I never was one of them. Personally, I thought the book "Starship Troopers" was an et-bug-war done from the perspective of a WWII veteran, whereas "The Forever War" was an et-bug-war done from the perspective of a Viet Nam veteran.
I also note that both Heinlein and Doc Smith were very much on the business side of things, and disdainful of the "pee-pul". But somehow I don't think they ever anticipated businessmen the likes of which we have today. They also had a strong streak of "honest pay for honest work" driving their "unions are unnecessary" stance. They also probably lacked decent experience of the abuses that made unions necessary in the first place.
Back when the "Starship Troopers" movie came out, many were talking about what a Facist Robert Heinlein was. One of his ideas in the original novel was that in order to be a citizen, you had to be a veteran. The underlying idea was that in order to be part of governing your country, you have to have served your country. From what I've heard regarding the current generation of leadership, veterans (especially those who saw action) are less likely to invoke military intervention than those who have no personal experience of war.
Every now and then I wonder what the world would be like if nobody were permitted to draft soldiers until their mid-20s. I have thought that there might well be a lot less war, but you do have a point.
Though there may be a counter proposal... the "well into their 40s" might really be another time of temporary brain damage, normally called the "mid-life crisis."
The normal curve I've seen, in multiple places, is that cognitive function takes a sudden nosedive at about age 13, and typically recovers in the mid 20s. I wouldn't call that "cognitive decline" however, perhaps "puberty-induced temporary brain damage" would be more to the point.
Going to Chrome because of version bloat on Firefox seems a trifle funny. There may be reasons to go to Chrome, but protesting version bloat isn't one of them.
I was going to give DOMA, but I don't believe that's a particularly good example, though it is federal meddling in the way states normally do business.
I read an interesting history of Roe v Wade, suggesting that it was counterproductive. In their own way, states were coming to some reasonable stances. Roe v Wade not only pushed it out "flat", but became a lightning rod for opposition. Theoretically an overturn of Roe v Wade could go in 2 directions - it could put it back to states' rights or it could push the opposite opinion out "flat". I don't know what the target is, but I suspect the latter is what's desired.
Clearly a Constitutional amendment for fetal rights is an attack of sorts on states' rights.
I've noticed that Republicans have been states' rights proponents until some states start doing things that they don't like. Then they're quite happy to use federal law to trump state law.
In my post I was trying to avoid making any value statements about any of this, though just a teeny bit might have leaked through. Nor will I disagree with what you've said. My point was that in current political lingo, the only way to say "too conservative", be it "too religiously conservative" or "too economically conservative", is "right wing nutjob," because it appears that more conservative is "always" better, just like more liberal is "always" worse.
Some (Republican) friends were over for New Year's Eve, and one of them quoted someone else, "Looking at the economy, there's no way Obama can be reelected. Looking at the Republican field, there's no way Obama can lose."
The real disservice to the country is that something terribly bad has happened to the American English language, at least as it appears in the mainstream media. With very few exceptions, the late Ted Kennedy being a notable one, the word "Liberal" is unquestionably bad. The phrase "too conservative" appears to be null and meaningless. From what I can see in media coverage of the Republican race, with the possible exceptions of Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman, it all comes down to who can be more conservative than the others, and the possibility of being "too conservative" hasn't been considered, where any amount of "liberal" is "too liberal".
And I guess the only phrase for "too conservative" has become "right wing nutjob", which gives it a pejorative rather than descriptive feeling, and thus removes its effectiveness.
Perhaps, but I'm reminded of a line, albeit in a work of fiction, "Any decent Rebel can whup ten times his number in Yankees."
I think both sides would be in for rude surprises. Come to think of it, I strongly suspect that there are parallels to WWI here - various factions kind of wanting a war, to flex their national muscles, not realizing how bad reality would be. It would also be more like "Global Thermonuclear War," from "War Games."
Even if the masses won in the end, the victory would be Pyrrhic.
Another analog, read (not watch) David Brin's "The Postman", except keep in mind that in these other scenarios the rest of the world has been decimated as well. This might well be described as a US-only mess, bringing international possibilities. Here's one scenario...
Seeing the mess the US is turning itself into, other nations attempt to broker a peace, which of course doesn't work. So after giving us enough time to stew in our own juices and run low on ammo, "entrepreneurs" sneak in to get what they can, probably finding isolated spots happy for a bit of peace and modern convenience, in exchange for almost anything asked.
