Rights are a term used in rhetoric, originally invented to convince theistic believers that their god made them inherent.
You don't even have the right to breathe. You, instead, have the need to breathe. However, as has been proven throughout history, this need can be overridden by someone with more power. And then you die.
This same thing is true of all other "rights". The term was invented to arouse emotional support, and it works for that purpose. It has no other meaning or function in nature. It does have other meanings in law, but even there it is subject to being overridden by those more powerful.
For that matter your assertion that "Any alleged âoerightâ of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right." is merely an assertion. If there is a "right" to self-defense, then there will come occasions where two different indivicuals will have conflicting rights. Which, logically, would mean that there could be no unlimited right of self defense, but rather it would need to be fenced in with conditions such that two people's right could never come into conflict. Just try to create such a statement. If you give the courts the power to decide when you have the right to speak, then the courts are the (an?) ultimate judge over how much right you have to speak. If you don't give anyone such a right, then there is no limit to fraud. Etc.
Rights, to the extent that they exist, are a social fiction by with one group exerts power over another. (Look into the history of slave holder's rights.)
Sorry, but that's not it. Insurance requirements have caused almost all schools (at least locally) to totally eliminate both wood and metal shop.
It wasn't that the students didn't want the classes (even if they didn't want that as a job), it was that the classes were cancelled, and the shops ripped out of the schools.
In a just society lawyers would have an honorable place. That, of course, doesn't say much about the ones currently existing.
Actually, even advertising has a worthwhile place in a society. Their place is ensuring that accurate information about what is being sold is available. Somehow that doesn't match what the job currently entails...except sometimes.
Not helicopters. They are too expensive. Quadcopter drones possibly. Or areostats. Or blimps. There are lots of choices, each has its advantages and disadvantages. But a robot eye-in-the-sky doesn't need to be very big or support a lot of weight...or be very expensive.
Actually, there are significant distinctions. E.g., it's against treaty for a military organization to use tear gas or other chemical weapons against a foe, but not against treaty for a police organization to do so.
FWIW, I'm not greatly in favor of Obamacare. I don't know how much to blame him for the implementation, but it's horribly flawed. Mainly because he didn't cut out the insurance companies, but also because he gave the drug companies a sweet deal. Also because it STILL isn't universal coverage.
Basic medical coverage should be a universal coverage. Insurance should be for coverage for exceptionals cases. It's true that drawing that line is not a straightforwards matter, but it should at least cover vaccines, clinic visits, emergency room coverage, yearly physicals. After that it starts getting questionable. I would probably side with universal coverage for more services, but I can understand that it's not a clear line. Which perscription drugs should be covered? Which non-perscription drugs? Etc.
My general feeling is that universal coverage should be available for debilitating problems, but not necessarily for fatal problems or cosmetic problems. Perhaps those should be extra cost options (i.e., insurance). Basic long term health care should be covered, but that doesn't include extras that aren't medically necessary. So some level of amenities should be either from savings or from insurance. Etc.
P.S.: When your health insurance raises its rate on you, do you automatically believe the reason they give? Can you check to determine that it's true? To me it usually seems that they are lying, or at best only telling a partial truth. This is true even when I feel that the actual amount of raise is reasonable. Perhaps the total number of proven lies from government and from corporate spokesmen just makes me doubt anything they say, but it does call their honor, integrity, and trustworthiness into doubt. This is slightly unfair as those making the statement (to the extent that it can be determined) aren't the same as those who have been proven to be lying. But they share so many of the same characteristics...
I complained about the license to our company lawyer, and his response was "They have not legal basis to enforce it". I switched away from MS as my only defense. Later, for a similar reason, but introduced more sneakily, I also switched away from Apple. (They introduced new language in a "mandatory security upgrade".)
As at first Linux didn't have a decent word processor, this made things difficult. (My choices were AbiWord, HTML, or Tex...UGH! I generally used HTML.) Fortunately StarOffice soon became available...and evolved into OpenOffice. But music score editors are still a bit primitive. I can use Frescobaldi, etc., but my wife refuses to learn, so she uses MusicScore and emits Lilypond with I reformat in Frescobaldi. And even that isn't up to Finale or Sibelius.
YES. Management never, or rarely, reads legal documents.
P.S.: This does not absolve management of responsibility. The lawyers are acting as their agent, so they are responsible for what is done in their name. This is also true for the Board of Directors, and for the corporation itself. They are all guilty, to approximately the same degree. Unfortunately, were this to lead to a legal suit it would be only the stockholders in the corporation that paid. This is an incredible mis-alignment of responsibility. Those who don't know about the misdeed are (essentially) the only ones that pay.
A. I accept that it was the lawyers. B. The lawyers were acting as agents of the corporation and of management and of the board of directors, so they are *ALL* guilty.
