"The founding fathers never foresaw global megacorporations with concentrations of wealth and power that exceeds that of some actual countries."
The problem is not "both parties are the same team", nor "puppeteers giving false choices". Those are distractions.
The problem is that the U.S. system failed to account for parties. The fact that half of Congress is on a "team", in support or opposed to the President, causes them to vote pro-team instead of for the country or their constituents, which short-circuits the checks and balances that the division of government was meant to establish. This is compounded by first-past-the-post voting which by Duverger's Law guarantees a two-party system. Then voting game theory all but assures that those two parties will converge on certain key topics (like law enforcement and war, i.e., the important stuff).
Did the founding fathers foresee this problem? Definitely yes -- it's the whole point of Washington's Farewell Address, and it's eerily prescient. Countries with constitutions that admit to, and take into account, the presence of parties in politics don't have quite the same level of dysfunction that the U.S. does.
This is what I came here to say, too. The "no-equations" dictum is pretty much an ironclad rule from editors and publishers. The author in question basically has no say in the matter. Which is pretty messed up, in that everyone is required to take basic algebra to communicate in that language, and then it's banned by fiat from our popular media.
"What's most surprising about this story to me is that any patients would sign such a contract."
Read the Ars Technica piece by the writer who tried to say "no" to such a contract. In short: he gets booted out the door. Now imagine you're in pain and maybe scared about a possible medical emergency (as the patient in the lawsuit here was). Situations like that is why oversight of a time-critical service like this is needed.
"people didn't live as a long, so there was a lot of pressure to start breeding as soon and as many as possible"
Common misconception. Lots of young people died (in childbirth or as infants), bringing down the average life expectancy. But once a person reached adulthood, the maximum lifespan was about the same as it is today. Bible Psalm 90:10: "Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away" (as written ~500 BC).
"That said, I'm hoping we're slowly getting to a tipping point on the entire privacy vs security discussion. 9/11 has happened long ago enough that the knee-jerk reactions are dying down, and people are starting to question what we're doing in order to make sure 3000 people don't die over the course of a few years."
I quote Chris Christie, small-government Republican, speaking last night at a meeting of GOP governors -- "I mean, these esoteric, intellectual debates [about surveillance and privacy] — I want them to come to New Jersey and sit across from the widows and the orphans [of 9/11] and have that conversation. And they won’t, because that’s a much tougher conversation to have." He also asserted that moves to end NSA surveillance, and the person of Rand Paul, are "very dangerous".
"This proves, once and for all, that the Democrats are just as bad, if not worse, than the Republicans on matters related to privacy and civil liberties."
Let's check the numbers: Dems voting yes on the Amash amendment: 111/200 = 55.5% GOP voting yes on the Amash amendment: 94/234 = 40.2%
Note that this is in the context of a Democratic White House furiously against the amendment and telling its members to vote no. Nonetheless, a majority of House Democrats voted "yes" and a majority of GOP voted "no". If only Democrats had been voting, then the amendment would have passed. Democrats are *pretty fucking bad* on privacy and civil liberties -- the White House leadership in particular has completely stabbed us in the back on these issues. However, the data argues for the opposite of the "bad, if not worse, than the Republicans" theory.
It was an amendment on a must-pass military funding bill. Yes, the White House ferociously opposed this. But no one threatened a veto, it would be like vetoing the entire defense department, which certainly this president wouldn't think of doing.
Yeah, they've been letting the wars go on, letting the debt increase without bounds, refusing to approve judges and letting courts get backlogged, permitting executive-branch agencies to spy on everyone, letting TSA scan and grope travelers as they wish, allowing increased asset seizures, permitting the defense department to militarize more cops with battlefield weapons... it's great I tell ya!
I'm not saying that "more laws = better", but numerous international analysts, and at least one former U.S. President, all agree that our system has become dysfunctionally broken.
The thing about the Thorium-power dream is that the time frame puts it sometime after flying cars, strong AI, and colonies on the moon. For example: India has had a concerted 3-stage nuclear power program to make use of its abundant thorium. That project started in the 1950's. (Likewise, experiments with thorium have occurred throughout the world since the 1960's). India just recently entered "stage 2" where fast breeder reactors can start producing uranium-233 which is the seed for later thorium reactors. Commencement of "stage 3" and actual use of the thorium is projected to be sometime after the year 2050 if all goes well.
"According to replies given in Q&A in the Indian Parliament on two separate occasions, 19 August 2010 and 21 March 2012, large scale thorium deployment is only to be expected “3 – 4 decades after the commercial operation of fast breeder reactors with short doubling time”.[66][31] Full exploitation of India’s domestic thorium reserves will likely not occur until after the year 2050."
Even TFA's link to the Weinberg Foundation site asserts that traveling wave reactors might be possible by the 2020's, but thorium reactors are by comparison "futuristic" and couldn't be implemented until some unknown time after that. And this from a paid booster for the idea.
