They don't really think he is a socialist. They know he is a moderate Republican. But people like the Koch brothers fund libertarian groups for two reasons: to repeal all government regulations, and to get rid of all taxation of the wealthy. By those standards, Obama has only given them several thousand inches, and now they want a light-year. I mean, if a guy is bending over backwards to do everything you ask, you could thank him, but then people might realize he was doing everything you asked. Better to call him a commie Muslim fascist Kenyan terrorist, in the hopes that people will not realize what he really is, and what he is really doing.
Because the text of the speech is always distributed to the media before hand.
I just tried looking for evidence that this is true, and could not find any through a Google search or through a search of Wikipedia. Can you cite any sources for this?
This is what our political reporting has been reduced too. If you do not toe the line, you do not get access. Ask too many uncomfortable questions, and you will only be asking questions of local school board candidates. You can argue, within the bounds set by the Washington elite, but you must stick to the narrative. Argue whichever "side" you like, as the sides have been pre-chosen and approved by the powers that be. Just don't question the narrative itself, or again, you won't be reporting in Washington.
Most photo studios such as Olin Mills will claim copyright on any photos they take of you. Yes, it is in the contract, but most people don't realize that. I tried having an Olin Mills picture of my mom copied for her memorial. Nobody would do it unless I got express written permission from Olin Mills. I ended up cropping out the stupid "Olin Mills" signature and had no trouble copying it after that. But the amazing thing is that, apparently, Olin Mills and other photography studios have invested large sums of money telling every single copy-jockey in the country not to copy studio photographs. Even the copy counter at the local drugstore wouldn't do it, "Nope,see here where it says 'Olin Mills' at the bottom? Yeah, they own that picture of your dead mom for the next seventy years."
Not really. I don't think the RIAA is concerned about piracy on.music gTLDs. They appear to be more concerned that they will not have as much control over domain names as they would like. They object to three specific things: "Ultra high standards for community objection," which means it will be more difficult for them to stop things they consider to be cybersquatting; "Lack of transparency" means they will not be able to easily figure out who owns what domain name, and who to sue; and "Malicious Conduct" which means that they suspect people might do things on the.music gTLD that they do on other parts of the Internet, like pirate music. They seem to want to force ICANN to be their unpaid police force, or to do their thinking for them and come up with a technical solution that protects their interests.
Basically, I believe RIAA wants to control anything remotely related to music. The idea of a huge new marketplace of independent music scares the crap out of them. I think they want ICANN to basically say, "The RIAA owns.music. If you want to put music of any sort on the Internet, talk to the RIAA." And I want to date supermodels, plural. Come on, RIAA, you are thinking too small. Take getting paid for doing nothing to the next step and force everyone with ears to pay a music tax directly to you. After all, if they have ears, they might hear some music without paying you for it, and we can't have that.
No, let anyone have specific input, just as any old schmoe can contribute patches to an open source project. Make it as easy as possible for everyone, even the stupid people, to see how things are done and contribute ideas about how they could be done better. Just as with open source, the maintainer (i.e. the government official in charge) decides what gets committed and what gets thrown out. Sure, you would have to look over and toss out dozens of bad ideas for every good one, but I think it would be worth it.
Of course, after issue has been decided, do not let the schmoes come and bother the people doing the decided upon work. Don't patch government daily or weekly, allow time to see how new things are working.
Haha, I'm not one of those folks who prattle on about "It's not a democracy, it's a republic!" Yeah, uh, the states are democracies that democratically elect representatives to join the governing bodies of the republic.
Unfortunately, we do not allow just anyone to contribute. Try writing a bill and getting it before congress. But that really wasn't what I was talking about, most of government is not decided on by votes of any sort, it is set as policy. I think this story is more about governmental operational procedures, which are decided by department heads, who all tend to protect "their" little fiefdoms and would never dream of doing something someone else in another department did.
They plan to look at the way each region of the state does things, and implement the best plans. Kalamazoo happens to be one place that the governor feels is doing things right, and should serve as a template for other areas. But you are correct in that this is not really about "open source" government at all, which would allow anyone to contribute. This is about taking the best policies and procedures already out there, and using them in places that are not yet doing so.
Apparently you and I have completely different mechanisms for drawing conclusions.
