I'm writing this in Arlington, Virginia, and I believe that most of the U.S. military's overseas missions, such as the war on Iraq, are neither defensive nor necessary.
All you need to do is look at Western Europe to support his point, or the US government before 1980. It's not the size of government that lends itself to being corrupted, it's the ever-burgeoning size of international corporations that is the real problem.
Just as bank robbers rob banks because that's where the money is, those who want power over others will corrupt government because where the political power is. I would agree that size of government is not the only factor, since campaign finance regulations, culture, and so forth will make it marginally harder for those who want to corrupt government to succeed. But that doesn't stop a bigger prize from being a more desirable one.
I mean, you suggest I look at Western Europe. When I do I see Italy, which is hardly a corruption-free country, and I see France, which I don't remember anyone referring to lately as a great place to start a new business.
in other words, if you are a true believer in capitalism, you will lose your libertarian naivete and insist on a strong regulatory government to keep the marketplace healthy
I agree with you that those who advocate free markets should focus much more on the problems of corporatism, and I agree that corporations are currently a greater threat to economic and even personal liberty than socialist proposals are, at least in the U.S. I don't understand those who claim to support a free market but don't recognize that corporations themselves are creations of the state -- that the entitlement of limited liability they enjoy shields their owners from responsibility for their actions at everyone else's expense.
But that said, you seem to believe that it's possible for significant political power to exist, but for it not to end up being used at the hands of those with wealth and power to maintain their positions. How is that any less naive than what libertarians believe?
I'm a total stranger to you, yet you just wrote four frothing paragraphs of psychodrama about what sort of person I am. You should seriously consider therapy, especially if you really are a parent.
Excuse me, there was an actual TRIAL against a vegan couple who essentially nutritionally starved their child on soy milk and apple sauce. You want to repeat that nonsense?
If you know enough to mention that case, surely you also know enough about it to understand that it has nothing to do with an even halfway normal vegan diet, even one for infants. The way those stupid people starved their kid to death wasn't a vegan issue -- and even the prosecutor said so.
I mean, if they'd starved their kid to death on skim milk from cows, and I said, "See? Dairy kills kids!" you'd call bullshit and I'd deserve it.
Vegan diets are extremely unhealthy for pregnant women and young children, even leading to miscarriage, disfigurement or death.
Getting sufficient iron from plant-only sources, while possible, is impractical because the concentrations are so low.
Most [vegans] also either choose not to have children or have passed child rearing age when they change their diet as well.
The continued survival of the world's vegan population is as a result of the world gravitiating [sic] toward laws that artificially eliminate darwinism.;)
Humans living on vegan diets usually take amino acid supplements because they cannot physically eat enough soy in a day to meet their dietary requirements for amino acids without feeling like they've eaten too much, if they can consume that much soy at all.
I've been vegan for years and never do this, and none of the vegans I know do either. There's a whole lot of misinformation floating around in this thread, as there always is whenever veganism gets discussed around here. The bottom line is that even if you're pregnant or lactating the only thing that's hard enough to get from a vegan diet that you eventually really need supplements is B12, although there are some things where supplements make things a lot easier, like iron and calcium.
But since you seem to have all the answers, riddle me this
So you think I'm wrong about this throwaway comment I made about why people might have reason to go into space. Fair enough, and maybe you're right; I'm a layman in the hard sciences, definitely not a rocket scientist or a geologist. But why the hostility? Why can't the goal of the conversation be progress rather than victory?
So, to recap, I'm wrong about everything regarding child rearing because I'm a fascist who denies his kids happy meals and ice cream on demand. Yeah, thanks for your input, I'll be sure to give it all due consideration.
Okay, fine, no, I can't do those things, but that wasn't my point. My point was that the quantities of those things up there might make it commercially viable to invest the resources necessary to get personnel to near-Earth asteroids, or to orbit for processing.
Well, I'm a parent of four school-age children, and while I'm well aware that many aspects of raising kids aren't simple, some of them are very straightforward. For example, you really do have complete control over whether or not you buy your kids fast food, and you really don't have to buy your kids ice cream just because the ice cream truck is going through your neighborhood playing its calliope siren song.
I also heard in an interview with him on NPR that, even then, he still seeks permission from every artist he parodies just to avoid any potential legal conflicts (citation needed). No citation here either, but I think I remember reading that he asks permission not for legal reasons, but simply because he believes it's polite.
