In other words, there exists a small cadre of Grammar Nazis that are presently objecting to the original usage of "presently" for the sake of objecting.
You're absolutely right. Thanks so much for providing all the usage quotations.
I agree with you that GP is completely misguided on this question, but there actually *IS* a situation where the usage of "presently" is confusing, and where careful writers and speakers should take care.
Take a look at the last usage guide you mention:
The two senses are rarely if ever confused. presently meaning "now" is most often used with the present tense (The professor is presently on sabbatical leave) and presently meaning "soon" often with the future tense (The supervisor will be back presently).
This is important advice that actually distinguishes the idiomatic usage of the two meanings. No one but a grammatical Nazi moron should object to the summary's "one of the two men known to have been targeted is presently serving an 8-month prison term." Here, "presently" is effectively a synonym of "currently." If you can replace "presently" with "currently" in a sentence in the present tense, chances are you're following the traditional historical usage of the word.
However, when you use "presently" with a future tense verb and generally following the verb, as in the example from your source "The supervisor will be back presently," the standard English idiom says it definitely means "soon" here. It does NOT mean "right now" or "immediately." A short delay is often to be expected.
I have sometimes heard the misuse of this "soon" meaning when people are giving a talk or presentation or something, and they'll say, "And we'll discuss topic X in detail presently."
If you look through all the examples given in your usage guides, you'll note that this phrasing means "soon," and if you say this as a speaker, you should mean, "This brings up topic X, which I'll get to soon, but before that, we need to have a further digression or finish up what we were talking about" or something like that.
"I will discuss topic X presently" does NOT mean "I'm NOW going to discuss topic X." If you say "I will discuss topic X presently" and then immediately start talking about X, some segment of your audience will be confused, and the judgmental literate people among them might think you're an idiot. (I'm not a judgmental type usually, but I've heard other grammatical wackos complain about this sort of thing.)
The thing is -- on this point the "grammar Nazis" are correct. Contrary to the way dictionaries organize words, they are not "atomistic" in this their meaning. Words only make sense in context, and it is not unusual for them to mean different things in different contexts.
So, yes, "presently" can mean "now" and it can mean "soon." But those meanings tend to occur in different linguistic contexts, and that has mostly been roughly consistent historically. If you're not sensitive to that, be prepared to be labeled as ignorant by people who actually know how to use language (as opposed to the GP, who was making a baseless objection).
There are no lawsuits for personal injury in New Zealand.
Yes -- you're right. I forgot about that quirk in tort law there.
One of the benefits of a really good nationalized health care system.
Umm, not really. Have a look here for some historical perspective:
New Zealand's compensation system arose not in response to concerns about medical malpractice but through farsighted workers' compensation reforms. A Royal Commission, established in 1967, concluded that accident victims needed a secure source of financial support when deprived of their capacity to work.
Until 1992, when medical terminology in the act was clarified so it was clear that medical accidents were covered, claims for medical injuries were very few. (The article I linked notes that, historically, only 0.05% of claims for personal injury were related to health care on average.)
So, no -- this "benefit" came out of a desire to provide compensation to people who were the victims of accidents in general, and particularly out of compensation for workers. (I have nothing against nationalized health care, by the way -- and I think it can be a very good idea. But it is not the reason why personal injury torts are prohibited.)
Yes. Now imagine how bad their toys must have been before, if tires are an improvement.
What a failure of imagination. I feel sorry for you. Tires can be amazing toys -- they roll, they bounce, you can climb through them, you can line them up and run through them in a funny way, they do all sorts of wobbly funny things if you don't just roll them... add water and/or sand/mud, and I can think of a lot more fun activities.
It seems like you've never been around a small child who found a large box to be the best toy he got for Christmas. He doesn't care about the fancy toy inside of it -- the box is more entertainment by itself.
Witness that a few times, and you'll understand why the new toys in the story were probably an improvement over some sort of static fancy approved "equipment" that probably was what was there before.
Rules against harmful behavior are good, because they limit harmful behavior. Rules about how to play add stress, anger, and rebelliousness. This isn't especially complicated, and the headline makes perfect sense.
It may make sense, but it's not related to the story. Really, read it; they gave the kids better toys, and the kids were more entertained.
Actually, since I read TFA, I can say that it *IS* related to the story. They didn't just give the kids "better toys" -- they let them do things they weren't allowed to do before, like climb trees and play "bullrush" (basically a kind of fast-paced tag). I don't think they installed the trees there just for the kids to climb -- instead, the implication is that previously it was disallowed.
In other words, they used to have more rules prohibiting various games and activities on the playground. They got rid of many of those rules. They also happened to give them a few other "toys" as you put it, some of which were not the fancy "approved" safe toys for playgrounds or whatever.
But they also got rid of a number of restrictive rules, according to the article I read anyway. (Obviously, I don't think they got rid of the "no bullying" rule -- it's just that when kids have more things to do, they are less likely to find it necessary to get "in trouble" just to have something to do.)
I just finished reading the article, I found it interesting that the 'toys' that they provided amounted to 'non-sharp junk' and provided far more entertainment than the 'child-safe' structures that were otherwise approved, resulting in them being very expensive(have to be carefully designed and built, unbreakable by kids), but 'boring' because they're static.
This is a good point. It's probably not that surprising to any parents of small children, for whom playing with a big box that a present was wrapped in is often more fun than actually playing with the expensive toy that was inside the box.
There is nothing radical here. Basically -- as most people who have kids or spend any time around kids today know -- schools and parents are incredibly overprotective of kids. They worry about any little possible injury or harm to self-esteem or whatever.
It sounds like these schools had banished so many supposedly "dangerous" activities from playtime that the kids had nothing to do. So -- surprise -- they got into trouble! They beat up other kids, misbehaved in various ways, etc. Because they were BORED.
Now, they let kids run around and do the kind of fun silly crap kids are supposed to do. And -- surprise -- they actually have fewer disciplinary problems! Because the kids get TO PLAY.
From TFA:
When researchers - inspired by their own risk-taking childhoods - decided to give children the freedom to create their own play, principals shook their heads
Seriously?!? Kids need time to explore the world, figure things out for themselves, even -- the horror! -- occasionally get hurt or screw up in some minor way. And, guess what, when they do, they learn from it! Isn't that what education is supposed to be about?
Wow -- I understand that parents are overprotective and schools get overprotective to avoid lawsuits, but I never thought so many educators could be so stupid as not to realize that kids appreciate having some freedom and free time in their lives... and they probably will behave better when they have that.
Just to be absolutely clear, once again, please re-read my post. You seem to think I was arguing that because protesters in the Civil Rights Movement or Ghandi's followers went to jail that Snowden should too.
That's not what I was saying AT ALL. I was saying that comparing Snowden to a person who was part of a traditional civil obedience movement is a stupid analogy. One of the many reasons that analogy is flawed is because the GP seemed to assume (with his rhetorical question) that these people didn't go to jail or something... when in fact they did. I was trying to prove the analogy was flawed. I was not making any claims WHATSOEVER about the Snowden case.
It's a good thing, then, that Snowden - nor anybody actually following this saga - is claiming that Snowden is engaging in "civil disobedience".
Umm, the GP made that claim. I was responding to a comment that had been modded as "+5 insightful" by pointing out the GP's comparison to classic "civil disobedience" movements was flawed.