By which I mean to say that endeavors that start like this wind up being "captured" over time by industry managers anyway. To keep that from happening you'd need some kind of clever artist-ownership arrangement, maybe a bit like the Vanguard Group or TIAA-CREF.
"The idea that the legislature can rule that 2+2=5 and this will somehow be true until or unless a court rules otherwise is a pernicious falsehood."
Wow, your logic is consistently terrible. The question is not about "until or unless a court rules otherwise". The argument is about after a court definitively rules in favor of a law. In that case, the law is officially constitutional.
It's been said above, but boy... the linked article seems SUPER fishy. It's the one and only post on a newly-created blog, just for the purpose of hammering DDG on this issue, apparently. It has a lot of claims that are adamantly delivered but seem really suspicious. For example: The claim that FISA can order real-time intercepts of any data, even data that the company itself doesn't collect during its business operations. (CEO of DDG responds respectfully in comments and blogger slaps him down and calls him a liar.) There's a bunch of things that ping my "don't trust this" alarm.
But "if the courts uphold them" (what GP said) != "any statute passed by legislators" (what you quoted). You're talking about legislature, GP is talking about courts, and they are of course very different. If the court system, including the Supreme Court, passes judgement and says a law is enforceable, then indeed we can conclude that it is officially constitutional per our legal system. Your quote is not on topic to this point.
Sorry, I was too generous. I see elsewhere I shouldn't have trusted the 4-5% number; it's actually over 18%, so multiply by 4. The GDP-Percent-Per-Coffin expense has increased by over 28 times WWII values.
Slashdot Mirror
What's sad is that the media/press, even Slashdot, will keep phrasing things as if it's a sly mystery question and not state the known facts clearly.
"The founding fathers never foresaw global megacorporations with concentrations of wealth and power that exceeds that of some actual countries."
The problem is not "both parties are the same team", nor "puppeteers giving false choices". Those are distractions.
The problem is that the U.S. system failed to account for parties. The fact that half of Congress is on a "team", in support or opposed to the President, causes them to vote pro-team instead of for the country or their constituents, which short-circuits the checks and balances that the division of government was meant to establish. This is compounded by first-past-the-post voting which by Duverger's Law guarantees a two-party system. Then voting game theory all but assures that those two parties will converge on certain key topics (like law enforcement and war, i.e., the important stuff).
Did the founding fathers foresee this problem? Definitely yes -- it's the whole point of Washington's Farewell Address, and it's eerily prescient. Countries with constitutions that admit to, and take into account, the presence of parties in politics don't have quite the same level of dysfunction that the U.S. does.
This is what I came here to say, too. The "no-equations" dictum is pretty much an ironclad rule from editors and publishers. The author in question basically has no say in the matter. Which is pretty messed up, in that everyone is required to take basic algebra to communicate in that language, and then it's banned by fiat from our popular media.
"What's most surprising about this story to me is that any patients would sign such a contract."
Read the Ars Technica piece by the writer who tried to say "no" to such a contract. In short: he gets booted out the door. Now imagine you're in pain and maybe scared about a possible medical emergency (as the patient in the lawsuit here was). Situations like that is why oversight of a time-critical service like this is needed.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/05/all-your-reviews-are-belong-to-us-medical-justice-vs-patient-free-speech/
Weirdly, if on Wikipedia you search for "Hadrian's Firewall", you get this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadrian%27s_Firewall
"people didn't live as a long, so there was a lot of pressure to start breeding as soon and as many as possible"
Common misconception. Lots of young people died (in childbirth or as infants), bringing down the average life expectancy. But once a person reached adulthood, the maximum lifespan was about the same as it is today. Bible Psalm 90:10: "Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away" (as written ~500 BC).
http://biblehub.com/psalms/90-10.htm
http://www.blueletterbible.org/study/parallel/paral18.cfm
Great quote, thanks for that.
"That said, I'm hoping we're slowly getting to a tipping point on the entire privacy vs security discussion. 9/11 has happened long ago enough that the knee-jerk reactions are dying down, and people are starting to question what we're doing in order to make sure 3000 people don't die over the course of a few years."
I quote Chris Christie, small-government Republican, speaking last night at a meeting of GOP governors -- "I mean, these esoteric, intellectual debates [about surveillance and privacy] — I want them to come to New Jersey and sit across from the widows and the orphans [of 9/11] and have that conversation. And they won’t, because that’s a much tougher conversation to have." He also asserted that moves to end NSA surveillance, and the person of Rand Paul, are "very dangerous".
http://news.yahoo.com/chris-christie--rise-of-libertarian-views-like-rand-paul-s-is-%E2%80%98dangerous%E2%80%99-162539832.html
High Frequency Tables.
Getting a direct fiber-optic link to the restaurant's web server could improve on this.
You called it.
