Wesley Mouch. No one liked Wesley Mouch. But it was Rearden Metal, not the railroads, that hired him. Jim Taggart and his railroad were already chummy with Washington in the beginning of the book. Rearden hired Mouch to deal with Washington so he didn't have to, which was one of his first fatal errors b/c Mouch just used his lobbyist position to enrich himself and get himself a powerful government job rather than actually lobby for the interests of Rearden Metal.
Anyway, it isn't really analogous to the topic at hand except in the vaguest sense: It deals with the relationship between the government and a corporation. If Google's lobbyists had anything to do with it then they were doing the exact opposite as what Mouch did, which is, their job.
Personally, I think it's wrong to try and assume the motives of this congressman. He may just be aware that much of the Google anti-trust heat comes from pressure applied to his fellow congresscritters and the FTC by competing lobbyists (mainly Microsoft's). Maybe I've just drank a little too much Kool-Aid, but to me Google seems extremely responsible for the amount of power they've obtained and I don't believe they're engaging in any anti-competitive behavior. I also call shenanigans whenever MS accuses another company of anti-trust violations.
First, the content of this post isn't interesting as it's been upvoted.
Second, 'sand ninjas' is racist - it's a derivative of the pejorative 'sand niggers.'
Third, imagining how awesome it would be to have a world conflict more bloody than any in history just b/c the U.S. would win and people we disagree with would die in the millions is just immature. Yeah, genocide would be so fucking awesome, wouldn't it? That would show everyone how much better we are!
I can't believe three people stupid enough to upvote this post got mod points. Grow the fuck up.
Westboro Baptists can get away with it because they're white
I doubt it's a racist thing. Religion is the protective barrier they hide behind. They're the worst possible consequence of the First Amendment, as it's been interpreted by courts up until this point, and they know it and they toe the line.
Actually, I take that back. WBC is the second worst possible First Amendment consequence. Since a certain Supreme Court decision that interpreted spending money as free speech, political action committees have supplanted them.
I find this attitude to be unsettling. The fact that abortion and 'gay rights' happen to be polarizing issues is one of the problems with the American political system. Of course, if the U.S. had more than two parties with clout then this effect probably wouldn't be so damaging. I find it very troubling that an anti-abortion Catholic who believes in a more liberal form of distributive justice would vote Republican because somehow they prioritize the abortion issue above economic issues. Likewise, it angers me to see a homosexual who believes in a more libertarian form of distributive justice vote Democrat because he prioritizes gay marriage over economic issues.
Very rare is there an issue important enough to prioritize over the fundamental economic policies of a candidate. This appeal to morality is usually done by those who have a shaky, at best, understanding of ethics. Distributive justice is an moral issue. It trumps almost any other issue including free speech, which changes from generation to generation depending on how certain judges decide to interpret the U.S. Constitution, but is never wholly endangered. The freedom of speech in the U.S. was enacted by a bunch of cutthroat politicians who libeled one another in publications (often under pseudonyms), slandered one another on the floor of congress, and in general sought to defame one another through lies and rumors. Is it any wonder that the democratic countries that came about after the U.S. were hesitant to have such a broad protection of speech and that none of them do?
keep your religious beliefs between you and god and shut the fuck up
Then keep your atheism between you and yourself and shut the fuck up.
Thats just a strawman and you know it.
Kind of like how your post is nothing but an extended ad hominem directed at anyone who practices religion? Don't incorrectly accuse someone of being guilty of a fallacy while engaging in one yourself. Stop making the world a worse place. Take Logic 101 and learn what a strawman argument actually is.
If you leave the money in circulation then it creates jobs
No it doesn't. Companies don't hire because they're paying less in taxes, they hire because they need people to get things done. Not to mention that taxing doesn't actually pull money out of circulation the way you're thinking -- it slows inflation or causes deflation. Taxes change the value of money, which is why cutting taxes only has short term benefits for an economy; inflation will eventually catch up so despite having more dollars available their value will be diminished. Likewise, when raising taxes, the money the government collects doesn't just disappear. First, it's used to pay for expenditures and goes toward lowering the deficit (and hopefully, eventually the debt). Second, as I mentioned, the rate of inflation will decrease in proportion to the money being taxed, thus resulting in the same amount of wealth in the economy regardless of the fact that there might be less money. Assuming that cutting taxes will create more wealth is like assuming that printing more money will create more wealth; it doesn't, it just affects the currency's market liquidity.
Of course, if you're voting based on the abortion issue, you're the type of sucker the Republicans love. Do you actually believe that guys like Romney and Ryan are against abortion? Even if they were elected, they have no way to overturn Roe v. Wade and they know it. It's just an issue they can make a lot of noise about to rally voters who care about nonsensical issues that have nothing to do with how the country is run. Also, what good is it to save the unborn when most aborted babies, if they were to be born, are likely to end up in prison? Here's a primer.
Finally, a president's economic policies usually take longer than their one or two terms to actually have an effect. One of the many reasons a four year election cycle is stupid. When judging an incumbent's economic policies, one shouldn't consider whether they did good, one should consider whether they will do good. Not to mention the fact that, although the president has more influence over the economy than most, that influence is extremely limited, especially with a divided congress.