Personally, I think it's important on Slashdot to respond to people who say things get modded up as "insightful" but that don't quite make sense. You, on the other hand, seem to like attacking people who are trying to correct such misconceptions. And you seem to lack the reading comprehension skills to understand that I was actually trying to correct the very misconception you seem to accuse me of.
So which are you? "badly misinformed" or "NSA shill"?
I'm a guy on Slashdot trying to improve the discussion by pointing out historical evidence that contradicts an improper analogy that was modded insightful.
So which are you? "Small intention span" or "lacking completely in reading comprehension skills"?
The things you say are all true, but they're also apparently no longer applicable or effective in today's society.
It's not that they're "no longer applicable or effective" today. It's that the cases are completely different, as I tried to explain. "Peaceful protest movements" are exactly that -- movements, i.e., involving lots of people.
If a lone person takes some sort of action against the government, it's easy to brand that person a traitor or a dissident or whatever. If hundreds or thousands of people take action and are arrested or detained or even beaten or whatever, the public starts to say, "Hey, maybe this isn't just one crazy person -- maybe there's something serious going on over here."
I said this in my original post, but apparently I have to repeat it -- I was NOT arguing that Snowden should just have handed himself over to be prosecuted, NOR was I necessarily arguing that he should go to prison. I was simply responding to the GP, who tried to claim some sort of equivalence with past protest movements and civil disobedience. The actions were completely different, and the intended goals were completely different. I think it's a poor analogy, for the reasons I explained... and you've continued to demonstrate how poor the analogy is by assuming that non-violent protest methods wouldn't be effective today. They would be -- if they were done in large numbers and actually disrupted unjust laws. But the best "protesters" can usually do these days is camp out in a park.
Regardless, all of this is completely irrelevant to the Snowden case -- I just thought it was important to realize that when past protesters broke the law, part of their goal was often to "get caught" by the unjust law. Clearly, that was not one of Snowden's goals, nor should it have been -- which is just another one of many reasons why the GP's comparison to protest movements and traditional "civil disobedience" is flawed.
What snowden did was a form of civil disobedience. What about the civil rights activists who committed "crimes" aka peaceful protests and other non violent forms of civil disobedience in order to repeal or change said laws?
Umm, most of them went to jail. That was usually an explicit part of the protest. Take some time and read Martin Luther King's Letter from Birmingham Jail sometime, for example. He explicitly discusses how a major point of protest an unjust law is to practice civil disobedience, but then be prepared to accept the consequences. The point of non-violent civil disobedience in many cases was to change the laws by showing how their enforcement resulted in injustice -- not to avoid prosecution.
And take a look at Ghandi -- in many cases, the idea was to protest in a non-violent manner by continuing to do something that you should be able to do, but let the British soldiers beat you -- accept your punishment, so that the British citizens themselves might become outraged at what their "law enforcement" was doing, and thus the laws might be changed.
Like many people today, I don't think you understand what non-violent action really was about, nor the cost you were expected to bear. Since the time of Ghandi and MLK, many governments have realized that beating the crap out of people who won't fight back (or who just accept being taken to prison) just ends up offending other people and ultimately overturning the laws. Law enforcement nowadays practices intimidation, but it avoids riling up the population too much with overt oppressive actions. Thus, fewer protestors are spurred to do the kinds of things that would result in arrest (or even beatings, etc.)... and thus the public is less outraged.
I'm not saying that this applies at all to Snowden. His actions were less about breaking unjust laws (after all, most people can probably agree that there are in fact intelligence secrets that should not be broadcast on the news, and it probably would be a bad thing if random people in intelligence just started exposing this information for no reason at all -- so those laws have some purpose). It was more about exposing the unjust practices of others within the government and things that had been inappropriately kept from the public.
In essence, the Snowden case is nothing like classic "civil disobedience" and peaceful protests. I'm not arguing that he should go to prison -- but if he were practicing actual classic civil disobedience, he should probably have been prepared to. Forcing the government to put you in jail or even beat the crap out of you was often a deliberate part of classic "civil disobedience" and "peaceful protest."
Actually, feelings of inadequacy are absolutely essential to learning your limits and realizing there are greater goals you can strive for. If you've never felt inadequate, then you've never challenged yourself. Far from being "an easy trip to mental illness," I'd say that someone who has never felt that way is likely a seriously mentally-ill megalomaniac.
For example, a few years ago I read about surveys of self-esteem for top schools like MIT. Students entering MIT have incredibly high self-esteem. Many of them were valedictorians or near the top of their high school classes. Everything probably came easily to them.
Now look at their perspectives when they graduate. Their feeling of self-worth is in the toilet. I believe the study estimated it took something like 10 years after leaving MIT before the undergraduates actually recovered their previous self-esteem.
Now, what happened? Those students were challenged in ways they never had been before. I don't know if this is still the case, but for many years part or all of freshman year at MIT was pass/fail -- to set a standard. You realized you might just end up with Cs, even if you were at the top of your class in high school. Other top schools often don't have this "calibration" time, and instead (like Harvard) give out just about all A's. They never set a standard. They don't make sure that almost all students feel inadequate and truly challenged.
Nevertheless, most MIT students apparently choose to work harder and to continue to try to succeed. And that's one reason why graduates are often successful, as well as highly valued in the workforce.
Of course, such a trajectory can lead to mental illness, and sometimes does. But for most it's better to be significantly challenged to the point that you realize how ignorant you are and try harder to achieve, rather than going through life thinking you're always going to be on top.
Frankenstein's Monster is, in a way, his child. Victor Frankenstein begat Monster Frankenstein.
No -- the monster is NOT, in any sense, "his child."
The monster was created by combining previously living components from various sources. I can say the same thing if I build a desk from dead trees. I "begat" the desk -- it thus must be "Desk AthanasiusKircher." Or, I could weave a shirt out of cotton. I thus "begat" the shirt -- it is thus "Shirt AthanasiusKircher." QED.
Wait... what? No. The world doesn't work like that.
"Ah," you say, "but these aren't human."
Okay, sure. Let's try that. I'm a heart surgeon. I take a heart from a previously dead human. I kill a living human (temporarily) by stopping his heart and removing it. I combine the two, a la Frankenstein, and I "reanimate" the being with an electrical stimulus.
I have thus "begat" my patient, and he "is, in a way," my child. QED.
Umm... wait, no, that doesn't work either. I think you might be wrong about this.
Now you can dial the pedantry either up or down a notch.
I'm perfectly fine with calling the monster "Frankenstein," by the way. But the actual reason it tends to be called Frankenstein is because the majority of the modern population got to know about the creature through a series of movies, in which the monster IS, in fact, called "Frankenstein," rather than "Frankenstein's monster" or whatever.
That's the reason the monster is called that. It's illogical -- about as logical as calling the desk I just built after my own name -- and inconsistent with the book. But that's the reason.
(By the way, I know you're tempted to talk about inventions that sometimes get named after their inventor. That sort of works, except in such a case we clearly call it "a/an X," as in "a Ford" or whatever. We would not say that "the name of our car is Ford." If Frankenstein had created a number of creatures, we might say that any one of them is "a Frankenstein," but the monster is not simply named "Frankenstein," at least according to the book. For the movies, they just adopted a different story.)
