their work.
No, they won't.
What will happen is that art that actually requires skill or craft or long-term investment or training will become harder to find.
You can always find people to post their latest recording of their friends in a basement on Youtube, perhaps singing an original song (frequently awful). You can always depend on people to post random landscape photos of their vacation on social media. Just like you can always make reality TV shows and other cheap entertainment.
So no, art will NOT "dry up." What does happen without copyright protection is that fewer people would want to invest in QUALITY artworks. This was the original justification for copyright protection back when it started in Italy in the late 1400s. Basically, this was a pivotal moment of the Renaissance when ancient Greek texts were rediscovered and people started translating them into modern languages (first Latin, and then vernacular languages like Italian). The problem was the printing press -- you'd have an expert translator (few people knew Greek in Western Europe at that time) who'd spend a few months doing a superior translation, and a printer would invest in having typesetters do all the text arrangement by hand... and after they sold one copy, the print shop down the street could buy it and re-typeset it, and there'd be a bastardized edition on the streets within a week. And the new shop didn't have to pay the translator and figure out the original layout, etc., so they could sell it cheaper.
At this point, the local government was faced with a problem. If cheap knock-offs became standard, why would any translator invest months of his life producing a quality translation? Learned leaders in places like Florence and Venice thus decided that the best solution was to grant a copying privilege for a short time (usually 5-10 years), so the printers and the translators could get paid for producing a QUALITY work. This was to assist in the creation of quality knowledge and its transmission for the general public. Obviously copyright has been abused by Disney and others since then, as copyright terms have ballooned to ridiculous proportions.
On Slashdot, there's often an assertion that artists just have this "drive" to make art and will keep doing it no matter what. But some things require skill -- like producing a good translation. Why should someone invest years in acquiring that skill if they can't make money off of it due to piracy? Why should someone spend a few years of his/her life researching an investigative book or a quality research book if there's no possibility of getting paid back? Or, to bring this back to the present discussion, why bother learning how to take great photos (learning about lighting, angles for shots, staging and presentation for commercial photos, etc.) if there's no reward for it?
The answer heard on Slashdot is often two things -- (1) "Artists can find other ways to make money -- musicians can play live rather than make money off of recordings, etc." or (2) "Well, the good artists can just be paid as a work-for-hire, like anyone else." The first only works for some types of art, and even then we're essentially saying, "We want artists to make product X for free, but they have to subsidize it by doing Y too." In that case, less people will try to produce quality X.
And for (2), that's great for established people with reputations. But for new artists without established reputations, they often need to put out significant investment first. No publisher, for example, is going to pay an advance to write a book for someone who has never written a book before... and even if a draft looks great, they likely wo
The thing is -- this bill really doesn't do anything new. Bison have appeared on American currency a number of times, perhaps most famously on the "buffalo nickel" but also on the well-known 1901 $10 bill.
I can't think of another animal other than the eagle that has been granted such a prominent place in American symbolism. So, it's already been the de facto "national mammal," even without this bill. In principle, I don't see the big deal one way or another in passing something like this.
My larger concern is that in many states these sort of bills turn into the "5th-grade class project" thing: "Let's learn how a bill is passed by getting our state legislature to approve an official State Horned Reptile or an official State BBQ Sidedish" or whatever. If you look at how many "official" state things there are in most states, it's just ridiculous... and they often aren't very representative of anything about the state, most often some 75-year-old stereotype about the state's residents.
So do we really want Congress getting in on this sort of nonsense? Pretty soon we'll have Mrs. Smith's 5th-grade class trying to pass a bill to get the mosquito designated the U.S. National Annoying Insect... after which we get to have a debate of senators rallying around whether gnats or black flies deserve the designation instead.
I should also clarify that, as I understand it, Congress has passed previous legislation that automatically allows rules changes to go into effect after a certain time unless Congress acts further. This is a common procedure for various departments within the federal government: they are required by law to notify Congress of changes in policies, but unless Congress objects, the proposed administrative changes go into effect after a period. (Otherwise, we'd have Congress micromanaging all parts of the government.)