Others have pointed out that you're wrong, but here's a bit more specific information for you: Only a small percentage of the brain is used to think. Seeing, hearing, feeling, and running other natural body functions consumes much more brainpower than daydreaming or figuring out a problem; all those functions have to run in conjuncture with thinking.
The classic error with the claim that we only use a small percentage of our brain to think is that it neglects that the brain exists to do more than think. Most of the regions of the brain cannot be utilized to think even if those physiological functions weren't necessary -- it would be like expecting the RAM in your computer to perform GPU functions b/c the GPU isn't being utilized at the moment. Just because there are parts of your computer that are idle or underutilized doesn't mean their potential energy can be redirected to a task they're not suited for.
I enjoyed your rebuttal (how rare it is to see one that isn't inflammatory), yet I still disagree and have some points for you to consider:
- The average Victorian Englishman wasn't your average English Victorian gentleman. Victorian gentlemen were hardly representative of England's population, let alone the world's. Those are like Ivy-leaguers today. An interesting book that examines how out of touch the Victorian gentleman was is Where Angels Fear to Tread, by E.M. Forrester. Regardless, I think you missed my point. I didn't mean that in the days of the British Empire that men were brutes - I meant that global affairs were handled differently. Warfare was more common, accepted, and feasible.
- I advocate neither the pre-WWII isolationism nor the post-WWII meddle in everyone's affairs approach to foreign policy. I think the goal of any U.S. foreign policy relations should be to benefit the U.S. directly and objectively -- foreign policy that exists to assert the correctness/propagation of ideals such as capitalism, democracy, or symbolic support for Israel (our anti-nuclear Iran stance, for example) is not only a waste of resources, it's also morally wrong. This is one area where I agree with Ron Paul. We ought to respect the sovereignty of other nations - we shouldn't expect them to respect our sovereignty because we have a larger military but because it's a mutual respect that every government morally owes every other government.
- Discussing Russia and China as military threats is just silly. Especially in the case of China, where we are so economically dependent on one another that war would destroy us both without a single bomb being dropped. There's a reason why we only wage wars on underdeveloped countries. Also, any conflict between first world countries is more effectively waged by means of espionage, political and economic leverage, assassinations, and other areas where the military is more a peripheral player than the acting agent. We are not far off from war, at least in the traditional sense, being a thing of the past. Jarheads are useless in a conflict with China. An NSA computer hacker who speaks five languages is more useful than every marine put together in that type of conflict.
- Top ranked military officials have a strong self-interest in a strong military. They also have a hard time accepting that the world is transforming into a place that doesn't require soldiers or tanks or fighter planes or anything else that resembles traditional militaries. They're like Polish cavalries in WWI.
- The physical means to engage in warfare is useless without the financial means to set those machines in motion. "Hey, China, can we borrow some money to go to war with you?" We're like that guy with a hotrod that he can't drive around because he can't afford to put gas in the tank. My Accura will blow it off the line purely based on the fact that it runs, even though the hotrod wins the eyeball test.
I'd rather have revenue that comes from hardware than software. Software is sort of like a bubble because once free alternatives crop up that are of sufficient quality, the bubble pops. In the long term Microsoft has to change their business strategy because they won't be able to maintain that Office lock-in forever. And once they lose the Office lock-in (which LibreOffice and Google Docs are already working on doing), they put Windows in vulnerable situation to lose its lock-in to a Linux variant.
There was a time when the FOSS naysayers claimed that OOo would never match the quality/usability/compatibility of MS Office but every year since the LibreOffice fork that gap has narrowed more and more. LibreOffice, being free, doesn't have to close that gap completely, it just has to close it enough for the gap to be irrelevant.
Linux is the same way. It's sort of a mess right now, but it does continuously improve and remains free. Just look at Android. It's too bad that Google hasn't thrown its weight behind a serious Linux variant rather than Chrome OS, or the year of the Linux desktop might have already been. Remember, Microsoft is jumping into the hardware space for a reason: they know that consumer software isn't sustainable in the long term. Software has a $0 replication and distribution cost, thus driving the price to $0 dollars. Hardware will never have this issue.
Here in Ohio there aren't many tech execs. Silicon Valley has no influence whatsoever on the election outcome. In fact, if I didn't live in Ohio, voting in the presidential election would seem rather pointless. I would still vote, but it would be more out of a sense of duty and to vote for the congressional/local elections. I would probably explore third-party options if I lived in a state that was solid-blue or solid-red. Here in Ohio, there's too much at stake to vote for a third party, as we learned in 2000 (damn you Ralph Nader!).
the nation with the most powerful military sets the world agenda
This is false. We are long past the days of the British Empire. In this day and age, the nation with the most powerful economy and cultural influence sets the world agenda. Of course, I've always found the notion that the U.S. ought to be individually responsible for setting a world agenda to be a strange one -- it's also a notion that didn't exist before WWII. Furthermore, when our government tries to assert itself in such a way where we attempt to set a world agenda, we tend to anger other countries and alienate them, thus diminishing our influence rather than amplifying it, as was the case during GWB's presidency.
Final point: We could make major cuts to our military without diminishing its capacity to wage war and continue functioning as it is. Much of our military spending essentially amounts to pork that will never materialize on the battlefield.