Going after the big-time bootleggers churning out counterfeits and selling fake Photoshop and DVDs online = fine and good. Going after j. random filesharing = gaaak.
Ah, okay. I didn't think that our ability to spot Earth-like planets reliably at interstellar distances was considered to be all that great, at least not yet.
I'll admit that a planetary body with a liquid water ocean and sufficient atmosphere for prolonged habitation is a rather rare thing, so there may be some desire to seek for habitable planets.
Out of curiosity, how do you know this? (Don't get me wrong, I agree with your overall argument, this bit was just a little jarring.)
Anyway, I hope you're wrong about there not being many class M planets out there, since as you point out it would be the only reasonable justification for starfaring aliens to bother taking the Earth from us. Especially since I figure if aliens did find us and wanted us out of the way, they'd just tailor viruses that would wipe us out quickly, release them, and wait a few weeks for us all to be gone, and we wouldn't be able to do anything about it.
Of course, there are also potential unreasonable justification, like religion. But there's nothing we can do about that either.
An axe-wielding Somali extremist broke into the home of Kurt Westergaard on Friday night as the 75-year-old cartoonist was looking after Stephanie, his five-year-old granddaughter.... He did not have time to collect the child from the living room before locking himself into a "panic room", a specially fortified bathroom.... "I feared for my grandchild," he told Jyllands-Posten, the newspaper that had commissioned the cartoon. "But she did great. I knew that he wouldn't do anything to her."
He "knew" that? Why, because Islamist terrorists always take such good care to avoid collateral damage? Of course he didn't fucking know that, the reasonable assumption would have been the opposite. He left his five year old granddaughter in the tender care of a crazed axe-wielding assassin. Kurt Westergaard, fuck you, and the horse you rode in on.
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I'm writing this in Arlington, Virginia, and I believe that most of the U.S. military's overseas missions, such as the war on Iraq, are neither defensive nor necessary.
All you need to do is look at Western Europe to support his point, or the US government before 1980. It's not the size of government that lends itself to being corrupted, it's the ever-burgeoning size of international corporations that is the real problem.
Just as bank robbers rob banks because that's where the money is, those who want power over others will corrupt government because where the political power is. I would agree that size of government is not the only factor, since campaign finance regulations, culture, and so forth will make it marginally harder for those who want to corrupt government to succeed. But that doesn't stop a bigger prize from being a more desirable one.
I mean, you suggest I look at Western Europe. When I do I see Italy, which is hardly a corruption-free country, and I see France, which I don't remember anyone referring to lately as a great place to start a new business.
in other words, if you are a true believer in capitalism, you will lose your libertarian naivete and insist on a strong regulatory government to keep the marketplace healthy
I agree with you that those who advocate free markets should focus much more on the problems of corporatism, and I agree that corporations are currently a greater threat to economic and even personal liberty than socialist proposals are, at least in the U.S. I don't understand those who claim to support a free market but don't recognize that corporations themselves are creations of the state -- that the entitlement of limited liability they enjoy shields their owners from responsibility for their actions at everyone else's expense.
But that said, you seem to believe that it's possible for significant political power to exist, but for it not to end up being used at the hands of those with wealth and power to maintain their positions. How is that any less naive than what libertarians believe?
I'm a total stranger to you, yet you just wrote four frothing paragraphs of psychodrama about what sort of person I am. You should seriously consider therapy, especially if you really are a parent.
I didn't say one shouldn't ever take what kids want into account, I said that as a parent one has the final say.
Excuse me, there was an actual TRIAL against a vegan couple who essentially nutritionally starved their child on soy milk and apple sauce. You want to repeat that nonsense?
If you know enough to mention that case, surely you also know enough about it to understand that it has nothing to do with an even halfway normal vegan diet, even one for infants. The way those stupid people starved their kid to death wasn't a vegan issue -- and even the prosecutor said so.
I mean, if they'd starved their kid to death on skim milk from cows, and I said, "See? Dairy kills kids!" you'd call bullshit and I'd deserve it.
Such as what exactly?
Humans living on vegan diets usually take amino acid supplements because they cannot physically eat enough soy in a day to meet their dietary requirements for amino acids without feeling like they've eaten too much, if they can consume that much soy at all.