Making up random arguments that don't work is not helpful for showing why a pedant is wrong.
In the 1990s, "culture war" conservatives like Pat Buchanan won enough votes to pull the Republican Party sharply to the right on social issues.
History has shown that voting third party is by far the most effective way to change how America is governed.
Just to be clear, Pat Buchanan wasn't running as a third-party candidate in the 1990s. He ran as a Republican in the primaries, but lost out to other Republican candidates. He did make a big stink at the conventions (including his 1992 keynote speech where he finally gave in and endorsed Bush, after threats not to), leading to confrontations that did nudge the Republican Party into moving toward social conservativism.
In any case, he didn't run as a third-party candidate until 2000. His greatest impact on the Republicans was actually during his time running as a Republican.
You're absolutely right about the history. I didn't mean to imply that the election of a president was the most feasible course, nor that that was actually what happened to the Whigs. My point was that Obama managed to energize a lot of voters in 2008 that had not been even interested in politics (or probably even voting) up to that point -- and that's the kind of thing that can significantly change election outcomes.
I also agree with you that the run for POTUS by third parties is probably not the most effective way to go about it. But, as I mentioned in my post, third party candidates have been elected a number of times in recent years to local, state, and even national offices. If a real shift in parties is going to happen, it will probably happen that way. But it wouldn't hurt to have a messenger with the kind of personality that worked for Obama in 2008 -- even if that person was just starting at a state-level election or whatever. That was my point.
For example, do you have a week's worth of food on hand? Few do.
If you don't have a week's worth of food in your home somewhere, you've got bigger problems than the flu.
Seriously. I'm tired of hearing about all these stories where an icestorm hits or some other minor thing that disrupts people's lives for a few days, and they can't cope without emergency help. These things DO happen. I haven't even lived in places with things like extreme weather, and there have definitely been times when it would have been difficult to leave my house for a few days.
Go get some jugs of water. Now. And buy some cans or jars of food. Put them in the closet. Fantastic! You can now survive for a few days even if your water is shut off, and you have enough food to get by for a week... in case something happens... which someday it probably will.
Over a few years, gradually use these up and buy more, so things stay fresh.
Better yet -- learn to buy in bulk. It's often much cheaper, and you'll always have excess food on hand for emergencies. And learn to cook a few basic things -- with a bag of flour or a bag of rice and whatever random stuff you may have in the pantry, you could probably survive for much longer than a week.
Neither does the submitter, since there's no way Lord Grantham would talk that way about "commoners".
Oh, I don't know. The aristocratic class on Downton Abbey often seem to express confusion when those "below them" even talk about concepts of concern to the ordinary worker. Witness, for example, Dame Maggie Smith (the Dowage Countess) completely befuddled when someone talks about having time off from work on the weekend to attend to other things in his life: "What is a week-end?"
I think there are plenty of workers in office environments who also believe that their bosses have no concept of what a "weekend" is supposed to be.
If you vote for one of the two established options, you have a chance of influence over which of the two will win. If you vote for anybody else, one of the two established candidates still wins, and your vote had no influence over which of them.
Except when the third-party candidate wins. Seriously -- it happens in local and state elections, and even occasionally for Congressional office. Contrary to popular belief, the president is not the only politician in America. And -- while they are infrequent -- there are plenty of examples where 3rd-party candidates were elected to other offices.
Usually some voters will think both options suck so much, it is not worthwhile voting for any of them. [snip] For a start, I don't know how many of them realize they are putting the choice of a winner in the hands of other voters
Except when the third-party candidate wins. See above.
Also, sometimes in a voting situation, "abstain" is actually a valid option. It's not a cop-out. Sometimes the two candidates that are presented to you both seem so terrible and flawed that you can't, in good conscience, support either one. In such a scenario, you could simply pick one randomly -- "the lesser of two evils" as people like you might say -- but sometimes the slight difference between the two candidates on some issues isn't enough to even justify that level of support.
So, you could stay home and not vote at all. In most elections, most Americans stay home and don't vote at all (particularly outside of presidential election years). Obviously no major candidate managed to get those people excited enough to get off their butt and walk to the local polling place.
If such a person actually does decide to get off their butt and vote, they are not "putting the choice of a winner in the hands of others," because otherwise they would not have voted at all -- so by taking action and voting, they are doing more than they would have done otherwise.
Contrary to popular belief, the two major parties do NOT "own" all voters. A vote for someone else is not automatically "stealing" a vote from a major party, or "helping the other guy win." There's a reason we need "get out the vote" efforts -- because most people don't feel strongly enough that they would do ANYTHING. For such a person, voting for anyone (even a 3rd party candidate) is actually doing SOMETHING.
Perhaps that something might make the major parties adjust a bit to try to recapture those 3rd party voters in the next election... and even that is some benefit.
Or, you know, sometimes the third-party candidate wins. Really.
Voting 3rd party is for people who have a great deal of idealism but a poor grasp of math, politics, or history.
... or for people who do not feel that they, in good conscience, could actually support either of the candidates being offered by the two major parties.
Keep in mind that a significant percentage of people who vote 3rd party might otherwise stay home and not vote at all. If they choose to vote for a 3rd-party candidate, they are not altering the outcome of the race between the two parties, since otherwise they wouldn't be participating at all. You can argue that their choice is irrational, but if they don't actually see a significant difference between the two major parties (which is increasingly difficult to see on many issues outside of "hot-button" social issues), they may not feel like they could support either one. Would you rather that they simply stayed home and not express their voice at all?
The key thing often forgotten by those who argue against anyone ever voting for a 3rd party is that they somehow think that all voters are "owned" by the 2 major parties. And if someone chooses to vote for a 3rd party, they are somehow "taking votes away" from a major party candidate.
Here's a newsflash: LOTS of people DON'T VOTE. Some are just lazy, but others simply can't be bothered to make a "choice" between two candidates when they like neither one of them. If a 3rd-party guy comes along and excites them enough to get that person to vote, no vote was "stolen" from any major party.
Contrary to popular belief, candidates actually need to EARN their votes. They don't come by default to them just because Democratic voters always vote Democrat or whatever. Lots of registered Democrats don't vote at various times, and other times they will vote Republican or even for some other party.
There's a reason why "get out the vote" campaigns are so critical to elections -- it's that many people are not even motivated enough to support a major-party candidate by getting off their butt and going to the local polling place. For many of those people, who otherwise might not vote at all, the major parties have not succeeded in convincing them of anything -- they didn't EARN those votes.
If such people come out and vote for a 3rd-party candidate they actually believe in, they are making a positive contribution to the process: and they should be applauded for it, not told that they are simply stupid or ignorant.
Unfortunately the way our voting system was constructed, you WILL always end up with 2 parties. End stop. Every other country that uses the US system has also ended up with 2 parties, it is built into the math, and no matter how much enthusiasm there is for any particular 3rd party, the 2 party system is what it will stabilize to every, single, time.
While you are right that the U.S. system is flawed and will tend toward 2 parties, you draw bad conclusions from that premise. That premise does not guarantee that (1) it will always be the same two parties, nor does it guarantee (2) that those parties will always adhere to the same agenda/platform for all time.