From my experience, there are people who exist in categories other than those two. Think Mac users; Macs certainly aren't cheap machines and 3D games aren't exactly what they're known for.
While it may be true that there isn't a particularly large demographic that ultrabooks appeal to, I find your dichotomy of laptop users to be a false one. I doubt that laptops sold primarily for video games crack the spot for the #2 demographic in the laptop market.
Because we should hold conviction for the principles, freedoms, and liberties this nation stands for.
People always talk of these principles as if some consensus exists as to what they actually are. Is it the freedom to exploit others or the freedom to not be exploited?Also, what's the difference between freedom and liberty? Aren't the principles you're referring to a single principle, that of liberty? So you have a list of three redundant items. Stylistically, it's effective rhetoric as a list of reasons always sounds more authoritative than a single reason, but this is/. where pedantic nerds such as myself hang out so that shit just won't fly.
One more gripe: Why ought we hold conviction to this principle of liberty? You say it as if it's self-evident. Shoulds are rarely self-evident.
what makes you think that Obama is behind his prosecution?
The fact that he has spoken at length in multiple speeches against this film, without one word in support of the concept that even hateful speech is Free Speech and protected in America.
Why does Obama have to include the caveat about free speech when condemning speech his disapproves of? The guy went to Harvard Law School and taught at the University of Chicago Law School teaching constitutional law and worked as a civil rights attorney - I think he's well aware that hateful speech is protected in America. Besides, if Obama had included the little disclaimer about free speech, would you be any less suspecting of his involvement in this case? What would that really prove?
Just because hateful speech is protected from censorship from the government doesn't mean it's protected from criticism from members of the government.
Now that MS Word utilizes OpenDocument, perhaps it can now begin to replace the.doc/.docx formats. I'm not really sure how many people use Google docs (I've heard quite a few do, I don't know how they do it), but if they have a sizable chunk of users it could work like the reverse of Microsoft's formats in the past. "Save that in.odt because everything reads.odt."
It's kind of risky on Google's part, but if they succeed they'll break Microsoft's key stranglehold on the whole text editing market. Let's face it, it's ridiculous that such a basic piece of software as MS Office not only sells at the outrageous price they have it at, but is also considered mandatory by most computer users who use their computer for actual work.
LibreOffice and its derivatives are bound to win eventually (it keeps improving and will always be free), but the process is extremely slow. It's nice to see Google attempt to cut off Word's life support, which is format lock. LibreOffice Writer is at the point where it could make Word irrelevant - LibreOffice just won't bury the Office suite until Calc catches up with Excel.
Are you actually attempting to make a coherent argument? Freedom of speech isn't a universal right. In Greece what this man did is technically illegal (whether that's just or not).
Everything past your first sentence is an attack on specific actions taken by certain conservatives (mostly American), not an attack on conservatism. The first sentence decries things in which you presume to be bad without providing any sort of argument to explain why they're bad.
If you really want to make a contribution to progressive politics then don't talk politics. Just cast your vote and leave the argumentation for those who actually know how to construct a syllogism. You don't help your cause by spouting off random opinionated dribble, you just reinforce the Randians' opinion that liberals are fools and provide them with a nice example to make their case.
I don't know the details of the Islam video (I saw the headlines and had no interest in reading further) but what's the 'far right' label have to do with any of it? Upon looking up Geert Wilders, he does indeed consider himself to be far-right. The Golden Dawn Party of Greece is fascist (they seem to be behind the arrest). Fascism is generally accepted to be far-right. Further right, it seems, than Wilders, who is quoted on Wiki saying "We'll never join up with the fascists." He also called Margaret Thatcher his hero.
Of course, one is Dutch and the other is Greek so I'm sure the term is somewhat relative. In a social sense the things that Wilders and the Golden Dawn seem to have in common is attempting to use the government to preserve old cultural traditions and xenophobia. It's not banning religious satire or making religious satire that makes them far-right, it's the fact that in doing these seemingly opposite actions (if you ignore the details and phrase them in a way in which they seem antithetical to each other) they both hope to achieve the same ends: Preserve old cultural norms.
So there's your 'far-right' (from a social standpoint): Policy focussed on preserving old cultural norms. I don't think the term was used in an economic sense but that's the problem with 'left' and 'right' in politics. They're broad, contextual terms. But that doesn't mean I believe you when you feign confusion.
I wonder if this blasphemy case is a retaliatory measure against a whistleblower?
I wonder if it's a retaliatory measure for kicking one of their dogs.
Actually, I found the info you linked to to be quite interesting. It's too bad you linked to it to support some pretty random speculation/conspiracy theory. Is there any particular reason you would assume he's a whistleblower because he was arrested for something stupid?
Not to mention that giving this guy a public forum is probably the worst way to get retaliation for whistleblowing. If I had to guess it's exactly what it sounds like: someone in power got their panties in a bunch because they were offended. If I understand the translation of the article correctly, it was some right-wing extremist in the Golden Dawn party. Larry Flynt once went through the same ordeal here in the States (and it was a good thing because it set a precedent in favor of satire).
Maybe a law should be passed that bans bullshit headlines that some people take literally. I really don't know if I'm being sarcastic about that or not. It has its appeals but it probably wouldn't work in practice without being a greater headache than it's worth (free speech, open to interpretation, etc.).