I believe it was judge Learned Hand who said they could neither be put in prison nor commit treason. And in a strict sense he was correct, but the members of the board of directors and the top management could be put in prison as the legal representatives of the corporation. And I feel that if the coporation commits negligent homocide, then they *should* be so imprisoned. And they could be called felons for the rest of their lives, and forbidden the right to vote or to own arms (unless other felons also have those rights). And "own" should be extended to mean either in person or by proxy. I.e., nobody should be allowed those right when acting as their agent.
Okay, I have often heard this call for a corporate death penalty. However, how do you envision this would work? Despite the twisted perspective of the courts, corporations are nothing more than the real, human people who own them and work for them
The board of directors and top management.
On a more serious note, a coproate death penalty means the dissolution of the corporate charter and dispersal of its assets to creditors, and then, if any are left, to stockholders. I do feel that this is insufficient, and some extremely harsh penalty should be imposed on the members of the Board of Directors and on the top management of the corporation, but that is not, strictly speaking, within the jurisdiction of the "corporate death penalty".
You are right, that I don't have anything in the way of good evidence. I have only the evidence of judges making decisions the are flagrantly illegal, and which are to the benefit of local politicians. And since I'm not a lawyer, my idea of "flagrantly illegal" doesn't carry much weight.
So lets just consider the MS anti-trust case, where the first judge found against MS, was quoted by a journalist as saying things that weren't complimentary to MS *after he had pronounced judgement* and was then removed from the case and replaced by a different judge who gave MS only nominal penalties, which were actually even to their advantage.
I'm sure it was purely coincidence that between the first judge's ruling and the appointment of the second judge, MS began making large political donations.
The Pentagon Papers was 30 years ago. The government has changed what it claims to be allowed to do in that period. E.g., it has "suspended" Habeus Corpus. And it has instituted a system where "law enforcement" officers are allowed to profit by confiscating the property of people on accusation of a crime without waiting for conviction.
You can claim that "national security letters are just used to investigate", but since those very letters usually forbid the recipient from revealing what they demant, this cannot be proven. To say that they are only used in this way can only be based on what the government claims they are used for, and it has repeatedly lied.
I think you're wrong. Both sides go in for regulation, regardless of their rhetoric. (Cicero originally formalized rhetoric as a way of lying in a convincing manner, and taught it in a school for Roman politicians.)
They do tend to regulate different things, but neither side ever seems to undo the other sides regulations, no matter how adversely they may affect the citizenry. After all, they need something to vilify their opponents about.
FWIW, Guiness is the only beer I currently consider worthwhile. But the Guiness I see says on the label that it is brewed in the US, and so would be affected by this ruling.
As someone else said, it is best at room temperature. Cold it's merely acceptable. Most stout I find unpalatable.
I think you overstate the inefficiency of ethanol as a fuel...though perhaps you need to tune your engine differently to take advantage of it.
OTOH, it is a remarkably poor fuel when one considers the costs of originally producing it. Sugar cane is much more plausible, but doesn't grow in the same areas. The best argument for corn derived ethanol fuel that I can see is that any corn used as fuel won't be turned into fructose syrup. AFAIKT, this is basically a government subsidy to the large growers. A very inefficient one, too.
IIUC, his lawyers requested that certain materials not be produced, and in doing so quoted a section of the state law which exhempted a particular category of material from being required to be produced. If you don't like the phrasing, talk to the people who wrote the law. His lawyers were just doing their job, and making it easy for the judge.
I don't think they count as science...until the make predictions that match the later observed results. Then they do.
Unfortunately, as you pointed out actually recreating the simulation can be absurdly difficult. And if it's not reproducable, then it's not science.
That said, when I worked at a transportation study commission, we used models all the time. We never deceived ourselves that they were correct, but they were a lot better than just guessing. Policies were built based around their 20-year projections. Often we'd have several very different 20-year projections based on different assumptions about what would be done in between. (Would this transit project be successful? Would that bridge be built? What effect would building the other highway have on journey-to-work times?) The results were never accurate. They were subject to political manipulation...but so was what projects would be built. It was a lot better than just guessing, but it sure was a lot short of science.
I think of this frequently when I read about the models, and the problems that people have with accepting their projections. Usually the problems aren't based in plausibility, but rather in what beliefs make them comfortable. And in those cases I tend to believe the models. But I sure don't think of them as "sound science".
OTOH: Do you trust the "Four Color Theorum"? It's a mathematical proof that any map can be colored with four colors, with no two adjacent patches having the same color except at a single point. The proof is so complex that no human can follow it. Do you trust it? Would you trust it if a lot of money was riding on the result?
Even math is less than certain. Complex proofs are only as trustworthy as every step in them multiplied, and both people and computers make mistakes. There are lots of illusions that prove that people will frequently dependably make the same mistake. So you can't really trust math. But just try to find something more trustworthy. You need to learn to live with less than certainty, because certainty is always an illusion.