Let me guess, one of you starts from basic propositions and works logically towards conclusions, the other one draws conclusions from his gut reaction and reasons backwards to find propositions that support the foregone conclusion. Yeah. That's it.
Actually, so as not to offend either of Slashdot's female readers, the site has implemented a gender check policy. You just have to verify that you are male by sending an email from the account linked to your Slashdot account with the phrase "I like porn!" in the subject and "Show me the naked chicks!" in the body to daddypants@slashdot.org. Then you will see the "Format Stories as ASCII naked chicks" checkbox on your preferences page.
I wasn't talking about the even horizon, I was talking about the singularity, which theoretically has infinite density. I know the person I responded to was quoting sci-fi as if it were real science, that is why I had to correct him.
Minimum wage laws have a history of working. Find me something from a mainstream economist showing they don't.
The Dems never claimed the cost savings came from mandatory coverage. Not that I believe the program will save money, but it won't cost as much as the Repubs claim. Knowing the Repubs would claim it would cost several moons and body parts, the Dems had to claim it would save money.
Social Security and medicare are the most successful social programs in American history. I challenge you to prove they have failed.
Charles Koch is not a democrat! He is one of the main men funding libertarian think tanks. He is a RADICAL right winger. I don't personally know about the others, but I do not trust any of your examples now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Koch#Political_activities
Digg an twitter are Democratic? Hahahaha, oh, that is rich. In any case, your refrain of "I know you are but what am I?" is hardly a rational adult argument.
We would be a footnote because "normal" matter is a footnote.
Judeo-Christian religions claim that we are special. They have had to accept a continued diminishing of our specialness, we are not the center of the universe. The sun does not revolve around the Earth. There are most certainly billions of other planets just like ours out there. We are demonstrably NOT God's special little favorites. With this, religious proponents would have to accept another reduction in our specialness: not only is our kind of matter not the only kind, it isn't even the most common kind.
Given that our hearts are prone to produce convenient lies, to mirror back to us the world we want to see rather than the world that is, I would place my faith in the microscope.
Just because someone disagrees with your world view or mythology does not make their world view childish. If many people continually see your religion in a different light than you do, they are not necessarily being childish. Perhaps their view is the real one, and you are the one deluding yourself. Perhaps your religion really does look that simplistic to outsiders.
The Church may claim to be uninterested in temporal matters, but then, the Church used to kill people for suggesting we were not the center of the universe. Tortured them right to death. While the Church may have progressed beyond killing people for suggesting the Bible is inaccurate, Christians still don't like it.
This research seems to show that the Bible only applies to a very small part of the universe, less than ten percent, that it tells a story, not of God's Special Chosen People, but of something more akin to the afterbirth of God's "real" creation, the ninety percent of the universe that is not our kind of matter.
Of course, religious fanatics need not concern themselves with any of this, they are not fact or evidence based, but faith based. All this evidence amounts to nothing to a person of faith. Similar to the delusions of a paranoid schizophrenic, this "faith" has its own internal logic which forces all facts to bend to fit it.
A black hole does not have a larger volume inside than out. It is extremely dense. Infinitely dense, in fact. We can easily see its effects through gravitational lensing. We know much about its characteristics.
Because the cosmological constant is positive, our universe is nothing like the inside of a black hole. Our universe is open and expanding. A black hole is closed. We can see black holes by the gravitational lensing they produce, even when nothing is falling in.
Dark matter also produces such lensing, but it is observably different because dark matter is not dense and point-like, as are black holes. Black holes are not inconsistent with quantum mechanics and relativity.
Your understanding of physics and black holes is deeply flawed. In fact, what you've written here bears almost no resemblance to any sort of modern physics. You've strung together a bunch of sciency sounding words, but taken as a whole, the words are nonsensical. You are so far off, you aren't even wrong.
The argument still works as a counter to Intelligent Design, because of the common shared belief of all Judeo-Christian religions: that God made us in his image, and that we are somehow special, occupying a special place in His mind and in His universe. If dark matter is alive, then we are a mere footnote, and God obviously did not create us in his own image, and we are not at all special. Maybe God created dark matter creatures in his image, maybe we are just an accidental byproduct of His fine tuning the universe for his favorites.