Regardless, there seems to be a thin line between a hyperbole and bullshit when it comes to headlines. It's sad that people like the OP not only regurgitate these headlines as facts, but then try to defend their irresponsible echoing of misinformation by linking to the sensationalist headlines.
Sadly, few of the ultra-religious see the difference between the two anymore.
Who are these strawmen you call the 'ultra-religious?'
I mean, nice try at being poetic and whatnot, but your assessment of the world sounds just as disconnected from reality as the world views of Mormons and Scientologists. Your last sentence in particular just doesn't represent reality because in developed nations atheism and agnosticism have become more and more common (in the U.S. the only reason that evangelicals are so powerful is because they actually vote). Then there's China where no one's religious (the largest population block in the world). I would be willing to bet, despite whatever survey results you can dig up, that the majority of the people in the world aren't religious. Even those who call themselves 'spiritual' tend to lack any concrete dogmatic convictions.
No tolerance, no compromise . . . sure, that may apply to a Southern Baptist, but it also applies to Richard Dawkins.
It's not like the world would be populated by nothing but rational individuals were religion to disappear. It seems to me that rationality is related to fundamental education and has little or nothing to do with one's religious beliefs. Even still, I've met many well educated atheists who held on to completely irrational beliefs (such as the belief that religion is a scourge to human progress . . . maybe in the Muslim world, but that's still debatable).
However, the computing revolution is finishing, and there might not be much innovating left to do.
Every time anyone has said anything resembling that at any time throughout human history, they've been wrong.
But that entirely depends on how long term you look.
Also, I find it unlikely that the next technological revolution will require a large workforce. Technology allows individuals to do so much more. Here in Ohio, we're losing manufacturing jobs even when new factories spring up. New factories often utilize robotics so heavily that they look like an economic gold mine on paper: high energy consumption, large land area, high revenue, etc. but it's not the economic driving force factories once were. All the businesses that serviced the blue collar factory workers are no longer needed.
The next step in the computing revolution is making our machines less dependent on us. Build themselves, diagnose themselves, fix themselves. How does our current economic system account for this when the current economic model relies on the assumption that all wealth is created by human labor? An effect of technology is the devaluing of human labor because most technology was created to replace human labor. "Siri, write me a software application that does blah blah blah." There will come a time that coding will seem as quaint as picking cotton.
Charter schools get children from families who are at least somewhat motivated to improve their child's station in life. I enjoyed Waiting for Superman, it was asking the right questions, but it made charter schools out to be a grand solution that they aren't. It looked at their success, not at how they got it.
A pop cultural counterexample of your own would be Freakonomics: Steve Levitt found that families who enroll their children into charter school lotteries tend to have children who perform better than children who aren't enrolled in the lotteries. Basically, it doesn't matter if they get lucky and get into the charter school: just by virtue of having parents who attempted to get them in the charter school, the student is just as likely to perform comparatively better to his peers as the lottery winners. What this suggests is that the success of charter schools is similar to the success of public schools in the suburbs: When you fill a school with children whose families value education they will outperform the worst schools in Chicago. Who woulda thunk?
Also, there's a problem with charter schools that wasn't investigated in Waiting for Superman. For-profit shitholes that pretty much rubber stamp HS diplomas (and often don't have a college educated teacher as the 'instructor' who's just there to run the place while students click through crappy software modules). It's one of those places that turns government grants into someone's bank account all while making local politicians very happy (they can boast of high graduation rates . . . never mind that the graduates don't even understand fractions).
While I agree that unions in America have problems, you can't point to them as the sole (or even main) cause of our education system's woes. Education just isn't valued in and of itself. It's viewed as job training and all too often people want to see it done as efficiently as possible. Things like foreign language and logic aren't taught at an elementary level because that would involve paying more teachers. Another major problem is that students are forced to learn the material at the same rate despite the fact that some learn much faster than others (or some learn certain subjects faster than others).
There are many problems with education in the U.S. but no one has the power to do anything about it. It's something that needs to be grabbed by the reigns and the U.S. Constitution forbids it. Not that that old document has carried much authority as of late.
While you have some valid points, I don't think calling out high-end chinese fashion designers and movie directors is a fair shot. First, I doubt anyone on here could name many fashion designers (and especially know where they're from). Also, fashion seems antithetical to China's culture of pretend-communism. Then, concerning movie directors . . . I could cheat and say John Woo, but that does require a caveat. However, in this case it's not a good measure of a country's worth (either financially or culturally). If I challenged you to come up with a big name Scandinavian movie director, could you do it? I couldn't and I've seen several Scandinavian films I've really enjoyed (along with many more Chinese films). He's not someone I could name off the top of my head, but you might be interested in this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Yimou . . . Jackie Chan sort of counts, too.
While I agree a focus on rote learning isn't ideal, the U.S. system isn't any more ideal. Our education system is only an education system for the middle class or better. For the poor it's like a daycare. Something to occupy them that conveniently gives them the possibility of hope.