Notice that we didn't always have the two parties we have now, for example. The Republican party emerged in the mid-1800s and overtook the Whig party for good reasons. There have also been a number of times since then where a 3rd-party presidential candidate has significantly contributed toward changing the issues discussed in an election. The most recent significant one was probably Ross Perot, who received about 20% of the popular vote in 1992. His presence in debates and during the campaigns served to highlight issues that otherwise may not have even been discussed, as well as problematizing the consistency of the two major party platforms. (For the record, I was NOT a Perot fan, but that's just the most recent example of a strong presidential 3rd-party candidate.) If a 3rd party managed to get a candidate with the charisma, connections, and rhetorical skills of Obama in 2008, it certainly could be possible for a party shift to occur like that which destroyed the Whigs 150 years ago.
And, if you're willing to look beyond the presidency, you can find plenty of examples of 3rd-party candidates actually elected to various offices, including sometimes to federal office.
One can philosophize all they want, but the way our system was built, voting 3rd party streghtens the position of the candidate furthest from the voter's preferences. It is no throwing your vote away, it is helping the worst candidate.
Except when your candidate gets elected, which actually does happen, particularly in many local or state elections.
And even if your candidate doesn't get elected, the examples I mention can often cause major party candidates to shift their views if the 3rd party candidate is perceived as a significant threat.
So no, it's not as simple as you make it out to be. Just because we have a system that tends toward 2 major parties doesn't mean you have to shut up and take whatever crap they serve to you... and sometimes voting for a 3rd party candidate can facilitate changes. (Not saying it always will -- but it's not always the irrational choice you make it out to be either.)
That lesson was learnt by the British Navy before lime juice, and by some Arctic explorers almost just over a century ago (Karluk). State of the art diets let to deficiency problems that seemingly random fresh food could fix (eg. seal blubber and offel).
I don't know much about seal blubber (though I believe it, like many animal fats, has decent concentrations of important fatty acids), but the idea that offal would solve nutrition problems isn't weird at all. I'd hardly call it "random fresh food."
Organ meats have high concentrations of lots of nutrients, since that's where a lot of specialized chemical stuff happens inside an animal. It's not surprising at all that -- particularly for mammals and things related to humans -- eating organ meats would provide a number of useful things that we need but which aren't found in decent concentrations elsewhere.
Ask anyone from many traditional cultures around the world -- organ meats are often considered delicacies. For some reason in the past century or so, Americans and other Western cultures have started to develop an aversion to offal, but that's a recent and somewhat stupid development.
Admittedly, the tastes and smells of organs can often be a little more unusual than your average steak. But with a little experience (and particularly with good recipes), they are quite delicious. We consume lots of things that taste weird or even bad the first time we encounter them (bitter foods like black coffee and beer come to mind), but because some of these foods have effects from consumption that are "useful" or at least desirable to us (coffee gives us "energy," beer gets us drunk), we get accustomed to flavors that are not often appealing at first.
Many traditional cultures still view offal in the same way: it may seem a little unusual, but the nutrition is more than worth the initial "eww!" experience.
More importantly, kids are exposed to these things at a young age (they are often even preferentially given to kids, because of their nutrition), so it doesn't seem "random," much less "weird" or "gross."
From a Macroeconomic viewpoint, deflation is bad. From an individual viewpoint, it is good. I bought 100 bitcoins when they were at $7. They are now worth enough to pay off my mortgage. That might not be good for the overall economy, but it is good for me.
Meh. From an individual standpoint, deflation is only good if you have enough currency that you can just sit on it until it grows. if you actually need to buy things now and use up that currency you have saved, it doesn't work in your favor. It also would make the idea of loans and mortgages completely unworkable (how would you like it if your mortgage principal ballooned to thousands of times its value before you could pay it off), so good luck if you don't have cash on hand to pay for something.
Also, bitcoin hardly qualifies as a "currency" enough to talk about it in deflationary terms. It's more like an investment right now. If the currency you had to deal with in most of your life were actually deflating, I hope you had a "fortune" to begin with, since as currency deflates rapidly, your salary would also decrease (probably more rapidly than deflation), and investment opportunities would mostly not be feasible. All you would have is holding onto cash.
Not saying it couldn't benefit anyone. But many -- and probably most -- individuals would have real problems if currency deflated rapidly, unless they already had a lot of money stashed somewhere.
Except, in our frame of reference, it's happening now, even though it happened then.
Nope. In our frame of reference, it most definitely happened then. The light is reaching us now.
Well, in common language, there really are at least two "nows". There's "now"(1), as in what may literally be happening somewhere I can't perceive at the moment. "My friend is working at his office now." What I really am saying most of the time is "Based on past information, I predict that if we measured the position and activity of my friend at time T0 -- this instant -- we would be likely to find out at some point in the future (T1) that at T0 my friend had been working at his office."
But there's also "now"(2), as in what I actually can perceive myself at this instant. "The sun is shining now." Well, yes, I suppose -- except those light rays left it some minutes ago; we don't know what the sun is doing now(1). "The police siren is making loud noises now." Well, no -- the police siren made loud noises, perhaps a fraction of a second ago, perhaps even multiple seconds ago if I'm a mile or more away -- but I'm hearing them now. The police siren may actually have ceased sounding by the time I make that statement.
We commonly use language in this way, where "now" can refer to what is happening in our perception, rather than what actually is occurring somewhere else that we can't perceive. In effect, the only place where now(1) and now(2) come close to meeting is when we talk about present observation and perception... which is frankly all we know about anyway.
Light cones create a fixed boundary beyond which information about an event can be known. Talking about what is going on outside our light cone is speculative at best, meaningless at worst. It's not like we could place an intergalatic phone call to our friend and actually find out what's going on this star now(1). We can only know what's going on at now(2).
I understand for physics and mathematical purposes, we like to talk about the abstraction of now(1). But now(2) is actually a more human concept expressing something about our engagement with events as we perceive them. On a galactic or universal scale, it makes sense to describe a supernova as "new" according to the concept of now(2), as roughly applied to our planet. If at some future time, we have observation posts spread out over many light years, it may no longer make sense to have a collective now(2) for humanity. But since we all live on one planet at the present, I can see some usefulness (and common linguistic reasons) for talking about the first information arriving to us as what's happening "now" in our "frame of reference" (loosely defined).
In this case, what's "happening now" in our frame of reference is our perception of the supernova, just as what's "happening now" in my frame of reference may be that "the police siren is making loud noises." Whether or not in fact the siren has ceased making noise at now(1) is generally irrelevant to my statement; what's happening now(1) at the supernova site is not only irrelevant but completely unknowable. It barely even makes sense to define a "now" for that, from an epistemological standpoint.
None of what you say is "offensive" to me... I eat both plants and animals, and I have my own moral justifications for it. But I guess a general point from my post is that our responses are often based on our imagination and cultural ideas/norms, rather than some innate or "natural" human response of sympathy. There are plenty of plant studies now showing complex cooperative networks in forests, "parent" plants preferentially "caring" for their young by sending nutrients their way through the soil until they provide for themselves, plants which "learn" to adopt novel behaviors based on experience (and seem to "remember" these behaviors for weeks or even more than a month)... etc. As we as a culture learn more about such things, will we be able to find it easier to feel something for plants as much as we do about a snail or whatever? I think it's at least possible.
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In other words, there exists a small cadre of Grammar Nazis that are presently objecting to the original usage of "presently" for the sake of objecting.