"This proves, once and for all, that the Democrats are just as bad, if not worse, than the Republicans on matters related to privacy and civil liberties."
Let's check the numbers:
Dems voting yes on the Amash amendment: 111/200 = 55.5%
GOP voting yes on the Amash amendment: 94/234 = 40.2%
Note that this is in the context of a Democratic White House furiously against the amendment and telling its members to vote no. Nonetheless, a majority of House Democrats voted "yes" and a majority of GOP voted "no". If only Democrats had been voting, then the amendment would have passed. Democrats are *pretty fucking bad* on privacy and civil liberties -- the White House leadership in particular has completely stabbed us in the back on these issues. However, the data argues for the opposite of the "bad, if not worse, than the Republicans" theory.
http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/113/house/1/412
It was an amendment on a must-pass military funding bill. Yes, the White House ferociously opposed this. But no one threatened a veto, it would be like vetoing the entire defense department, which certainly this president wouldn't think of doing.
Yeah, they've been letting the wars go on, letting the debt increase without bounds, refusing to approve judges and letting courts get backlogged, permitting executive-branch agencies to spy on everyone, letting TSA scan and grope travelers as they wish, allowing increased asset seizures, permitting the defense department to militarize more cops with battlefield weapons... it's great I tell ya!
I'm not saying that "more laws = better", but numerous international analysts, and at least one former U.S. President, all agree that our system has become dysfunctionally broken.
The thing about the Thorium-power dream is that the time frame puts it sometime after flying cars, strong AI, and colonies on the moon. For example: India has had a concerted 3-stage nuclear power program to make use of its abundant thorium. That project started in the 1950's. (Likewise, experiments with thorium have occurred throughout the world since the 1960's). India just recently entered "stage 2" where fast breeder reactors can start producing uranium-233 which is the seed for later thorium reactors. Commencement of "stage 3" and actual use of the thorium is projected to be sometime after the year 2050 if all goes well.
"According to replies given in Q&A in the Indian Parliament on two separate occasions, 19 August 2010 and 21 March 2012, large scale thorium deployment is only to be expected “3 – 4 decades after the commercial operation of fast breeder reactors with short doubling time”.[66][31] Full exploitation of India’s domestic thorium reserves will likely not occur until after the year 2050."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%27s_three-stage_nuclear_power_programme#Stage_III_.E2.80.93_thorium_based_reactors
Even TFA's link to the Weinberg Foundation site asserts that traveling wave reactors might be possible by the 2020's, but thorium reactors are by comparison "futuristic" and couldn't be implemented until some unknown time after that. And this from a paid booster for the idea.
I played it briefly, found it disappointing, and went back to the many far more impressive games on my 2600.
"To be classified as porn, two opinions have to be met: provokes a sexual response, and has no artistic merit."
No, that's the legal test for obscenity (not porn).
Sounds like a major programming challenge. IT'S STILL A MISERABLE GAME.
Like United Artists Corporation, now part of MGM.
By which I mean to say that endeavors that start like this wind up being "captured" over time by industry managers anyway. To keep that from happening you'd need some kind of clever artist-ownership arrangement, maybe a bit like the Vanguard Group or TIAA-CREF.
That's like some supervillain background story out of Garth Ennis' Preacher comic.
"... very religious so not a liar."
Yeah, because that obviates any concern that someone might be self-deluded into believing in magical things.
(Btw, I also have relatives said to be wonderful dowsers... and I don't believe it a bit from them either.)
"The idea that the legislature can rule that 2+2=5 and this will somehow be true until or unless a court rules otherwise is a pernicious falsehood."
Wow, your logic is consistently terrible. The question is not about "until or unless a court rules otherwise". The argument is about after a court definitively rules in favor of a law. In that case, the law is officially constitutional.
It's been said above, but boy... the linked article seems SUPER fishy. It's the one and only post on a newly-created blog, just for the purpose of hammering DDG on this issue, apparently. It has a lot of claims that are adamantly delivered but seem really suspicious. For example: The claim that FISA can order real-time intercepts of any data, even data that the company itself doesn't collect during its business operations. (CEO of DDG responds respectfully in comments and blogger slaps him down and calls him a liar.) There's a bunch of things that ping my "don't trust this" alarm.
But "if the courts uphold them" (what GP said) != "any statute passed by legislators" (what you quoted). You're talking about legislature, GP is talking about courts, and they are of course very different. If the court system, including the Supreme Court, passes judgement and says a law is enforceable, then indeed we can conclude that it is officially constitutional per our legal system. Your quote is not on topic to this point.
Or becoming enraged and telling them to flip it out the window. (His back's not as good as it used to be.)
Sorry, I was too generous. I see elsewhere I shouldn't have trusted the 4-5% number; it's actually over 18%, so multiply by 4. The GDP-Percent-Per-Coffin expense has increased by over 28 times WWII values.