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Wesley Mouch. No one liked Wesley Mouch. But it was Rearden Metal, not the railroads, that hired him. Jim Taggart and his railroad were already chummy with Washington in the beginning of the book. Rearden hired Mouch to deal with Washington so he didn't have to, which was one of his first fatal errors b/c Mouch just used his lobbyist position to enrich himself and get himself a powerful government job rather than actually lobby for the interests of Rearden Metal.
Anyway, it isn't really analogous to the topic at hand except in the vaguest sense: It deals with the relationship between the government and a corporation. If Google's lobbyists had anything to do with it then they were doing the exact opposite as what Mouch did, which is, their job.
Personally, I think it's wrong to try and assume the motives of this congressman. He may just be aware that much of the Google anti-trust heat comes from pressure applied to his fellow congresscritters and the FTC by competing lobbyists (mainly Microsoft's). Maybe I've just drank a little too much Kool-Aid, but to me Google seems extremely responsible for the amount of power they've obtained and I don't believe they're engaging in any anti-competitive behavior. I also call shenanigans whenever MS accuses another company of anti-trust violations.
First, the content of this post isn't interesting as it's been upvoted.
Second, 'sand ninjas' is racist - it's a derivative of the pejorative 'sand niggers.'
Third, imagining how awesome it would be to have a world conflict more bloody than any in history just b/c the U.S. would win and people we disagree with would die in the millions is just immature. Yeah, genocide would be so fucking awesome, wouldn't it? That would show everyone how much better we are!
I can't believe three people stupid enough to upvote this post got mod points. Grow the fuck up.
Westboro Baptists can get away with it because they're white
I doubt it's a racist thing. Religion is the protective barrier they hide behind. They're the worst possible consequence of the First Amendment, as it's been interpreted by courts up until this point, and they know it and they toe the line.
Actually, I take that back. WBC is the second worst possible First Amendment consequence. Since a certain Supreme Court decision that interpreted spending money as free speech, political action committees have supplanted them.
it should be a polarizing issue
I find this attitude to be unsettling. The fact that abortion and 'gay rights' happen to be polarizing issues is one of the problems with the American political system. Of course, if the U.S. had more than two parties with clout then this effect probably wouldn't be so damaging. I find it very troubling that an anti-abortion Catholic who believes in a more liberal form of distributive justice would vote Republican because somehow they prioritize the abortion issue above economic issues. Likewise, it angers me to see a homosexual who believes in a more libertarian form of distributive justice vote Democrat because he prioritizes gay marriage over economic issues.
Very rare is there an issue important enough to prioritize over the fundamental economic policies of a candidate. This appeal to morality is usually done by those who have a shaky, at best, understanding of ethics. Distributive justice is an moral issue. It trumps almost any other issue including free speech, which changes from generation to generation depending on how certain judges decide to interpret the U.S. Constitution, but is never wholly endangered. The freedom of speech in the U.S. was enacted by a bunch of cutthroat politicians who libeled one another in publications (often under pseudonyms), slandered one another on the floor of congress, and in general sought to defame one another through lies and rumors. Is it any wonder that the democratic countries that came about after the U.S. were hesitant to have such a broad protection of speech and that none of them do?
keep your religious beliefs between you and god and shut the fuck up
Then keep your atheism between you and yourself and shut the fuck up.
Thats just a strawman and you know it.
Kind of like how your post is nothing but an extended ad hominem directed at anyone who practices religion? Don't incorrectly accuse someone of being guilty of a fallacy while engaging in one yourself. Stop making the world a worse place. Take Logic 101 and learn what a strawman argument actually is.
If you leave the money in circulation then it creates jobs
No it doesn't. Companies don't hire because they're paying less in taxes, they hire because they need people to get things done. Not to mention that taxing doesn't actually pull money out of circulation the way you're thinking -- it slows inflation or causes deflation. Taxes change the value of money, which is why cutting taxes only has short term benefits for an economy; inflation will eventually catch up so despite having more dollars available their value will be diminished. Likewise, when raising taxes, the money the government collects doesn't just disappear. First, it's used to pay for expenditures and goes toward lowering the deficit (and hopefully, eventually the debt). Second, as I mentioned, the rate of inflation will decrease in proportion to the money being taxed, thus resulting in the same amount of wealth in the economy regardless of the fact that there might be less money. Assuming that cutting taxes will create more wealth is like assuming that printing more money will create more wealth; it doesn't, it just affects the currency's market liquidity.
Of course, if you're voting based on the abortion issue, you're the type of sucker the Republicans love. Do you actually believe that guys like Romney and Ryan are against abortion? Even if they were elected, they have no way to overturn Roe v. Wade and they know it. It's just an issue they can make a lot of noise about to rally voters who care about nonsensical issues that have nothing to do with how the country is run. Also, what good is it to save the unborn when most aborted babies, if they were to be born, are likely to end up in prison? Here's a primer.
Finally, a president's economic policies usually take longer than their one or two terms to actually have an effect. One of the many reasons a four year election cycle is stupid. When judging an incumbent's economic policies, one shouldn't consider whether they did good, one should consider whether they will do good. Not to mention the fact that, although the president has more influence over the economy than most, that influence is extremely limited, especially with a divided congress.
Others have pointed out that you're wrong, but here's a bit more specific information for you: Only a small percentage of the brain is used to think. Seeing, hearing, feeling, and running other natural body functions consumes much more brainpower than daydreaming or figuring out a problem; all those functions have to run in conjuncture with thinking.