Could someone please explain to me exactly what the Supreme Court does? I didn't even know that they do this kind of thing. I thought they heard cases and made rulings on the cases.
The title here is somewhat misleading -- SCOTUS didn't really do anything here, other than to be a stage in a multistage approval process that ultimately ends with Congressional approval.
You can easily find this information with a search engine, but basically the rules of court procedure are approved through a long process. There is a standing committee consisting of the Chief Justice of SCOTUS, the chief justices of all circuits in the U.S., and representative judges of the district courts. I believe they have subcommittees overseeing the various elements of procedure -- civil, criminal, etc. So, a rule change is generally (1) proposed and drafted in that subcommittee, then (2) approved by the whole standing committee with representatives from all federal courts, then (3) approved by SCOTUS -- the stage mentioned in TFA, then (4) sent to Congress for final approval. At any stage of the process, a group could reject proposals or ask for changes -- and that can still happen for Congress here.
This is the process for rule changes that Congress created through legislation. SCOTUS has other random powers, too, also granted by Congress. Most of them are necessary to allow SCOTUS to administer itself on a day-to-day basis, and the major ones generally require Congressional approval for major changes (such as judicial rules of procedure).
So, TFS is a bit misleading because SCOTUS didn't really "give" the FBI any "power." It played a part in passing along some changes to rules about warrants that had been approved by a delegation of the federal courts and has sent those proposed changes to Congress, who actually has the power to enact them.
Duverger's Law is frequently misunderstood. It says there is a tendency toward two-party systems in plurality voting. However, there is no guarantee that those two parties will always be the same, nor that they will remain stable in their platforms. Strong movements outside the system can therefore move the major parties politically or in a severe shift even replace a major party.
Do I blame the Republicans or Democrats and their leaderships for being dominant parties? No. But they have gone far beyond the natural tendencies in Duverger's Law: they have recently sought to exclude alternative movements that threaten them by increasingly undemocratic means. The Republicans really raised the bars after Perot's movements in 1992 and 1996. The Dems did it too after their narrative of blaming Nader for Gore's weak candidacy in 2000. These parties have sought to exclude other choices by increasing thresholds to get on ballots (usually signatures, but also other requirements), increasing thresholds for other parties to be involves in debates, etc.
There are lots of other subtle ways the major parties have entrenched their monopoly in the past few decades. And THAT is something they should be blamed for. Just like you don't begrudge a business for becoming a monopoly if it sells a good product, but when it starts trying to drive other superior products out of business through unfair business practices, you should note the behavior is unjust. Dems and Reps deserve to be called out for trying to build in ways to suppress current and future challenges to their duopoly.
I.E. By default, a new Amazon fire tablet ... like ... the kids version for $79 that I bought the other day directly from amazon ... comes already linked to the credit cards on my amazon account and I had to specifically go add an account to the device and restrict it from being able to purchase.
It gets worse. There are various settings available on different places on devices -- the "1-click ordering" setting, the "do you need a password setting to purchase at all" setting, the "in-apps purchase" setting, etc. All of these seem buried under different menus.
And whenever you buy a new device, they ALWAYS default to ON, even if you've previously disabled them repeatedly. Moreover, you often need to enter your Amazon account password, not a tablet password, just to disable them. (...which is a pain for me, because I use a password manager with a 30-character string of meaningless characters or whatever... and I'm not going to install the password manager client on a Fire tablet I intend for a kid just to edit these settings.) These settings should all be OFF by default.
And heaven help you when you try to leave the Amazon ecosystem (as I did after my first Fire purchase) and want to make use of all the apps you bought at the Amazon appstore on a new non-Amazon Android tablet. Amazon Freetime (which manages kids accounts) doesn't work right on other non-Amazon tablets, but you have to be logged into the Amazon appstore and have some no-password purchasing options enabled by default to make use of many Amazon apps on a non-Amazon Android device. The requirement to be logged in means if you create a "kids account" on your 3rd-party tablet, you won't be able to access the Amazon apps.