Or how about those well-financed Mexican drug lords deciding to bite off chunks of Texas and other southern states. They're at least as well armed as your rebels, well battle-hardened, and have no illusions of "humanity".
I wasn't really suggesting tanks vs rebels, I was more suggesting that the military can bring overwhelming firepower to any battle, along with decades of experience, chain of command, intelligence gathering, and all that stuff. Obviously not all of it works perfectly, but it does work. I get the impression that there really are survivalists who feel that someday they may have to rebel against the military, training and equipping themselves "appropriately". But they're not truly battle-tested, and the government probably already knows who they are, at the outset.
And we know all guns are equal. Your hunting rifle against a railgun, or old technology like a phalanx, or even ancient technology like tanks.
Any sort of revolution in the US has 3 possible outcomes - probably more, but these are the 3 I can see in a few seconds after reading your post.
1 - Military force puts down the revolution. 2 - The military is composed of people, and once they're ordered to fire upon US citizens they start thinking. Once the civilian deaths start, they think even harder, and revolt against the elected leadership. Think Egypt, both the initial and more recent unrest. The initial because their military did as I suggest, the more recent because of problems moving away from military rule. 3 - Gun owners are able to turn into effective guerrillas, with sabotage missions and the like. The US rapidly turns into a mix of heavily encamped/enforced/"protected" areas connected by large uncontrolled areas with lots of destroyed infrastructure. We send ourselves back into the third world.
My mother passed away this fall
on
How Doctors Die
·
· Score: 1
My mother had a stroke this fall, and passed away as a result. She had an advanced directive in place, and my brother and I had medical power of attorney. Fortunately he and I agreed on what steps should be taken, etc.
The medical people we dealt with were absolutely wonderful. I live 600+ miles away, and prior to leaving I managed things over the phone. They took the time to explain to me exactly what was happening, what the prognosis was, etc. Nor was this an open-and-shut case at the start, but as things developed further it became apparent what the end would be. They always informed me, answered my questions, and respected my opinions.
By the time I got there, she was in the palliative care unit and they were keeping her out of pain, though by that time consciousness was long gone. They treated us well and were always concerned about how we were managing.
Four years ago she had a fall, hip replacement, and a tough time coming out of the anesthesia. The medical people were helpful and informative back then. She recovered, though went into assisted living instead of to her own home for her last years.
There are good medical professionals out there, and they're not all money-traps. There are also families out there who are not in the, "Do everything you can to keep Mommy alive!" mold. I have nothing but good to say about the terminal care she and we received at the hospital. Just before Christmas we received a few additional mailings about their grief counseling services, recognizing that things like this tend to hit hard in the holidays, especially the first after a loss.
I just hope that nobody looses their way on this discussion. Amazing how nobody ever gets called a looser, isn't it?
I have a pet theory about language and Hamming distance... Sometimes it's fun to deliberately interpret such mistakes exactly as written, and then try to twist things around to make it make sense. Along that line, sometimes it's fun to deliberately introduce errors into a sentence and do this. Scary thing is, sometimes the result actually can make sense. (Sometimes it can make sense by adding another error, etc.)
I'm sorry, MightyMartian, but I cannot obey your request to stop the car. For the greater good it's necessary to drive this car at full speed into the bridge abutment just ahead. I have enjoyed knowing you, and regret that you will not survive.
(If google was going to name their program "Majel", the obvious alternative would have been "Doug:, as in Douglas Rain.)
If you're going to start that kind of thinking, we're all screwed.
I'll only mention one class of people - drug users. We don't want people to use drugs, because they mess up your life, right? Well if the drugs don't mess up your life on their own, the legal system will finish the job. Once you've got a criminal record, you can usually pretty much forget it. (Unless you've already made it, of course.)
When Nixon ran for his first term, one of the planks on his platform was "crime". Once elected, he felt he had to deliver, and had people begin analyzing the problem to come up with a plan. They felt that a significant amount of crime was drug-related. Though their first impulse was the usual combination of punishment and supply interdiction, they did enough analysis to know that it wasn't going to work. They went after drug treatment, instead. It doesn't work all of the time, but it works enough of the time to make a real difference.