The classic error with the claim that we only use a small percentage of our brain to think is that it neglects that the brain exists to do more than think. Most of the regions of the brain cannot be utilized to think even if those physiological functions weren't necessary -- it would be like expecting the RAM in your computer to perform GPU functions b/c the GPU isn't being utilized at the moment. Just because there are parts of your computer that are idle or underutilized doesn't mean their potential energy can be redirected to a task they're not suited for.
I enjoyed your rebuttal (how rare it is to see one that isn't inflammatory), yet I still disagree and have some points for you to consider:
- The average Victorian Englishman wasn't your average English Victorian gentleman. Victorian gentlemen were hardly representative of England's population, let alone the world's. Those are like Ivy-leaguers today. An interesting book that examines how out of touch the Victorian gentleman was is Where Angels Fear to Tread, by E.M. Forrester. Regardless, I think you missed my point. I didn't mean that in the days of the British Empire that men were brutes - I meant that global affairs were handled differently. Warfare was more common, accepted, and feasible.
- I advocate neither the pre-WWII isolationism nor the post-WWII meddle in everyone's affairs approach to foreign policy. I think the goal of any U.S. foreign policy relations should be to benefit the U.S. directly and objectively -- foreign policy that exists to assert the correctness/propagation of ideals such as capitalism, democracy, or symbolic support for Israel (our anti-nuclear Iran stance, for example) is not only a waste of resources, it's also morally wrong. This is one area where I agree with Ron Paul. We ought to respect the sovereignty of other nations - we shouldn't expect them to respect our sovereignty because we have a larger military but because it's a mutual respect that every government morally owes every other government.
- Discussing Russia and China as military threats is just silly. Especially in the case of China, where we are so economically dependent on one another that war would destroy us both without a single bomb being dropped. There's a reason why we only wage wars on underdeveloped countries. Also, any conflict between first world countries is more effectively waged by means of espionage, political and economic leverage, assassinations, and other areas where the military is more a peripheral player than the acting agent. We are not far off from war, at least in the traditional sense, being a thing of the past. Jarheads are useless in a conflict with China. An NSA computer hacker who speaks five languages is more useful than every marine put together in that type of conflict.
- Top ranked military officials have a strong self-interest in a strong military. They also have a hard time accepting that the world is transforming into a place that doesn't require soldiers or tanks or fighter planes or anything else that resembles traditional militaries. They're like Polish cavalries in WWI.
- The physical means to engage in warfare is useless without the financial means to set those machines in motion. "Hey, China, can we borrow some money to go to war with you?" We're like that guy with a hotrod that he can't drive around because he can't afford to put gas in the tank. My Accura will blow it off the line purely based on the fact that it runs, even though the hotrod wins the eyeball test.
I'd rather have revenue that comes from hardware than software. Software is sort of like a bubble because once free alternatives crop up that are of sufficient quality, the bubble pops. In the long term Microsoft has to change their business strategy because they won't be able to maintain that Office lock-in forever. And once they lose the Office lock-in (which LibreOffice and Google Docs are already working on doing), they put Windows in vulnerable situation to lose its lock-in to a Linux variant.
There was a time when the FOSS naysayers claimed that OOo would never match the quality/usability/compatibility of MS Office but every year since the LibreOffice fork that gap has narrowed more and more. LibreOffice, being free, doesn't have to close that gap completely, it just has to close it enough for the gap to be irrelevant.
Linux is the same way. It's sort of a mess right now, but it does continuously improve and remains free. Just look at Android. It's too bad that Google hasn't thrown its weight behind a serious Linux variant rather than Chrome OS, or the year of the Linux desktop might have already been. Remember, Microsoft is jumping into the hardware space for a reason: they know that consumer software isn't sustainable in the long term. Software has a $0 replication and distribution cost, thus driving the price to $0 dollars. Hardware will never have this issue.
Here in Ohio there aren't many tech execs. Silicon Valley has no influence whatsoever on the election outcome. In fact, if I didn't live in Ohio, voting in the presidential election would seem rather pointless. I would still vote, but it would be more out of a sense of duty and to vote for the congressional/local elections. I would probably explore third-party options if I lived in a state that was solid-blue or solid-red. Here in Ohio, there's too much at stake to vote for a third party, as we learned in 2000 (damn you Ralph Nader!).
the nation with the most powerful military sets the world agenda
This is false. We are long past the days of the British Empire. In this day and age, the nation with the most powerful economy and cultural influence sets the world agenda. Of course, I've always found the notion that the U.S. ought to be individually responsible for setting a world agenda to be a strange one -- it's also a notion that didn't exist before WWII. Furthermore, when our government tries to assert itself in such a way where we attempt to set a world agenda, we tend to anger other countries and alienate them, thus diminishing our influence rather than amplifying it, as was the case during GWB's presidency.
Final point: We could make major cuts to our military without diminishing its capacity to wage war and continue functioning as it is. Much of our military spending essentially amounts to pork that will never materialize on the battlefield.
From my experience, there are people who exist in categories other than those two. Think Mac users; Macs certainly aren't cheap machines and 3D games aren't exactly what they're known for.