You're absolutely right. Thanks so much for providing all the usage quotations.
I agree with you that GP is completely misguided on this question, but there actually *IS* a situation where the usage of "presently" is confusing, and where careful writers and speakers should take care.
Take a look at the last usage guide you mention:
The two senses are rarely if ever confused. presently meaning "now" is most often used with the present tense (The professor is presently on sabbatical leave) and presently meaning "soon" often with the future tense (The supervisor will be back presently).
This is important advice that actually distinguishes the idiomatic usage of the two meanings. No one but a grammatical Nazi moron should object to the summary's "one of the two men known to have been targeted is presently serving an 8-month prison term." Here, "presently" is effectively a synonym of "currently." If you can replace "presently" with "currently" in a sentence in the present tense, chances are you're following the traditional historical usage of the word.
However, when you use "presently" with a future tense verb and generally following the verb, as in the example from your source "The supervisor will be back presently," the standard English idiom says it definitely means "soon" here. It does NOT mean "right now" or "immediately." A short delay is often to be expected.
I have sometimes heard the misuse of this "soon" meaning when people are giving a talk or presentation or something, and they'll say, "And we'll discuss topic X in detail presently."
If you look through all the examples given in your usage guides, you'll note that this phrasing means "soon," and if you say this as a speaker, you should mean, "This brings up topic X, which I'll get to soon, but before that, we need to have a further digression or finish up what we were talking about" or something like that.
"I will discuss topic X presently" does NOT mean "I'm NOW going to discuss topic X." If you say "I will discuss topic X presently" and then immediately start talking about X, some segment of your audience will be confused, and the judgmental literate people among them might think you're an idiot. (I'm not a judgmental type usually, but I've heard other grammatical wackos complain about this sort of thing.)
The thing is -- on this point the "grammar Nazis" are correct. Contrary to the way dictionaries organize words, they are not "atomistic" in this their meaning. Words only make sense in context, and it is not unusual for them to mean different things in different contexts.
So, yes, "presently" can mean "now" and it can mean "soon." But those meanings tend to occur in different linguistic contexts, and that has mostly been roughly consistent historically. If you're not sensitive to that, be prepared to be labeled as ignorant by people who actually know how to use language (as opposed to the GP, who was making a baseless objection).
There are no lawsuits for personal injury in New Zealand.
Yes -- you're right. I forgot about that quirk in tort law there.
One of the benefits of a really good nationalized health care system.
Umm, not really. Have a look here for some historical perspective:
New Zealand's compensation system arose not in response to concerns about medical malpractice but through farsighted workers' compensation reforms. A Royal Commission, established in 1967, concluded that accident victims needed a secure source of financial support when deprived of their capacity to work.
Until 1992, when medical terminology in the act was clarified so it was clear that medical accidents were covered, claims for medical injuries were very few. (The article I linked notes that, historically, only 0.05% of claims for personal injury were related to health care on average.)
So, no -- this "benefit" came out of a desire to provide compensation to people who were the victims of accidents in general, and particularly out of compensation for workers. (I have nothing against nationalized health care, by the way -- and I think it can be a very good idea. But it is not the reason why personal injury torts are prohibited.)
Yes. Now imagine how bad their toys must have been before, if tires are an improvement.
What a failure of imagination. I feel sorry for you. Tires can be amazing toys -- they roll, they bounce, you can climb through them, you can line them up and run through them in a funny way, they do all sorts of wobbly funny things if you don't just roll them... add water and/or sand/mud, and I can think of a lot more fun activities.
It seems like you've never been around a small child who found a large box to be the best toy he got for Christmas. He doesn't care about the fancy toy inside of it -- the box is more entertainment by itself.
Witness that a few times, and you'll understand why the new toys in the story were probably an improvement over some sort of static fancy approved "equipment" that probably was what was there before.
Rules against harmful behavior are good, because they limit harmful behavior. Rules about how to play add stress, anger, and rebelliousness. This isn't especially complicated, and the headline makes perfect sense.
It may make sense, but it's not related to the story. Really, read it; they gave the kids better toys, and the kids were more entertained.
Actually, since I read TFA, I can say that it *IS* related to the story. They didn't just give the kids "better toys" -- they let them do things they weren't allowed to do before, like climb trees and play "bullrush" (basically a kind of fast-paced tag). I don't think they installed the trees there just for the kids to climb -- instead, the implication is that previously it was disallowed.
In other words, they used to have more rules prohibiting various games and activities on the playground. They got rid of many of those rules. They also happened to give them a few other "toys" as you put it, some of which were not the fancy "approved" safe toys for playgrounds or whatever.
But they also got rid of a number of restrictive rules, according to the article I read anyway. (Obviously, I don't think they got rid of the "no bullying" rule -- it's just that when kids have more things to do, they are less likely to find it necessary to get "in trouble" just to have something to do.)
I just finished reading the article, I found it interesting that the 'toys' that they provided amounted to 'non-sharp junk' and provided far more entertainment than the 'child-safe' structures that were otherwise approved, resulting in them being very expensive(have to be carefully designed and built, unbreakable by kids), but 'boring' because they're static.
This is a good point. It's probably not that surprising to any parents of small children, for whom playing with a big box that a present was wrapped in is often more fun than actually playing with the expensive toy that was inside the box.
There is nothing radical here. Basically -- as most people who have kids or spend any time around kids today know -- schools and parents are incredibly overprotective of kids. They worry about any little possible injury or harm to self-esteem or whatever.
It sounds like these schools had banished so many supposedly "dangerous" activities from playtime that the kids had nothing to do. So -- surprise -- they got into trouble! They beat up other kids, misbehaved in various ways, etc. Because they were BORED.
Now, they let kids run around and do the kind of fun silly crap kids are supposed to do. And -- surprise -- they actually have fewer disciplinary problems! Because the kids get TO PLAY.
From TFA:
When researchers - inspired by their own risk-taking childhoods - decided to give children the freedom to create their own play, principals shook their heads
Seriously?!? Kids need time to explore the world, figure things out for themselves, even -- the horror! -- occasionally get hurt or screw up in some minor way. And, guess what, when they do, they learn from it! Isn't that what education is supposed to be about?
Wow -- I understand that parents are overprotective and schools get overprotective to avoid lawsuits, but I never thought so many educators could be so stupid as not to realize that kids appreciate having some freedom and free time in their lives... and they probably will behave better when they have that.
("Small attention span...") Yes, I see the irony...
I meant civil [disobedience] obviously...
Just to be absolutely clear, once again, please re-read my post. You seem to think I was arguing that because protesters in the Civil Rights Movement or Ghandi's followers went to jail that Snowden should too.
That's not what I was saying AT ALL. I was saying that comparing Snowden to a person who was part of a traditional civil obedience movement is a stupid analogy. One of the many reasons that analogy is flawed is because the GP seemed to assume (with his rhetorical question) that these people didn't go to jail or something... when in fact they did. I was trying to prove the analogy was flawed. I was not making any claims WHATSOEVER about the Snowden case.
It's a good thing, then, that Snowden - nor anybody actually following this saga - is claiming that Snowden is engaging in "civil disobedience".
Umm, the GP made that claim. I was responding to a comment that had been modded as "+5 insightful" by pointing out the GP's comparison to classic "civil disobedience" movements was flawed.