His argument is based on the assumption that our observable universe is important to God. His argument is meant as a counter to intelligent design. The important thing is about his argument is that it states that our universe is not fine tuned for our kind of life. Telling IDers that their God did not fine tune the universe for them, but for some unknown alien creatures is almost worse than claiming there is no God at all.
American companies aren't "American" anymore. There is no real link between a large corporation and any nation or people. The rich of any country can and will continue to profit even as their country goes bankrupt. America may be competing with China, but American corporations are not. American corporations are not citizens, they are not our allies, and we have no longer have any interests in common. What is good for American corporations is not what is good for the American people, it is only what is good for the ultra wealthy. American corporations are not competing with China any more or less than they are competing with America.
"The Big Guy" is not as in charge as he would like to be. Government still acts too fairly for his taste, policing things he would rather were not policed. Government is the only thing keeping him from dominating you utterly. He has tried to control government, but still fails, at least here in America where we still have rules. He would profit from your labors far more easily if he didn't have government trying to keep things fair. That is why "The Big Guy" hates government.
You and I hate government because "The Big Guy" HAS captured some of it. But the answer is not LESS regulations, as he would have you believe. That would only allow him to dominate us, and no group or individual would be powerful enough to stop him.
I want less domination by the powerful. Insofar as it is government dominating us, I want less of that. But government also protects us from domination, and I want more of that part. The free market is a good tool, but like any tool it requires attention and maintenance to keep it in working order. The powerful can dominate markets as easily as they dominate governments. Only regulations keep free markets free.
The powerful want a reduction in government because maintaining control over a fundamentally democratic structure is expensive and difficult, and prone to sudden catastrophic errors on their part or shifts in national mood which can set them back immensely. In addition, they will need to fight for control over any NEW programs the government enacts. That is why they hate change.
"They" do not want a reduction in military spending, you are right on that one. Ever notice what a hawk Obama is? Is Hillary any kind of a peacenik? That's one reason the corporate media marginalizes politicians like Kucinich, he's not a hawk.
Don't get me started on "sound money." It will likely degenerate into me hurling epithets at you in frustration over you being so god damn stupid. You mean specie backed currency, don't you? It's a prime example of the "simplistic solutions to complex problems." The problem with specie backed currency is that fluctuations in production and industrial demand will influence monetary supply. Economies are almost constantly growing. So is industrial demand for precious metals. You do the math. Don't think constant, random deflation would be a problem? Then you haven't thought it through.
The system we have is quite capable of producing sound money. We need an elastic monetary supply. Of course, we need it controlled democratically, rather than in the hands of fat cat bankers, and it should not be there to produce a profit, but to keep the economy stable.
Contrary to some opinion, "They" love decentralized power because they can pit localities against each other. They are already powerful. Naturally they want to weaken the only democratic structures large enough to really challenge them. They will move capital to the poorest, most desperate localities, allowing the rich areas to fall apart and become desperate. When the poor areas start to become wealthy, they will move to the next desperate location. We will all be serfs in a new global feudalism, with capital constantly fleeing wealthy areas in search of the next batch of desperate slaves.
They want free speech because they have free speech and they like it. Don't forget, they control media empires, you have one mouth, and perhaps a blog... that no one reads. Your free speech isn't the same as their free speech. And if they ever dislike like what you are saying, they can simply destroy your reputation and deny you all their access to the national consciousness.
I believe in the power of collective action to protect my interests and defend my rights, and I call it "government." I tend to think of myself as a social anarchist. Libertarians are individualist anarchists.
Anarchy does not mean chaos. The word has been co-opted. There is a reason libertarians won't identify as anarchists, even though they are. People like the Koch brothers want to cut off libertarianism from its a
Free market libertarians are funded and lead by the ultra-rich. People like the Koch brothers give you your marching orders. You've been fooled into believing their interests are yours.
Slashdot Mirror
They don't really think he is a socialist. They know he is a moderate Republican. But people like the Koch brothers fund libertarian groups for two reasons: to repeal all government regulations, and to get rid of all taxation of the wealthy. By those standards, Obama has only given them several thousand inches, and now they want a light-year. I mean, if a guy is bending over backwards to do everything you ask, you could thank him, but then people might realize he was doing everything you asked. Better to call him a commie Muslim fascist Kenyan terrorist, in the hopes that people will not realize what he really is, and what he is really doing.