While it may be true that there isn't a particularly large demographic that ultrabooks appeal to, I find your dichotomy of laptop users to be a false one. I doubt that laptops sold primarily for video games crack the spot for the #2 demographic in the laptop market.
Just, from, you know, my experience. . .
Because we should hold conviction for the principles, freedoms, and liberties this nation stands for.
People always talk of these principles as if some consensus exists as to what they actually are. Is it the freedom to exploit others or the freedom to not be exploited?Also, what's the difference between freedom and liberty? Aren't the principles you're referring to a single principle, that of liberty? So you have a list of three redundant items. Stylistically, it's effective rhetoric as a list of reasons always sounds more authoritative than a single reason, but this is /. where pedantic nerds such as myself hang out so that shit just won't fly.
One more gripe: Why ought we hold conviction to this principle of liberty? You say it as if it's self-evident. Shoulds are rarely self-evident.
what makes you think that Obama is behind his prosecution?
The fact that he has spoken at length in multiple speeches against this film, without one word in support of the concept that even hateful speech is Free Speech and protected in America.
Why does Obama have to include the caveat about free speech when condemning speech his disapproves of? The guy went to Harvard Law School and taught at the University of Chicago Law School teaching constitutional law and worked as a civil rights attorney - I think he's well aware that hateful speech is protected in America. Besides, if Obama had included the little disclaimer about free speech, would you be any less suspecting of his involvement in this case? What would that really prove?
Just because hateful speech is protected from censorship from the government doesn't mean it's protected from criticism from members of the government.
Because it is quite likely that this arrest is about censorship to appease jihadists.
Is it really quite likely? It seems to me that it's a faint possibility.
Now that MS Word utilizes OpenDocument, perhaps it can now begin to replace the .doc/.docx formats. I'm not really sure how many people use Google docs (I've heard quite a few do, I don't know how they do it), but if they have a sizable chunk of users it could work like the reverse of Microsoft's formats in the past. "Save that in .odt because everything reads .odt."
It's kind of risky on Google's part, but if they succeed they'll break Microsoft's key stranglehold on the whole text editing market. Let's face it, it's ridiculous that such a basic piece of software as MS Office not only sells at the outrageous price they have it at, but is also considered mandatory by most computer users who use their computer for actual work.
LibreOffice and its derivatives are bound to win eventually (it keeps improving and will always be free), but the process is extremely slow. It's nice to see Google attempt to cut off Word's life support, which is format lock. LibreOffice Writer is at the point where it could make Word irrelevant - LibreOffice just won't bury the Office suite until Calc catches up with Excel.
Are you actually attempting to make a coherent argument? Freedom of speech isn't a universal right. In Greece what this man did is technically illegal (whether that's just or not).
Everything past your first sentence is an attack on specific actions taken by certain conservatives (mostly American), not an attack on conservatism. The first sentence decries things in which you presume to be bad without providing any sort of argument to explain why they're bad.
If you really want to make a contribution to progressive politics then don't talk politics. Just cast your vote and leave the argumentation for those who actually know how to construct a syllogism. You don't help your cause by spouting off random opinionated dribble, you just reinforce the Randians' opinion that liberals are fools and provide them with a nice example to make their case.
I don't know the details of the Islam video (I saw the headlines and had no interest in reading further) but what's the 'far right' label have to do with any of it? Upon looking up Geert Wilders, he does indeed consider himself to be far-right. The Golden Dawn Party of Greece is fascist (they seem to be behind the arrest). Fascism is generally accepted to be far-right. Further right, it seems, than Wilders, who is quoted on Wiki saying "We'll never join up with the fascists." He also called Margaret Thatcher his hero.
Of course, one is Dutch and the other is Greek so I'm sure the term is somewhat relative. In a social sense the things that Wilders and the Golden Dawn seem to have in common is attempting to use the government to preserve old cultural traditions and xenophobia. It's not banning religious satire or making religious satire that makes them far-right, it's the fact that in doing these seemingly opposite actions (if you ignore the details and phrase them in a way in which they seem antithetical to each other) they both hope to achieve the same ends: Preserve old cultural norms.
So there's your 'far-right' (from a social standpoint): Policy focussed on preserving old cultural norms. I don't think the term was used in an economic sense but that's the problem with 'left' and 'right' in politics. They're broad, contextual terms. But that doesn't mean I believe you when you feign confusion.
I wonder if this blasphemy case is a retaliatory measure against a whistleblower?
I wonder if it's a retaliatory measure for kicking one of their dogs.
Actually, I found the info you linked to to be quite interesting. It's too bad you linked to it to support some pretty random speculation/conspiracy theory. Is there any particular reason you would assume he's a whistleblower because he was arrested for something stupid?
Not to mention that giving this guy a public forum is probably the worst way to get retaliation for whistleblowing. If I had to guess it's exactly what it sounds like: someone in power got their panties in a bunch because they were offended. If I understand the translation of the article correctly, it was some right-wing extremist in the Golden Dawn party. Larry Flynt once went through the same ordeal here in the States (and it was a good thing because it set a precedent in favor of satire).
Maybe a law should be passed that bans bullshit headlines that some people take literally. I really don't know if I'm being sarcastic about that or not. It has its appeals but it probably wouldn't work in practice without being a greater headache than it's worth (free speech, open to interpretation, etc.).