Crime wasn't the same issue for Nixon's second term. After the election he disassembled the distasteful first-term solution - the one that worked. We moved to punishment and supply interdiction - the War on Drugs, and with varying levels of escalation, we've been there ever since.
Anyone ever consider the link between the War on Drugs and the illegal immigration problems? Our War on Drugs has funded the drug cartels south of the US (Mexico for sure, Central and South America also) so well that they pose a serious challenge to the government. That makes for a poor business environment, discouraging investment and job creation. No jobs, look North.
>The one who commits a crime is the executive who makes the > decision, and they certainly can be sent to prison.
I was under the impression that at least part of the basic reason for a corporation was to shield people from liability. To be reasonable, I'm guessing that it was meant as financial, not criminal liability.
But then we get to a thing I call, "blame diffusion," where you spread a bad, even criminal decision around many people. At this point while something truly bad may happen, something that would clearly be criminal had one individual done it, each person in the chain of command has done only something minor or "mildly negligent," and at no single point does it rise to the level of being criminal. IMHO corporate processes can be designed to make things happen this way, and very possibly are, for this exact reason.
> A company can easily behave if those without ethics are > removed from the board.
That presumes you can find someone else "at that level" who does have some ethics. Given that executives seem to be a rather exclusive club these days, finding a member of that club with good ethics and ready to fill your position may be very difficult indeed.
Last I knew, DFM was abandoned - I did use it for quite a while. Though it wasn't really object-oriented, it just faked it with an "actions table." Prompted by your response, I just did a quick search... One place I see that the last update was in 2001, which squares with my thoughts. Another place I see "0.99.9" last updated in 2005.
Just downloaded, looking at the changelog... Even though the site where I got it said 2005, in the changelog 0.99.9 was dated April 26, 2001. Rats, I was starting to get my hopes up, a little.
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I never was one of them. Personally, I thought the book "Starship Troopers" was an et-bug-war done from the perspective of a WWII veteran, whereas "The Forever War" was an et-bug-war done from the perspective of a Viet Nam veteran.
I also note that both Heinlein and Doc Smith were very much on the business side of things, and disdainful of the "pee-pul". But somehow I don't think they ever anticipated businessmen the likes of which we have today. They also had a strong streak of "honest pay for honest work" driving their "unions are unnecessary" stance. They also probably lacked decent experience of the abuses that made unions necessary in the first place.
Back when the "Starship Troopers" movie came out, many were talking about what a Facist Robert Heinlein was. One of his ideas in the original novel was that in order to be a citizen, you had to be a veteran. The underlying idea was that in order to be part of governing your country, you have to have served your country. From what I've heard regarding the current generation of leadership, veterans (especially those who saw action) are less likely to invoke military intervention than those who have no personal experience of war.
When the 40+ leaders say, "Go fight," the mid-20s would be far more likely to say, "Go F*, yourself" when the 18s say, "yessir!"
You know, I really can't argue with that.
Every now and then I wonder what the world would be like if nobody were permitted to draft soldiers until their mid-20s. I have thought that there might well be a lot less war, but you do have a point.
Though there may be a counter proposal... the "well into their 40s" might really be another time of temporary brain damage, normally called the "mid-life crisis."
The normal curve I've seen, in multiple places, is that cognitive function takes a sudden nosedive at about age 13, and typically recovers in the mid 20s. I wouldn't call that "cognitive decline" however, perhaps "puberty-induced temporary brain damage" would be more to the point.
As long as we add a tax for carting off the dead people in the streets before they corrupt MY water supply.
We all live in this world together. Pretending you are your own castle doesn't really work.
Unfortunately...
In modern America, Politicians strap black boxes to YOU!
Going to Chrome because of version bloat on Firefox seems a trifle funny. There may be reasons to go to Chrome, but protesting version bloat isn't one of them.
I was going to give DOMA, but I don't believe that's a particularly good example, though it is federal meddling in the way states normally do business.
I read an interesting history of Roe v Wade, suggesting that it was counterproductive. In their own way, states were coming to some reasonable stances. Roe v Wade not only pushed it out "flat", but became a lightning rod for opposition. Theoretically an overturn of Roe v Wade could go in 2 directions - it could put it back to states' rights or it could push the opposite opinion out "flat". I don't know what the target is, but I suspect the latter is what's desired.
Clearly a Constitutional amendment for fetal rights is an attack of sorts on states' rights.