Because the text of the speech is always distributed to the media before hand.
I just tried looking for evidence that this is true, and could not find any through a Google search or through a search of Wikipedia. Can you cite any sources for this?
This is what our political reporting has been reduced too. If you do not toe the line, you do not get access. Ask too many uncomfortable questions, and you will only be asking questions of local school board candidates. You can argue, within the bounds set by the Washington elite, but you must stick to the narrative. Argue whichever "side" you like, as the sides have been pre-chosen and approved by the powers that be. Just don't question the narrative itself, or again, you won't be reporting in Washington.
And I actually thought liberals might have meant all they were saying about "civility".
Nah, not really. I'm not stupid.
Say what now? How do you know that ravenspear is a liberal? Conservatives and independents hate teahadists too.
Most photo studios such as Olin Mills will claim copyright on any photos they take of you. Yes, it is in the contract, but most people don't realize that. I tried having an Olin Mills picture of my mom copied for her memorial. Nobody would do it unless I got express written permission from Olin Mills. I ended up cropping out the stupid "Olin Mills" signature and had no trouble copying it after that. But the amazing thing is that, apparently, Olin Mills and other photography studios have invested large sums of money telling every single copy-jockey in the country not to copy studio photographs. Even the copy counter at the local drugstore wouldn't do it, "Nope,see here where it says 'Olin Mills' at the bottom? Yeah, they own that picture of your dead mom for the next seventy years."
Not really. I don't think the RIAA is concerned about piracy on .music gTLDs. They appear to be more concerned that they will not have as much control over domain names as they would like. They object to three specific things: "Ultra high standards for community objection," which means it will be more difficult for them to stop things they consider to be cybersquatting; "Lack of transparency" means they will not be able to easily figure out who owns what domain name, and who to sue; and "Malicious Conduct" which means that they suspect people might do things on the .music gTLD that they do on other parts of the Internet, like pirate music. They seem to want to force ICANN to be their unpaid police force, or to do their thinking for them and come up with a technical solution that protects their interests.
Basically, I believe RIAA wants to control anything remotely related to music. The idea of a huge new marketplace of independent music scares the crap out of them. I think they want ICANN to basically say, "The RIAA owns .music. If you want to put music of any sort on the Internet, talk to the RIAA." And I want to date supermodels, plural. Come on, RIAA, you are thinking too small. Take getting paid for doing nothing to the next step and force everyone with ears to pay a music tax directly to you. After all, if they have ears, they might hear some music without paying you for it, and we can't have that.
I just remember Jagger as the one with the bigger lips...
I did as well. Do no evil, Larry Ellison edition...
You misspelled know.
I briefly confused Larry Page with Larry Ellison. Whew. That would be terrible.
How could you confuse a rock and roll guitar legend with a diminutive, bombastic sci-fi writer?
No, let anyone have specific input, just as any old schmoe can contribute patches to an open source project. Make it as easy as possible for everyone, even the stupid people, to see how things are done and contribute ideas about how they could be done better. Just as with open source, the maintainer (i.e. the government official in charge) decides what gets committed and what gets thrown out. Sure, you would have to look over and toss out dozens of bad ideas for every good one, but I think it would be worth it.
Of course, after issue has been decided, do not let the schmoes come and bother the people doing the decided upon work. Don't patch government daily or weekly, allow time to see how new things are working.
Haha, I'm not one of those folks who prattle on about "It's not a democracy, it's a republic!" Yeah, uh, the states are democracies that democratically elect representatives to join the governing bodies of the republic.
Unfortunately, we do not allow just anyone to contribute. Try writing a bill and getting it before congress. But that really wasn't what I was talking about, most of government is not decided on by votes of any sort, it is set as policy. I think this story is more about governmental operational procedures, which are decided by department heads, who all tend to protect "their" little fiefdoms and would never dream of doing something someone else in another department did.
They plan to look at the way each region of the state does things, and implement the best plans. Kalamazoo happens to be one place that the governor feels is doing things right, and should serve as a template for other areas. But you are correct in that this is not really about "open source" government at all, which would allow anyone to contribute. This is about taking the best policies and procedures already out there, and using them in places that are not yet doing so.