Personally, I think it's important on Slashdot to respond to people who say things get modded up as "insightful" but that don't quite make sense. You, on the other hand, seem to like attacking people who are trying to correct such misconceptions. And you seem to lack the reading comprehension skills to understand that I was actually trying to correct the very misconception you seem to accuse me of.
So which are you? "badly misinformed" or "NSA shill"?
I'm a guy on Slashdot trying to improve the discussion by pointing out historical evidence that contradicts an improper analogy that was modded insightful.
So which are you? "Small intention span" or "lacking completely in reading comprehension skills"?
The things you say are all true, but they're also apparently no longer applicable or effective in today's society.
It's not that they're "no longer applicable or effective" today. It's that the cases are completely different, as I tried to explain. "Peaceful protest movements" are exactly that -- movements, i.e., involving lots of people.
If a lone person takes some sort of action against the government, it's easy to brand that person a traitor or a dissident or whatever. If hundreds or thousands of people take action and are arrested or detained or even beaten or whatever, the public starts to say, "Hey, maybe this isn't just one crazy person -- maybe there's something serious going on over here."
I said this in my original post, but apparently I have to repeat it -- I was NOT arguing that Snowden should just have handed himself over to be prosecuted, NOR was I necessarily arguing that he should go to prison. I was simply responding to the GP, who tried to claim some sort of equivalence with past protest movements and civil disobedience. The actions were completely different, and the intended goals were completely different. I think it's a poor analogy, for the reasons I explained... and you've continued to demonstrate how poor the analogy is by assuming that non-violent protest methods wouldn't be effective today. They would be -- if they were done in large numbers and actually disrupted unjust laws. But the best "protesters" can usually do these days is camp out in a park.
Regardless, all of this is completely irrelevant to the Snowden case -- I just thought it was important to realize that when past protesters broke the law, part of their goal was often to "get caught" by the unjust law. Clearly, that was not one of Snowden's goals, nor should it have been -- which is just another one of many reasons why the GP's comparison to protest movements and traditional "civil disobedience" is flawed.
What snowden did was a form of civil disobedience. What about the civil rights activists who committed "crimes" aka peaceful protests and other non violent forms of civil disobedience in order to repeal or change said laws?
Umm, most of them went to jail. That was usually an explicit part of the protest. Take some time and read Martin Luther King's Letter from Birmingham Jail sometime, for example. He explicitly discusses how a major point of protest an unjust law is to practice civil disobedience, but then be prepared to accept the consequences. The point of non-violent civil disobedience in many cases was to change the laws by showing how their enforcement resulted in injustice -- not to avoid prosecution.
And take a look at Ghandi -- in many cases, the idea was to protest in a non-violent manner by continuing to do something that you should be able to do, but let the British soldiers beat you -- accept your punishment, so that the British citizens themselves might become outraged at what their "law enforcement" was doing, and thus the laws might be changed.
Like many people today, I don't think you understand what non-violent action really was about, nor the cost you were expected to bear. Since the time of Ghandi and MLK, many governments have realized that beating the crap out of people who won't fight back (or who just accept being taken to prison) just ends up offending other people and ultimately overturning the laws. Law enforcement nowadays practices intimidation, but it avoids riling up the population too much with overt oppressive actions. Thus, fewer protestors are spurred to do the kinds of things that would result in arrest (or even beatings, etc.)... and thus the public is less outraged.
I'm not saying that this applies at all to Snowden. His actions were less about breaking unjust laws (after all, most people can probably agree that there are in fact intelligence secrets that should not be broadcast on the news, and it probably would be a bad thing if random people in intelligence just started exposing this information for no reason at all -- so those laws have some purpose). It was more about exposing the unjust practices of others within the government and things that had been inappropriately kept from the public.
In essence, the Snowden case is nothing like classic "civil disobedience" and peaceful protests. I'm not arguing that he should go to prison -- but if he were practicing actual classic civil disobedience, he should probably have been prepared to. Forcing the government to put you in jail or even beat the crap out of you was often a deliberate part of classic "civil disobedience" and "peaceful protest."
The middle one is an easy trip to mental illness.
Actually, feelings of inadequacy are absolutely essential to learning your limits and realizing there are greater goals you can strive for. If you've never felt inadequate, then you've never challenged yourself. Far from being "an easy trip to mental illness," I'd say that someone who has never felt that way is likely a seriously mentally-ill megalomaniac.
For example, a few years ago I read about surveys of self-esteem for top schools like MIT. Students entering MIT have incredibly high self-esteem. Many of them were valedictorians or near the top of their high school classes. Everything probably came easily to them.
Now look at their perspectives when they graduate. Their feeling of self-worth is in the toilet. I believe the study estimated it took something like 10 years after leaving MIT before the undergraduates actually recovered their previous self-esteem.
Now, what happened? Those students were challenged in ways they never had been before. I don't know if this is still the case, but for many years part or all of freshman year at MIT was pass/fail -- to set a standard. You realized you might just end up with Cs, even if you were at the top of your class in high school. Other top schools often don't have this "calibration" time, and instead (like Harvard) give out just about all A's. They never set a standard. They don't make sure that almost all students feel inadequate and truly challenged.
Nevertheless, most MIT students apparently choose to work harder and to continue to try to succeed. And that's one reason why graduates are often successful, as well as highly valued in the workforce.
Of course, such a trajectory can lead to mental illness, and sometimes does. But for most it's better to be significantly challenged to the point that you realize how ignorant you are and try harder to achieve, rather than going through life thinking you're always going to be on top.
Frankenstein's Monster is, in a way, his child. Victor Frankenstein begat Monster Frankenstein.
No -- the monster is NOT, in any sense, "his child."
The monster was created by combining previously living components from various sources. I can say the same thing if I build a desk from dead trees. I "begat" the desk -- it thus must be "Desk AthanasiusKircher." Or, I could weave a shirt out of cotton. I thus "begat" the shirt -- it is thus "Shirt AthanasiusKircher." QED.
Wait... what? No. The world doesn't work like that.
"Ah," you say, "but these aren't human."
Okay, sure. Let's try that. I'm a heart surgeon. I take a heart from a previously dead human. I kill a living human (temporarily) by stopping his heart and removing it. I combine the two, a la Frankenstein, and I "reanimate" the being with an electrical stimulus.
I have thus "begat" my patient, and he "is, in a way," my child. QED.
Umm... wait, no, that doesn't work either. I think you might be wrong about this.
Now you can dial the pedantry either up or down a notch.
I'm perfectly fine with calling the monster "Frankenstein," by the way. But the actual reason it tends to be called Frankenstein is because the majority of the modern population got to know about the creature through a series of movies, in which the monster IS, in fact, called "Frankenstein," rather than "Frankenstein's monster" or whatever.
That's the reason the monster is called that. It's illogical -- about as logical as calling the desk I just built after my own name -- and inconsistent with the book. But that's the reason.
(By the way, I know you're tempted to talk about inventions that sometimes get named after their inventor. That sort of works, except in such a case we clearly call it "a/an X," as in "a Ford" or whatever. We would not say that "the name of our car is Ford." If Frankenstein had created a number of creatures, we might say that any one of them is "a Frankenstein," but the monster is not simply named "Frankenstein," at least according to the book. For the movies, they just adopted a different story.)