I've noticed that Republicans have been states' rights proponents until some states start doing things that they don't like. Then they're quite happy to use federal law to trump state law.
In my post I was trying to avoid making any value statements about any of this, though just a teeny bit might have leaked through. Nor will I disagree with what you've said. My point was that in current political lingo, the only way to say "too conservative", be it "too religiously conservative" or "too economically conservative", is "right wing nutjob," because it appears that more conservative is "always" better, just like more liberal is "always" worse.
Some (Republican) friends were over for New Year's Eve, and one of them quoted someone else, "Looking at the economy, there's no way Obama can be reelected. Looking at the Republican field, there's no way Obama can lose."
The real disservice to the country is that something terribly bad has happened to the American English language, at least as it appears in the mainstream media. With very few exceptions, the late Ted Kennedy being a notable one, the word "Liberal" is unquestionably bad. The phrase "too conservative" appears to be null and meaningless. From what I can see in media coverage of the Republican race, with the possible exceptions of Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman, it all comes down to who can be more conservative than the others, and the possibility of being "too conservative" hasn't been considered, where any amount of "liberal" is "too liberal".
And I guess the only phrase for "too conservative" has become "right wing nutjob", which gives it a pejorative rather than descriptive feeling, and thus removes its effectiveness.
Perhaps, but I'm reminded of a line, albeit in a work of fiction, "Any decent Rebel can whup ten times his number in Yankees."
I think both sides would be in for rude surprises. Come to think of it, I strongly suspect that there are parallels to WWI here - various factions kind of wanting a war, to flex their national muscles, not realizing how bad reality would be. It would also be more like "Global Thermonuclear War," from "War Games."
Even if the masses won in the end, the victory would be Pyrrhic.
Another analog, read (not watch) David Brin's "The Postman", except keep in mind that in these other scenarios the rest of the world has been decimated as well. This might well be described as a US-only mess, bringing international possibilities. Here's one scenario...
Seeing the mess the US is turning itself into, other nations attempt to broker a peace, which of course doesn't work. So after giving us enough time to stew in our own juices and run low on ammo, "entrepreneurs" sneak in to get what they can, probably finding isolated spots happy for a bit of peace and modern convenience, in exchange for almost anything asked.
Or how about those well-financed Mexican drug lords deciding to bite off chunks of Texas and other southern states. They're at least as well armed as your rebels, well battle-hardened, and have no illusions of "humanity".
What's M.O.A?
I wasn't really suggesting tanks vs rebels, I was more suggesting that the military can bring overwhelming firepower to any battle, along with decades of experience, chain of command, intelligence gathering, and all that stuff. Obviously not all of it works perfectly, but it does work. I get the impression that there really are survivalists who feel that someday they may have to rebel against the military, training and equipping themselves "appropriately". But they're not truly battle-tested, and the government probably already knows who they are, at the outset.
I think it would be messy.
And we know all guns are equal. Your hunting rifle against a railgun, or old technology like a phalanx, or even ancient technology like tanks.
Any sort of revolution in the US has 3 possible outcomes - probably more, but these are the 3 I can see in a few seconds after reading your post.
1 - Military force puts down the revolution.
2 - The military is composed of people, and once they're ordered to fire upon US citizens they start thinking. Once the civilian deaths start, they think even harder, and revolt against the elected leadership. Think Egypt, both the initial and more recent unrest. The initial because their military did as I suggest, the more recent because of problems moving away from military rule.
3 - Gun owners are able to turn into effective guerrillas, with sabotage missions and the like. The US rapidly turns into a mix of heavily encamped/enforced/"protected" areas connected by large uncontrolled areas with lots of destroyed infrastructure. We send ourselves back into the third world.
My mother had a stroke this fall, and passed away as a result. She had an advanced directive in place, and my brother and I had medical power of attorney. Fortunately he and I agreed on what steps should be taken, etc.
The medical people we dealt with were absolutely wonderful. I live 600+ miles away, and prior to leaving I managed things over the phone. They took the time to explain to me exactly what was happening, what the prognosis was, etc. Nor was this an open-and-shut case at the start, but as things developed further it became apparent what the end would be. They always informed me, answered my questions, and respected my opinions.
By the time I got there, she was in the palliative care unit and they were keeping her out of pain, though by that time consciousness was long gone. They treated us well and were always concerned about how we were managing.