Excellent! Tacos al carbon for everybody!
Came here just to make this very joke. Good job, great minds and all that.
Apparently you and I have completely different mechanisms for drawing conclusions.
Let me guess, one of you starts from basic propositions and works logically towards conclusions, the other one draws conclusions from his gut reaction and reasons backwards to find propositions that support the foregone conclusion. Yeah. That's it.
Must be for premium members only, darn.
Actually, so as not to offend either of Slashdot's female readers, the site has implemented a gender check policy. You just have to verify that you are male by sending an email from the account linked to your Slashdot account with the phrase "I like porn!" in the subject and "Show me the naked chicks!" in the body to daddypants@slashdot.org. Then you will see the "Format Stories as ASCII naked chicks" checkbox on your preferences page.
I can see a naked chick whenever I want
So what the hell are you doing here?
Looking at all the naked chicks. What? You can't see them? Go to your preferences and click the "Format stories as ASCII naked chicks" checkbox.
I wasn't talking about the even horizon, I was talking about the singularity, which theoretically has infinite density. I know the person I responded to was quoting sci-fi as if it were real science, that is why I had to correct him.
Minimum wage laws have a history of working. Find me something from a mainstream economist showing they don't.
The Dems never claimed the cost savings came from mandatory coverage. Not that I believe the program will save money, but it won't cost as much as the Repubs claim. Knowing the Repubs would claim it would cost several moons and body parts, the Dems had to claim it would save money.
Social Security and medicare are the most successful social programs in American history. I challenge you to prove they have failed.
Charles Koch is not a democrat! He is one of the main men funding libertarian think tanks. He is a RADICAL right winger. I don't personally know about the others, but I do not trust any of your examples now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Koch#Political_activities
Digg an twitter are Democratic? Hahahaha, oh, that is rich. In any case, your refrain of "I know you are but what am I?" is hardly a rational adult argument.
We would be a footnote because "normal" matter is a footnote.
Judeo-Christian religions claim that we are special. They have had to accept a continued diminishing of our specialness, we are not the center of the universe. The sun does not revolve around the Earth. There are most certainly billions of other planets just like ours out there. We are demonstrably NOT God's special little favorites. With this, religious proponents would have to accept another reduction in our specialness: not only is our kind of matter not the only kind, it isn't even the most common kind.
Given that our hearts are prone to produce convenient lies, to mirror back to us the world we want to see rather than the world that is, I would place my faith in the microscope.
Just because someone disagrees with your world view or mythology does not make their world view childish. If many people continually see your religion in a different light than you do, they are not necessarily being childish. Perhaps their view is the real one, and you are the one deluding yourself. Perhaps your religion really does look that simplistic to outsiders.
The Church may claim to be uninterested in temporal matters, but then, the Church used to kill people for suggesting we were not the center of the universe. Tortured them right to death. While the Church may have progressed beyond killing people for suggesting the Bible is inaccurate, Christians still don't like it.
This research seems to show that the Bible only applies to a very small part of the universe, less than ten percent, that it tells a story, not of God's Special Chosen People, but of something more akin to the afterbirth of God's "real" creation, the ninety percent of the universe that is not our kind of matter.
Of course, religious fanatics need not concern themselves with any of this, they are not fact or evidence based, but faith based. All this evidence amounts to nothing to a person of faith. Similar to the delusions of a paranoid schizophrenic, this "faith" has its own internal logic which forces all facts to bend to fit it.
A black hole does not have a larger volume inside than out. It is extremely dense. Infinitely dense, in fact. We can easily see its effects through gravitational lensing. We know much about its characteristics.
Because the cosmological constant is positive, our universe is nothing like the inside of a black hole. Our universe is open and expanding. A black hole is closed. We can see black holes by the gravitational lensing they produce, even when nothing is falling in.
Dark matter also produces such lensing, but it is observably different because dark matter is not dense and point-like, as are black holes. Black holes are not inconsistent with quantum mechanics and relativity.
Your understanding of physics and black holes is deeply flawed. In fact, what you've written here bears almost no resemblance to any sort of modern physics. You've strung together a bunch of sciency sounding words, but taken as a whole, the words are nonsensical. You are so far off, you aren't even wrong.