I've been vegan for years and never do this, and none of the vegans I know do either. There's a whole lot of misinformation floating around in this thread, as there always is whenever veganism gets discussed around here. The bottom line is that even if you're pregnant or lactating the only thing that's hard enough to get from a vegan diet that you eventually really need supplements is B12, although there are some things where supplements make things a lot easier, like iron and calcium.
But since you seem to have all the answers, riddle me this
So you think I'm wrong about this throwaway comment I made about why people might have reason to go into space. Fair enough, and maybe you're right; I'm a layman in the hard sciences, definitely not a rocket scientist or a geologist. But why the hostility? Why can't the goal of the conversation be progress rather than victory?
So, to recap, I'm wrong about everything regarding child rearing because I'm a fascist who denies his kids happy meals and ice cream on demand. Yeah, thanks for your input, I'll be sure to give it all due consideration.
Okay, fine, no, I can't do those things, but that wasn't my point. My point was that the quantities of those things up there might make it commercially viable to invest the resources necessary to get personnel to near-Earth asteroids, or to orbit for processing.
You're absolutely right. But I was actually trying to be funny, and "risk management" wasn't as catchy a punchline. :-)
There is nothing in space. Where would you go? In other words, once the novelty-seekers got their thrills, what's the motivation?
Precious metals and other mineral resources, for one.
Good point, you'll get no argument from me on that.
Oh look, a teenager. Don't worry, you'll understand this stuff when you're older.
I wouldn't likely get the job, they'd hire someone who wasn't so paranoid
That's crazy -- who wants a system administrator who isn't paranoid?
Well, I'm a parent of four school-age children, and while I'm well aware that many aspects of raising kids aren't simple, some of them are very straightforward. For example, you really do have complete control over whether or not you buy your kids fast food, and you really don't have to buy your kids ice cream just because the ice cream truck is going through your neighborhood playing its calliope siren song.
Ah. Well, good thing I attached all those qualifiers then. :-)
I also heard in an interview with him on NPR that, even then, he still seeks permission from every artist he parodies just to avoid any potential legal conflicts (citation needed).
No citation here either, but I think I remember reading that he asks permission not for legal reasons, but simply because he believes it's polite.
Going after the big-time bootleggers churning out counterfeits and selling fake Photoshop and DVDs online = fine and good.
Going after j. random filesharing = gaaak.
Well, at least you're half right.
Ah, okay. I didn't think that our ability to spot Earth-like planets reliably at interstellar distances was considered to be all that great, at least not yet.
I'll admit that a planetary body with a liquid water ocean and sufficient atmosphere for prolonged habitation is a rather rare thing, so there may be some desire to seek for habitable planets.
Out of curiosity, how do you know this? (Don't get me wrong, I agree with your overall argument, this bit was just a little jarring.)
Anyway, I hope you're wrong about there not being many class M planets out there, since as you point out it would be the only reasonable justification for starfaring aliens to bother taking the Earth from us. Especially since I figure if aliens did find us and wanted us out of the way, they'd just tailor viruses that would wipe us out quickly, release them, and wait a few weeks for us all to be gone, and we wouldn't be able to do anything about it.
Of course, there are also potential unreasonable justification, like religion. But there's nothing we can do about that either.
An axe-wielding Somali extremist broke into the home of Kurt Westergaard on Friday night as the 75-year-old cartoonist was looking after Stephanie, his five-year-old granddaughter.... He did not have time to collect the child from the living room before locking himself into a "panic room", a specially fortified bathroom.... "I feared for my grandchild," he told Jyllands-Posten, the newspaper that had commissioned the cartoon. "But she did great. I knew that he wouldn't do anything to her."
He "knew" that? Why, because Islamist terrorists always take such good care to avoid collateral damage? Of course he didn't fucking know that, the reasonable assumption would have been the opposite. He left his five year old granddaughter in the tender care of a crazed axe-wielding assassin. Kurt Westergaard, fuck you, and the horse you rode in on.
When Hamas decided that war with Israel would broaden their support, I decided to throw my support elsewhere.
When Obama decided that the only way out of this depression was massive spending programs, I affiliated myself with a different party.
Wait, you used to suppose Obama?
Got it. Thanks, that's both interesting and informative.