Regardless, there seems to be a thin line between a hyperbole and bullshit when it comes to headlines. It's sad that people like the OP not only regurgitate these headlines as facts, but then try to defend their irresponsible echoing of misinformation by linking to the sensationalist headlines.
Sadly, few of the ultra-religious see the difference between the two anymore.
Who are these strawmen you call the 'ultra-religious?'
I mean, nice try at being poetic and whatnot, but your assessment of the world sounds just as disconnected from reality as the world views of Mormons and Scientologists. Your last sentence in particular just doesn't represent reality because in developed nations atheism and agnosticism have become more and more common (in the U.S. the only reason that evangelicals are so powerful is because they actually vote). Then there's China where no one's religious (the largest population block in the world). I would be willing to bet, despite whatever survey results you can dig up, that the majority of the people in the world aren't religious. Even those who call themselves 'spiritual' tend to lack any concrete dogmatic convictions.
No tolerance, no compromise . . . sure, that may apply to a Southern Baptist, but it also applies to Richard Dawkins.
It's not like the world would be populated by nothing but rational individuals were religion to disappear. It seems to me that rationality is related to fundamental education and has little or nothing to do with one's religious beliefs. Even still, I've met many well educated atheists who held on to completely irrational beliefs (such as the belief that religion is a scourge to human progress . . . maybe in the Muslim world, but that's still debatable).
Every time anyone has said anything resembling that at any time throughout human history, they've been wrong.
But that entirely depends on how long term you look.
Also, I find it unlikely that the next technological revolution will require a large workforce. Technology allows individuals to do so much more. Here in Ohio, we're losing manufacturing jobs even when new factories spring up. New factories often utilize robotics so heavily that they look like an economic gold mine on paper: high energy consumption, large land area, high revenue, etc. but it's not the economic driving force factories once were. All the businesses that serviced the blue collar factory workers are no longer needed.
The next step in the computing revolution is making our machines less dependent on us. Build themselves, diagnose themselves, fix themselves. How does our current economic system account for this when the current economic model relies on the assumption that all wealth is created by human labor? An effect of technology is the devaluing of human labor because most technology was created to replace human labor. "Siri, write me a software application that does blah blah blah." There will come a time that coding will seem as quaint as picking cotton.
Charter schools get children from families who are at least somewhat motivated to improve their child's station in life. I enjoyed Waiting for Superman, it was asking the right questions, but it made charter schools out to be a grand solution that they aren't. It looked at their success, not at how they got it.
A pop cultural counterexample of your own would be Freakonomics: Steve Levitt found that families who enroll their children into charter school lotteries tend to have children who perform better than children who aren't enrolled in the lotteries. Basically, it doesn't matter if they get lucky and get into the charter school: just by virtue of having parents who attempted to get them in the charter school, the student is just as likely to perform comparatively better to his peers as the lottery winners. What this suggests is that the success of charter schools is similar to the success of public schools in the suburbs: When you fill a school with children whose families value education they will outperform the worst schools in Chicago. Who woulda thunk?
Also, there's a problem with charter schools that wasn't investigated in Waiting for Superman. For-profit shitholes that pretty much rubber stamp HS diplomas (and often don't have a college educated teacher as the 'instructor' who's just there to run the place while students click through crappy software modules). It's one of those places that turns government grants into someone's bank account all while making local politicians very happy (they can boast of high graduation rates . . . never mind that the graduates don't even understand fractions).
While I agree that unions in America have problems, you can't point to them as the sole (or even main) cause of our education system's woes. Education just isn't valued in and of itself. It's viewed as job training and all too often people want to see it done as efficiently as possible. Things like foreign language and logic aren't taught at an elementary level because that would involve paying more teachers. Another major problem is that students are forced to learn the material at the same rate despite the fact that some learn much faster than others (or some learn certain subjects faster than others).
There are many problems with education in the U.S. but no one has the power to do anything about it. It's something that needs to be grabbed by the reigns and the U.S. Constitution forbids it. Not that that old document has carried much authority as of late.
While you have some valid points, I don't think calling out high-end chinese fashion designers and movie directors is a fair shot. First, I doubt anyone on here could name many fashion designers (and especially know where they're from). Also, fashion seems antithetical to China's culture of pretend-communism. Then, concerning movie directors . . . I could cheat and say John Woo, but that does require a caveat. However, in this case it's not a good measure of a country's worth (either financially or culturally). If I challenged you to come up with a big name Scandinavian movie director, could you do it? I couldn't and I've seen several Scandinavian films I've really enjoyed (along with many more Chinese films). He's not someone I could name off the top of my head, but you might be interested in this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Yimou . . . Jackie Chan sort of counts, too.
While I agree a focus on rote learning isn't ideal, the U.S. system isn't any more ideal. Our education system is only an education system for the middle class or better. For the poor it's like a daycare. Something to occupy them that conveniently gives them the possibility of hope.
If you take away the minorities, the US would probably score like Japan. It's not popular to say that; but it's true.
If you take away the MAJORITY OF SOME minorities, the US would probably score like Japan. It's not popular to say that; but it's true.
More specifically, take away the poor and we'll score near the top. Minorities just tend to be poor.