The argument still works as a counter to Intelligent Design, because of the common shared belief of all Judeo-Christian religions: that God made us in his image, and that we are somehow special, occupying a special place in His mind and in His universe. If dark matter is alive, then we are a mere footnote, and God obviously did not create us in his own image, and we are not at all special. Maybe God created dark matter creatures in his image, maybe we are just an accidental byproduct of His fine tuning the universe for his favorites.
His argument is based on the assumption that our observable universe is important to God. His argument is meant as a counter to intelligent design. The important thing is about his argument is that it states that our universe is not fine tuned for our kind of life. Telling IDers that their God did not fine tune the universe for them, but for some unknown alien creatures is almost worse than claiming there is no God at all.
American companies aren't "American" anymore. There is no real link between a large corporation and any nation or people. The rich of any country can and will continue to profit even as their country goes bankrupt. America may be competing with China, but American corporations are not. American corporations are not citizens, they are not our allies, and we have no longer have any interests in common. What is good for American corporations is not what is good for the American people, it is only what is good for the ultra wealthy. American corporations are not competing with China any more or less than they are competing with America.
"The Big Guy" is not as in charge as he would like to be. Government still acts too fairly for his taste, policing things he would rather were not policed. Government is the only thing keeping him from dominating you utterly. He has tried to control government, but still fails, at least here in America where we still have rules. He would profit from your labors far more easily if he didn't have government trying to keep things fair. That is why "The Big Guy" hates government.
You and I hate government because "The Big Guy" HAS captured some of it. But the answer is not LESS regulations, as he would have you believe. That would only allow him to dominate us, and no group or individual would be powerful enough to stop him.
I want less domination by the powerful. Insofar as it is government dominating us, I want less of that. But government also protects us from domination, and I want more of that part. The free market is a good tool, but like any tool it requires attention and maintenance to keep it in working order. The powerful can dominate markets as easily as they dominate governments. Only regulations keep free markets free.
The powerful want a reduction in government because maintaining control over a fundamentally democratic structure is expensive and difficult, and prone to sudden catastrophic errors on their part or shifts in national mood which can set them back immensely. In addition, they will need to fight for control over any NEW programs the government enacts. That is why they hate change.
"They" do not want a reduction in military spending, you are right on that one. Ever notice what a hawk Obama is? Is Hillary any kind of a peacenik? That's one reason the corporate media marginalizes politicians like Kucinich, he's not a hawk.
Don't get me started on "sound money." It will likely degenerate into me hurling epithets at you in frustration over you being so god damn stupid. You mean specie backed currency, don't you? It's a prime example of the "simplistic solutions to complex problems." The problem with specie backed currency is that fluctuations in production and industrial demand will influence monetary supply. Economies are almost constantly growing. So is industrial demand for precious metals. You do the math. Don't think constant, random deflation would be a problem? Then you haven't thought it through.
The system we have is quite capable of producing sound money. We need an elastic monetary supply. Of course, we need it controlled democratically, rather than in the hands of fat cat bankers, and it should not be there to produce a profit, but to keep the economy stable.
Contrary to some opinion, "They" love decentralized power because they can pit localities against each other. They are already powerful. Naturally they want to weaken the only democratic structures large enough to really challenge them. They will move capital to the poorest, most desperate localities, allowing the rich areas to fall apart and become desperate. When the poor areas start to become wealthy, they will move to the next desperate location. We will all be serfs in a new global feudalism, with capital constantly fleeing wealthy areas in search of the next batch of desperate slaves.
They want free speech because they have free speech and they like it. Don't forget, they control media empires, you have one mouth, and perhaps a blog... that no one reads. Your free speech isn't the same as their free speech. And if they ever dislike like what you are saying, they can simply destroy your reputation and deny you all their access to the national consciousness.
I believe in the power of collective action to protect my interests and defend my rights, and I call it "government." I tend to think of myself as a social anarchist. Libertarians are individualist anarchists.
Anarchy does not mean chaos. The word has been co-opted. There is a reason libertarians won't identify as anarchists, even though they are. People like the Koch brothers want to cut off libertarianism from its a
Free market libertarians are funded and lead by the ultra-rich. People like the Koch brothers give you your marching orders. You've been fooled into believing their interests are yours.