Basically, you end up in a situation where you are forced to let your tablet open to kids making some random purchases on 3rd-party tablets, or you give up all the purchased apps you already bought on Amazon's appstore. (There are some 3rd-party apps that try to create kids accounts on Android but generally don't work well with the Amazon app.)
Maybe some of these settings have changed recently, but I know a year or so ago I spent a couple hours trying to find a setting in either my Amazon account or the Amazon appstore app which would allow me to BOTH continue to use a bunch of apps I had purchased AND not allow a small child to make random purchases all the time. I think I finally found something that kind of worked, but it required me to find the setting again and toggle it on and off anytime I wanted to interact with Amazon.
Perhaps there are ways around some of these issues (though at the time I was trying to solve them, there were dozens of complaints on Amazon online help about it).
Regardless -- it's very clear that Amazon has fought again and again to make its tablets, apps, and appstore by default allow people to make accidental purchases. That is a problem. I have no problem with having one-click ordering and no-password purchases and whatever as OPTIONS for people who want them, but they should always be OFF by default.
In the distant past we've had other non presidens on currency. Such as Martha Washington on a silver certificate.
Distant past? How about Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill? And Sacagewea on the dollar coin, preceded by Susan Anthony?
Retroactive copyright extensions that actually do steal content from the public domain: Totally not a game rigged from the top down, apparently.
I absolutely concur with you about the ridiculous laws that have created ex post facto copyright extensions. I'm a big fan of the original copyright terms of 1790, and everything that's more than a few decades old should be in the public domain.
HOWEVER, that has little to do with GP's point. Go on any torrent site and witness the number of people who are currently downloading movies, music, tv shows, books, etc. from this year. Do the same for material of the past decade (or even 28 years, if you prefer an actual copyright term).
Now, go on the same site and look at how many people are downloading materials that are over 30 years old. Sure, there's some stuff up there, but it's tiny compared to the amount of current content being pirated.
You're right to complain about how copyrights should expire within reasonable terms. But the VAST majority of piracy is of material that would be under copyright even using the shortest copyright terms ever available historically. Piracy is therefore mostly about "I wanna have new stuff now!" and less about some sort of protest against how Mickey Mouse cartoons from 1930 should be in public domain... how many people are actually taking that stuff?
You don't indoor plumbing or electricity too, those are just luxury things we have grown accustomed to using.
While this is true on one level, removing electricity or indoor plumbing would make life a LOT more inconvenient for most people.
I have a mobile phone. On average, I'd say there's about one time per month when I'd be hugely inconvenienced if I didn't have one. On the other hand, if you took away electricity and/or indoor plumbing, I've be inconvenienced multiple times daily, and it would require me to do a lot of extra work in my life to live without them.
Without a mobile phone? Short of emergencies, mostly it just requires a little planning ahead.
But of course it also depends on your friends. If you and your friend group are the types who are glued to their phones 24/7 and can't go 5 minutes without checking Facebook or email or texts or whatever... or else you start to twitch... well, then I understand that it's more fully integrated into your life.
That's not true for me yet. Frankly, I'd love to live without a mobile phone... I mostly carry mine for emergencies, though I use it more often because it's convenient.
It's the act of taking notes that matters, not the method.
I think that's what I said. Notes instead of transcription.
I don't remember handwritten ones any better than typed notes
If you take the same notes, there probably won't be any difference. The problem is that many people tend to take different KINDS of notes while typing: more transcription, less comprehension. If you're one of the minority who takes notes in a similar way whether by hand or typing, then yes, there's probably little difference.
We'd go to a thing called a "library" where books were actually purchased, thus the author actually getting paid.
The number of books sold to libraries is so small that the authors could perhaps buy a cup of coffee with their profits.
While your statement is perhaps literally true -- authors rarely make significant royalties off of library sales -- I think you completely miss GP's point.