Making up random arguments that don't work is not helpful for showing why a pedant is wrong.
In the 1990s, "culture war" conservatives like Pat Buchanan won enough votes to pull the Republican Party sharply to the right on social issues.
History has shown that voting third party is by far the most effective way to change how America is governed.
Just to be clear, Pat Buchanan wasn't running as a third-party candidate in the 1990s. He ran as a Republican in the primaries, but lost out to other Republican candidates. He did make a big stink at the conventions (including his 1992 keynote speech where he finally gave in and endorsed Bush, after threats not to), leading to confrontations that did nudge the Republican Party into moving toward social conservativism.
In any case, he didn't run as a third-party candidate until 2000. His greatest impact on the Republicans was actually during his time running as a Republican.
You're absolutely right about the history. I didn't mean to imply that the election of a president was the most feasible course, nor that that was actually what happened to the Whigs. My point was that Obama managed to energize a lot of voters in 2008 that had not been even interested in politics (or probably even voting) up to that point -- and that's the kind of thing that can significantly change election outcomes.
I also agree with you that the run for POTUS by third parties is probably not the most effective way to go about it. But, as I mentioned in my post, third party candidates have been elected a number of times in recent years to local, state, and even national offices. If a real shift in parties is going to happen, it will probably happen that way. But it wouldn't hurt to have a messenger with the kind of personality that worked for Obama in 2008 -- even if that person was just starting at a state-level election or whatever. That was my point.
For example, do you have a week's worth of food on hand? Few do.
If you don't have a week's worth of food in your home somewhere, you've got bigger problems than the flu.
Seriously. I'm tired of hearing about all these stories where an icestorm hits or some other minor thing that disrupts people's lives for a few days, and they can't cope without emergency help. These things DO happen. I haven't even lived in places with things like extreme weather, and there have definitely been times when it would have been difficult to leave my house for a few days.
Go get some jugs of water. Now. And buy some cans or jars of food. Put them in the closet. Fantastic! You can now survive for a few days even if your water is shut off, and you have enough food to get by for a week... in case something happens... which someday it probably will.
Over a few years, gradually use these up and buy more, so things stay fresh.
Better yet -- learn to buy in bulk. It's often much cheaper, and you'll always have excess food on hand for emergencies. And learn to cook a few basic things -- with a bag of flour or a bag of rice and whatever random stuff you may have in the pantry, you could probably survive for much longer than a week.
It's just you, since I don't watch Downton Abbey
Neither does the submitter, since there's no way Lord Grantham would talk that way about "commoners".
Oh, I don't know. The aristocratic class on Downton Abbey often seem to express confusion when those "below them" even talk about concepts of concern to the ordinary worker. Witness, for example, Dame Maggie Smith (the Dowage Countess) completely befuddled when someone talks about having time off from work on the weekend to attend to other things in his life: "What is a week-end?"
I think there are plenty of workers in office environments who also believe that their bosses have no concept of what a "weekend" is supposed to be.
If you vote for one of the two established options, you have a chance of influence over which of the two will win. If you vote for anybody else, one of the two established candidates still wins, and your vote had no influence over which of them.
Except when the third-party candidate wins. Seriously -- it happens in local and state elections, and even occasionally for Congressional office. Contrary to popular belief, the president is not the only politician in America. And -- while they are infrequent -- there are plenty of examples where 3rd-party candidates were elected to other offices.
Usually some voters will think both options suck so much, it is not worthwhile voting for any of them. [snip] For a start, I don't know how many of them realize they are putting the choice of a winner in the hands of other voters
Except when the third-party candidate wins. See above.
Also, sometimes in a voting situation, "abstain" is actually a valid option. It's not a cop-out. Sometimes the two candidates that are presented to you both seem so terrible and flawed that you can't, in good conscience, support either one. In such a scenario, you could simply pick one randomly -- "the lesser of two evils" as people like you might say -- but sometimes the slight difference between the two candidates on some issues isn't enough to even justify that level of support.
So, you could stay home and not vote at all. In most elections, most Americans stay home and don't vote at all (particularly outside of presidential election years). Obviously no major candidate managed to get those people excited enough to get off their butt and walk to the local polling place.
If such a person actually does decide to get off their butt and vote, they are not "putting the choice of a winner in the hands of others," because otherwise they would not have voted at all -- so by taking action and voting, they are doing more than they would have done otherwise.
Contrary to popular belief, the two major parties do NOT "own" all voters. A vote for someone else is not automatically "stealing" a vote from a major party, or "helping the other guy win." There's a reason we need "get out the vote" efforts -- because most people don't feel strongly enough that they would do ANYTHING. For such a person, voting for anyone (even a 3rd party candidate) is actually doing SOMETHING.
Perhaps that something might make the major parties adjust a bit to try to recapture those 3rd party voters in the next election... and even that is some benefit.
Or, you know, sometimes the third-party candidate wins. Really.
Voting 3rd party is for people who have a great deal of idealism but a poor grasp of math, politics, or history.
... or for people who do not feel that they, in good conscience, could actually support either of the candidates being offered by the two major parties.
Keep in mind that a significant percentage of people who vote 3rd party might otherwise stay home and not vote at all. If they choose to vote for a 3rd-party candidate, they are not altering the outcome of the race between the two parties, since otherwise they wouldn't be participating at all. You can argue that their choice is irrational, but if they don't actually see a significant difference between the two major parties (which is increasingly difficult to see on many issues outside of "hot-button" social issues), they may not feel like they could support either one. Would you rather that they simply stayed home and not express their voice at all?
The key thing often forgotten by those who argue against anyone ever voting for a 3rd party is that they somehow think that all voters are "owned" by the 2 major parties. And if someone chooses to vote for a 3rd party, they are somehow "taking votes away" from a major party candidate.
Here's a newsflash: LOTS of people DON'T VOTE. Some are just lazy, but others simply can't be bothered to make a "choice" between two candidates when they like neither one of them. If a 3rd-party guy comes along and excites them enough to get that person to vote, no vote was "stolen" from any major party.
Contrary to popular belief, candidates actually need to EARN their votes. They don't come by default to them just because Democratic voters always vote Democrat or whatever. Lots of registered Democrats don't vote at various times, and other times they will vote Republican or even for some other party.
There's a reason why "get out the vote" campaigns are so critical to elections -- it's that many people are not even motivated enough to support a major-party candidate by getting off their butt and going to the local polling place. For many of those people, who otherwise might not vote at all, the major parties have not succeeded in convincing them of anything -- they didn't EARN those votes.
If such people come out and vote for a 3rd-party candidate they actually believe in, they are making a positive contribution to the process: and they should be applauded for it, not told that they are simply stupid or ignorant.
Unfortunately the way our voting system was constructed, you WILL always end up with 2 parties. End stop. Every other country that uses the US system has also ended up with 2 parties, it is built into the math, and no matter how much enthusiasm there is for any particular 3rd party, the 2 party system is what it will stabilize to every, single, time.
While you are right that the U.S. system is flawed and will tend toward 2 parties, you draw bad conclusions from that premise. That premise does not guarantee that (1) it will always be the same two parties, nor does it guarantee (2) that those parties will always adhere to the same agenda/platform for all time.