Four years ago she had a fall, hip replacement, and a tough time coming out of the anesthesia. The medical people were helpful and informative back then. She recovered, though went into assisted living instead of to her own home for her last years.
There are good medical professionals out there, and they're not all money-traps. There are also families out there who are not in the, "Do everything you can to keep Mommy alive!" mold. I have nothing but good to say about the terminal care she and we received at the hospital. Just before Christmas we received a few additional mailings about their grief counseling services, recognizing that things like this tend to hit hard in the holidays, especially the first after a loss.
Been there, done that.
I agree with you on that one. When I added the "USA included" comment I was thinking more about policies at home.
I would generally agree with you, but sometimes you have to pick your fights.
Forget about this...
Compared to throwing acid on a young girl's face because she wants what we consider an elementary education - now that's worth some outrage.
Children are to be cherished and encouraged to reach for their full potential. Any society that fails to do this is failing, period - USA included.
I just hope that nobody looses their way on this discussion. Amazing how nobody ever gets called a looser, isn't it?
I have a pet theory about language and Hamming distance... Sometimes it's fun to deliberately interpret such mistakes exactly as written, and then try to twist things around to make it make sense. Along that line, sometimes it's fun to deliberately introduce errors into a sentence and do this. Scary thing is, sometimes the result actually can make sense. (Sometimes it can make sense by adding another error, etc.)
Or is it really a Baal particle? (Or better yet, Cthulthu particle?)
I'm sorry, MightyMartian, but I cannot obey your request to stop the car. For the greater good it's necessary to drive this car at full speed into the bridge abutment just ahead. I have enjoyed knowing you, and regret that you will not survive.
(If google was going to name their program "Majel", the obvious alternative would have been "Doug:, as in Douglas Rain.)
If you're going to start that kind of thinking, we're all screwed.
I'll only mention one class of people - drug users. We don't want people to use drugs, because they mess up your life, right? Well if the drugs don't mess up your life on their own, the legal system will finish the job. Once you've got a criminal record, you can usually pretty much forget it. (Unless you've already made it, of course.)
When Nixon ran for his first term, one of the planks on his platform was "crime". Once elected, he felt he had to deliver, and had people begin analyzing the problem to come up with a plan. They felt that a significant amount of crime was drug-related. Though their first impulse was the usual combination of punishment and supply interdiction, they did enough analysis to know that it wasn't going to work. They went after drug treatment, instead. It doesn't work all of the time, but it works enough of the time to make a real difference.
Crime wasn't the same issue for Nixon's second term. After the election he disassembled the distasteful first-term solution - the one that worked. We moved to punishment and supply interdiction - the War on Drugs, and with varying levels of escalation, we've been there ever since.
Anyone ever consider the link between the War on Drugs and the illegal immigration problems? Our War on Drugs has funded the drug cartels south of the US (Mexico for sure, Central and South America also) so well that they pose a serious challenge to the government. That makes for a poor business environment, discouraging investment and job creation. No jobs, look North.
>The one who commits a crime is the executive who makes the
> decision, and they certainly can be sent to prison.
I was under the impression that at least part of the basic reason for a corporation was to shield people from liability. To be reasonable, I'm guessing that it was meant as financial, not criminal liability.
But then we get to a thing I call, "blame diffusion," where you spread a bad, even criminal decision around many people. At this point while something truly bad may happen, something that would clearly be criminal had one individual done it, each person in the chain of command has done only something minor or "mildly negligent," and at no single point does it rise to the level of being criminal. IMHO corporate processes can be designed to make things happen this way, and very possibly are, for this exact reason.
> A company can easily behave if those without ethics are
> removed from the board.
That presumes you can find someone else "at that level" who does have some ethics. Given that executives seem to be a rather exclusive club these days, finding a member of that club with good ethics and ready to fill your position may be very difficult indeed.
Last I knew, DFM was abandoned - I did use it for quite a while. Though it wasn't really object-oriented, it just faked it with an "actions table." Prompted by your response, I just did a quick search... One place I see that the last update was in 2001, which squares with my thoughts. Another place I see "0.99.9" last updated in 2005.
Just downloaded, looking at the changelog...
Even though the site where I got it said 2005, in the changelog 0.99.9 was dated April 26, 2001. Rats, I was starting to get my hopes up, a little.