GP was talking about RESEARCH. Research requires those sort of heavy-duty "academic" books that are different from your typical trade paperback. They have completely different marketing and completely different systems of production/distribution.
And yes, one of the PRIMARY markets for these books is generally libraries.
As someone who has actually dealt with academic publishers (i.e., selling the kind of specialist books that one would deal with in serious research), let me explain a few things.
Academic authors rarely make any money at all off of these things. They might get some tiny royalties, but for books that may only sell a few thousand or even a few hundred copies, those royalty checks will be minuscule.
Academic publishers, however, are generally interested in at least making their money back from an investment in resources (e.g., acquisitions editors who vet submissions, copyeditors, layout/design, etc.). The few exceptions are places like Oxford University Press, which subsidizes its academic offerings, allowing it to sell its books for a lot cheaper. A lot of other academic presses tend to have prices starting near $100 and going up from there for specialist books. That reflects the fact that they know they'll only sell a small number of copies, so they need to try to make their money back by setting a high price.
And who buys academic books at high prices? University and college libraries, i.e., the exact places that GP says one goes to for serious research. Publishers convince academic libraries to buy their books by being a well-established house (like OUP, CUP, Harvard, Chicago, etc.) and often through other tricks like offering "series." If you've ever looked at an academic book in the front matter and wondered, "Why is there a series of books on 'Upper Midwestern Basketweaving in Hipster Communities'?", well, it's because established academic publishers know that academic librarians are usually not specialists -- they make a lot of purchases based on stuff that seems broadly valuable. Book "series" tend to sell more, because once you get on the "list" for a particular library, they'll often plan to buy more books from that series as they come out.
Anyhow, this is probably more than you wanted to know. But the point is that serious expensive books with small print runs tend to be marketed mostly to academic libraries. And those are generally the sorts of resources researchers need the most.
(Note here that I'm explicitly NOT talking about textbooks -- textbooks are tertiary sources at best, generally summarizing research materials on a broad level. Many of those are sold at significant profits, and they can make decent money for some authors.)
I'm not arguing about whether this Google Books ruling is good or bad, only noting that libraries currently are still quite important in buying and facilitating the dissemination of small print run specialist research books. (And now they tend to subscribe to electronic copies of such books too, which often come packaged in "series" from publishers as well.)
If you remove this chain, it's difficult to see how to replace it. If publishers no longer can come close to breaking even on academic books, many will stop publishing them. And while some radicals may say, "Well, authors should still just write stuff and post it online then!"... well, you obviously haven't seen many book manuscripts. Editors are important. And perhaps even more importantly, acquisition agents are important to screen books, often enlisti
Numerous studies have shown better retention and understanding when people "take notes," as opposed to simply transcribing large chunks of what they hear.
This is a general issue with learning in general -- the more your brain "works" to understand something, the better you retain it. (Numerous studies suggest that too.) And even if you're not going for retention in your brain, if you actually listen and comprehend, then write down short "notes" (i.e., summaries), you'll probably do better than if you attempt to transcribe spottily and perhaps miss some critical detail in your transcription.
The problem is that many people type so fast that they naturally tend toward chunks of transcription, rather than processing the information and then summarizing in "notes." If you take the same kind of notes while typing that good note-takers do by hand, you'd do just as well... perhaps better, because sometimes the speed will help.
But of course there are other advantages to handwriting, especially when it comes to math, chemical formulas, drawing diagrams, flow-charts, whatever. Handwriting is still usually much faster for everything other than plain text -- and thus, it's still my preferred medium, whether on paper or with a stylus on a tablet or whatever. (Also, I don't believe in linear note-taking: connections are generally complex between ideas, and a blank sheet of paper allows a lot more flexibility in drawing various sorts of connections than text arranged in lines.)