Notice that we didn't always have the two parties we have now, for example. The Republican party emerged in the mid-1800s and overtook the Whig party for good reasons. There have also been a number of times since then where a 3rd-party presidential candidate has significantly contributed toward changing the issues discussed in an election. The most recent significant one was probably Ross Perot, who received about 20% of the popular vote in 1992. His presence in debates and during the campaigns served to highlight issues that otherwise may not have even been discussed, as well as problematizing the consistency of the two major party platforms. (For the record, I was NOT a Perot fan, but that's just the most recent example of a strong presidential 3rd-party candidate.) If a 3rd party managed to get a candidate with the charisma, connections, and rhetorical skills of Obama in 2008, it certainly could be possible for a party shift to occur like that which destroyed the Whigs 150 years ago.
And, if you're willing to look beyond the presidency, you can find plenty of examples of 3rd-party candidates actually elected to various offices, including sometimes to federal office.
One can philosophize all they want, but the way our system was built, voting 3rd party streghtens the position of the candidate furthest from the voter's preferences. It is no throwing your vote away, it is helping the worst candidate.
Except when your candidate gets elected, which actually does happen, particularly in many local or state elections.
And even if your candidate doesn't get elected, the examples I mention can often cause major party candidates to shift their views if the 3rd party candidate is perceived as a significant threat.
So no, it's not as simple as you make it out to be. Just because we have a system that tends toward 2 major parties doesn't mean you have to shut up and take whatever crap they serve to you... and sometimes voting for a 3rd party candidate can facilitate changes. (Not saying it always will -- but it's not always the irrational choice you make it out to be either.)
That lesson was learnt by the British Navy before lime juice, and by some Arctic explorers almost just over a century ago (Karluk). State of the art diets let to deficiency problems that seemingly random fresh food could fix (eg. seal blubber and offel).
I don't know much about seal blubber (though I believe it, like many animal fats, has decent concentrations of important fatty acids), but the idea that offal would solve nutrition problems isn't weird at all. I'd hardly call it "random fresh food."
Organ meats have high concentrations of lots of nutrients, since that's where a lot of specialized chemical stuff happens inside an animal. It's not surprising at all that -- particularly for mammals and things related to humans -- eating organ meats would provide a number of useful things that we need but which aren't found in decent concentrations elsewhere.
Ask anyone from many traditional cultures around the world -- organ meats are often considered delicacies. For some reason in the past century or so, Americans and other Western cultures have started to develop an aversion to offal, but that's a recent and somewhat stupid development.
Admittedly, the tastes and smells of organs can often be a little more unusual than your average steak. But with a little experience (and particularly with good recipes), they are quite delicious. We consume lots of things that taste weird or even bad the first time we encounter them (bitter foods like black coffee and beer come to mind), but because some of these foods have effects from consumption that are "useful" or at least desirable to us (coffee gives us "energy," beer gets us drunk), we get accustomed to flavors that are not often appealing at first.
Many traditional cultures still view offal in the same way: it may seem a little unusual, but the nutrition is more than worth the initial "eww!" experience.
More importantly, kids are exposed to these things at a young age (they are often even preferentially given to kids, because of their nutrition), so it doesn't seem "random," much less "weird" or "gross."
From a Macroeconomic viewpoint, deflation is bad. From an individual viewpoint, it is good. I bought 100 bitcoins when they were at $7. They are now worth enough to pay off my mortgage. That might not be good for the overall economy, but it is good for me.
Meh. From an individual standpoint, deflation is only good if you have enough currency that you can just sit on it until it grows. if you actually need to buy things now and use up that currency you have saved, it doesn't work in your favor. It also would make the idea of loans and mortgages completely unworkable (how would you like it if your mortgage principal ballooned to thousands of times its value before you could pay it off), so good luck if you don't have cash on hand to pay for something.
Also, bitcoin hardly qualifies as a "currency" enough to talk about it in deflationary terms. It's more like an investment right now. If the currency you had to deal with in most of your life were actually deflating, I hope you had a "fortune" to begin with, since as currency deflates rapidly, your salary would also decrease (probably more rapidly than deflation), and investment opportunities would mostly not be feasible. All you would have is holding onto cash.
Not saying it couldn't benefit anyone. But many -- and probably most -- individuals would have real problems if currency deflated rapidly, unless they already had a lot of money stashed somewhere.
Except, in our frame of reference, it's happening now, even though it happened then.
Nope. In our frame of reference, it most definitely happened then. The light is reaching us now.
Well, in common language, there really are at least two "nows". There's "now"(1), as in what may literally be happening somewhere I can't perceive at the moment. "My friend is working at his office now." What I really am saying most of the time is "Based on past information, I predict that if we measured the position and activity of my friend at time T0 -- this instant -- we would be likely to find out at some point in the future (T1) that at T0 my friend had been working at his office."
But there's also "now"(2), as in what I actually can perceive myself at this instant. "The sun is shining now." Well, yes, I suppose -- except those light rays left it some minutes ago; we don't know what the sun is doing now(1). "The police siren is making loud noises now." Well, no -- the police siren made loud noises, perhaps a fraction of a second ago, perhaps even multiple seconds ago if I'm a mile or more away -- but I'm hearing them now. The police siren may actually have ceased sounding by the time I make that statement.
We commonly use language in this way, where "now" can refer to what is happening in our perception, rather than what actually is occurring somewhere else that we can't perceive. In effect, the only place where now(1) and now(2) come close to meeting is when we talk about present observation and perception... which is frankly all we know about anyway.
Light cones create a fixed boundary beyond which information about an event can be known. Talking about what is going on outside our light cone is speculative at best, meaningless at worst. It's not like we could place an intergalatic phone call to our friend and actually find out what's going on this star now(1). We can only know what's going on at now(2).
I understand for physics and mathematical purposes, we like to talk about the abstraction of now(1). But now(2) is actually a more human concept expressing something about our engagement with events as we perceive them. On a galactic or universal scale, it makes sense to describe a supernova as "new" according to the concept of now(2), as roughly applied to our planet. If at some future time, we have observation posts spread out over many light years, it may no longer make sense to have a collective now(2) for humanity. But since we all live on one planet at the present, I can see some usefulness (and common linguistic reasons) for talking about the first information arriving to us as what's happening "now" in our "frame of reference" (loosely defined).
In this case, what's "happening now" in our frame of reference is our perception of the supernova, just as what's "happening now" in my frame of reference may be that "the police siren is making loud noises." Whether or not in fact the siren has ceased making noise at now(1) is generally irrelevant to my statement; what's happening now(1) at the supernova site is not only irrelevant but completely unknowable. It barely even makes sense to define a "now" for that, from an epistemological standpoint.
None of what you say is "offensive" to me... I eat both plants and animals, and I have my own moral justifications for it. But I guess a general point from my post is that our responses are often based on our imagination and cultural ideas/norms, rather than some innate or "natural" human response of sympathy. There are plenty of plant studies now showing complex cooperative networks in forests, "parent" plants preferentially "caring" for their young by sending nutrients their way through the soil until they provide for themselves, plants which "learn" to adopt novel behaviors based on experience (and seem to "remember" these behaviors for weeks or even more than a month)... etc. As we as a culture learn more about such things, will we be able to find it easier to feel something for plants as much as we do about a snail or whatever? I think it's at least possible.