Except an espresso machine will cost a LOT more. Also, using your own grounds costs a lot less (no more 50 cents+ for 5-10 cents of stale grounds), you can grind fresh if you want, you can use whatever coffee you want, etc. Bottom line: a lot cheaper, better for the environment, and is actually more convenient in some ways. (And if you buy a number of reusable filter inserts, you just rinse quickly and throw in the dishwasher). Personally I hate Keurigs but I was given one quite a few years back... And someone else in my house likes to use it. This is the only sensible way to use them from my perspective.
The judge makes the point that members of other religions truly believe, while members of the FSM don't. But even that's not really true. Members of the FSM truly believe in the tenets of their religion: they truly believe that making special exceptions to the rules to accommodate someone's religion is unfair and unethical. Their practices are designed to bring this perceived injustice to light and are central to their moral code.
This is a really great point.
And I'd go even further to note that many religions have a long history of disparaging the followers of other religions and/or their practices. This particular "religion" is no different in that regard. In our modern multicultural world, most people tend to ignore those aspects or downplay them... but they are often still official dogma in many religions.
Just because a religion wishes to argue against another religion through parody or satire doesn't mean that the arguments are not truly believed and felt sincerely. Many religions also have a long history of taking the symbols of another religion and mocking them or using them in inappropriate ways to disparage those other groups. Again, Pastafarians are just appropriating elements that have a long history in other religions.
In this case, the judge can only label these things as "satire" or "political statements" because of the suspicion that Pastafarians may not truly believe in the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But I know many "Christians" who do not believe in the literal existence of Jesus or at least in the literal historicity of miracles attributed to him. Should they too be denied religious status under the law? Are judges to get involved in theological disputes to determine exactly who is a "sincere Christian" and who doesn't hold the requisite number of Christian dogmatic facts as "truth"?
The fact is that Pastafarians have a coherent philosophical stance, and they take actions because they believe in their philosophical doctrine. Even if you believe the law should make exceptions for people with legitimate beliefs, the boundary line should deal with the beliefs -- no matter whether they are "religious" (whatever that means!) or philosophical or whatever.
A novel about how special agent Adam Lance is sent to steal a crystal skull from the temple of the Snake God is qualitatively different from a book professing the gospel of the Snake God as truth, and the former makes adopting religous belief inspired by the book appear less likely than the latter.
And precisely how do you tell the difference? Because one book has the subtitle "A Novel" and the other has the subtitle "A Religious Text" on the front?
Also, "truth" is problematic here. There are plenty of high-profile Christian and Jewish theologians who claim that many Bible stories were NEVER meant to be taken literally... and sometimes those stories are explicitly framed that way (e.g., New Testament parables) On the other hand, there are plenty of novels that present themselves in a tone as if they were "truth," sometimes even expressed in a first-person narration as if a diary of a real person. So, how exactly do you apply your standard that a religious text should be "professing the gospel.. as truth"?
What it really comes down to is a distinction in what people *DO* with the text, not what the text *IS*. There are plenty of examples throughout history where texts have subsequently acquired meanings and associations that were never intended by the author... but culturally their meaning is now fundamentally connected with these new ideas.
As long as the law says that religious belief should lead to a certain treatment, then it becomes necessary to distinguish between what is religious belief and what isn't.
This is the problem -- "religion" should not have any special status under the law, at least not more so than any sincerely held belief. An example would be "conscientious objector" status in a number of countries, where pacifism could be due to religious beliefs or due to a more general philosophical objection (which is not necessarily religious in nature).
(And yes, there is vagueness in sorting out whether something is a "sincerely held belief" too. But it's at least a somewhat more consistent -- if vague -- standard than granting special status to religions only, whether they are.)
You normatively assert that this should not be the case. Based on the actual judgement, it is the case.
You forgot to add: ...until that judgment is appealed and perhaps clarified (or even overturned). I highly suspect that even if this judgment is upheld by higher courts, the reasoning will be clarified.
Dude, don't use religion as a reason why you're bitter about life and your dad fucked in you in the ass like a nickel whore.
This is exactly the sort of high-class, deep-thinking argumentation I love coming to Slashdot for.
[In case you don't get this, that was sarcasm.]
And in case you didn't notice this, I explicitly noted at the end that my post was meant to be satirical. In other words, I was making a joke to further an important point -- all religions tend to have some elements which can appear ridiculous to outsiders.
I make no claims about whether these Bible stories are true or false -- only that a reasonable person could apply the judge's standard in this case to the opening pages of the Bible and conclude that it was meant to be a parody and/or political satire or commentary. (In fact, in cases like the story of Lot's daughters, it probably was intended to be something like political commentary or even satire to poke fun at the origins of neighboring tribes.) Thus, while I concur with the judge's ruling that I doubt this prisoner has a "serious" religion, the actual judgment standard is pretty arbitrary and doesn't hold up to the kind of deep logical scrutiny we usually demand of legal opinions.
The Flying Spaghetti Monster Gospel is plainly a work of satire, meant to entertain while making a pointed political statement
This "plainly" here is difficult to judge. How can we be sure any unbelievable religious text wasn't some sort of "pointed political statement" or "satire"?
For example, I now take you back a few thousand years to the drafting of the Book of Genesis:
HEAD RABBI: "Hey, you nimrods! It's time to get to work on that 'history' of our people. I expect to see some results when I get back. Make sure it's entertaining!" [exits]
RABBI A: "Okay, let's get going. God created the universe over 7 billion years."
RABBI B: "Come on. That's not very exciting. How about 7 days?!"
RABBI A: "No way. Nobody will believe that. It's just ridiculous!"
RABBI B: "But maybe that's what we need here. A touch of the ridiculous!"
RABBI A: [scribbles furiously] "Okay, fine. 7 days. And God made a beautiful paradise. And God created men and women..."
RABBI B: "Wait, wait, I got it... maybe the woman is made from the guy's RIB."
RABBI A: "Okay, that is pretty hysterical. And now we need to explain why life sucks so much, and all these stupid rules we have about not being able to eat bacon."
RABBI B: "Hmm... I love me some bacon. What to do? Well, we need God to look completely ridiculous from the start, with all sorts of arbitrary rules. How about we put a tree in paradise with lovely fruit, but the people aren't supposed to eat it for no apparent reason? And then they do, and God just says, 'Get the hell out of here!' "
RABBI A: "BRILLIANT! Hey, I got an idea. Remember that big flood they still tell stories about? What if God told a special 'chosen' guy to build a giant boat and sail around in it?"
RABBI B: "Yeah, and he packed up all the stuff in his house to save it from the flood."
RABBI A: "Wait, wait... no we need to make this even crazier. Remember, we gotta make this silly and entertaining, or nobody will read it. How about the flood covers everything, so the guy has to save all the animals. So he packs up two of everything on his boat!"
RABBI B: "That's insane... and hilarious. Everyone's going to crack up at the ridiculousness of that. And then when they land the boat after the flood, the guy gets all drunk and naked... and his family has to come in and cover him up."
RABBI A: "But, but... he's all drunk and curses the guy who saw him, and thus we can justify serfdom and slavery for millennia!"
RABBI B: "Fantastic! But what are we gonna call the people who get cursed?"
RABBI A: "Well, they keep telling us we can't have bacon. Let's call him HAM!"
RABBI B: "Okay, where do we go now? Well, there's that guy everybody brings up as the founder of our people -- Abram."
RABBI A: "No, when he gets called by God, you gotta add more bacon jokes -- he's AbraHAM... get it?"
RABBI B: "That's really hamming it up..."
RABBI A: [groan]
RABBI B: "Okay, let's say this Abram... er, no... AbraHAM has a guy in his family that lives in a city that needs to be cured."
RABBI A: "Cured? Like bacon! Well you'll need some salt."
RABBI B: "Yeah -- so the guy flees the city, and his wife turns into a giant pillar of salt!"
RABBI A: "That's going too far. This is getting preposterous."
RABBI B: "No, no. Hear me out. And his daughters are so stupid, that after they fle