Who's going to tell the judge no? Who's going to enforce it?
Sometimes a judge will be so egregiously corrupt that the higher courts will discipline them, but it's quite infrequent, and I've never heard of it happening when he was acting to support the local politicos. (And even then the "discipline" is generally trivial in comparison to the offense.)
The Republicans who were responsible for emancipation (as an act of war against the rebellious South) is only vaguely related to the current Republican party. The Democrats have a closer link, and again, the civil rights movement was a political attack against the Dixiecrats, who pretended to be Democrats, but actually had an independent agenda.
P.S.: Given what the Federal Govt. has become, are you so sure states' rights was a bad idea? You can trace the current Federal Govt. back to the centralization imposed (by both sides!) during the Civil War.
P.P.S.: Under privitization, prisons have become defacto sources of slave labor. So don't claim that slavery has been eliminated. It's nature has been changed, but it isn't gone.
Just because you are convinced a particular technology is going to succeed doesn't mean that you want it to do so. Betting can, thus, be better than investing.
Slashdot Mirror
Rights are a term used in rhetoric, originally invented to convince theistic believers that their god made them inherent.
You don't even have the right to breathe. You, instead, have the need to breathe. However, as has been proven throughout history, this need can be overridden by someone with more power. And then you die.
This same thing is true of all other "rights". The term was invented to arouse emotional support, and it works for that purpose. It has no other meaning or function in nature. It does have other meanings in law, but even there it is subject to being overridden by those more powerful.
For that matter your assertion that "Any alleged âoerightâ of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right." is merely an assertion. If there is a "right" to self-defense, then there will come occasions where two different indivicuals will have conflicting rights. Which, logically, would mean that there could be no unlimited right of self defense, but rather it would need to be fenced in with conditions such that two people's right could never come into conflict. Just try to create such a statement. If you give the courts the power to decide when you have the right to speak, then the courts are the (an?) ultimate judge over how much right you have to speak. If you don't give anyone such a right, then there is no limit to fraud. Etc.
Rights, to the extent that they exist, are a social fiction by with one group exerts power over another. (Look into the history of slave holder's rights.)
Sorry, but that's not it. Insurance requirements have caused almost all schools (at least locally) to totally eliminate both wood and metal shop.
It wasn't that the students didn't want the classes (even if they didn't want that as a job), it was that the classes were cancelled, and the shops ripped out of the schools.
In a just society lawyers would have an honorable place. That, of course, doesn't say much about the ones currently existing.
Actually, even advertising has a worthwhile place in a society. Their place is ensuring that accurate information about what is being sold is available. Somehow that doesn't match what the job currently entails...except sometimes.
Not helicopters. They are too expensive. Quadcopter drones possibly. Or areostats. Or blimps. There are lots of choices, each has its advantages and disadvantages. But a robot eye-in-the-sky doesn't need to be very big or support a lot of weight...or be very expensive.
I don't like it, but expect it to happen.
No, I don't think they'd be that blatant. I don't think even the next Republican would be that blatant. Give it two or three more terms.
Actually, there are significant distinctions. E.g., it's against treaty for a military organization to use tear gas or other chemical weapons against a foe, but not against treaty for a police organization to do so.
FWIW, I'm not greatly in favor of Obamacare. I don't know how much to blame him for the implementation, but it's horribly flawed. Mainly because he didn't cut out the insurance companies, but also because he gave the drug companies a sweet deal. Also because it STILL isn't universal coverage.
Basic medical coverage should be a universal coverage. Insurance should be for coverage for exceptionals cases. It's true that drawing that line is not a straightforwards matter, but it should at least cover vaccines, clinic visits, emergency room coverage, yearly physicals. After that it starts getting questionable. I would probably side with universal coverage for more services, but I can understand that it's not a clear line. Which perscription drugs should be covered? Which non-perscription drugs? Etc.
My general feeling is that universal coverage should be available for debilitating problems, but not necessarily for fatal problems or cosmetic problems. Perhaps those should be extra cost options (i.e., insurance). Basic long term health care should be covered, but that doesn't include extras that aren't medically necessary. So some level of amenities should be either from savings or from insurance. Etc.
P.S.: When your health insurance raises its rate on you, do you automatically believe the reason they give? Can you check to determine that it's true? To me it usually seems that they are lying, or at best only telling a partial truth. This is true even when I feel that the actual amount of raise is reasonable. Perhaps the total number of proven lies from government and from corporate spokesmen just makes me doubt anything they say, but it does call their honor, integrity, and trustworthiness into doubt. This is slightly unfair as those making the statement (to the extent that it can be determined) aren't the same as those who have been proven to be lying. But they share so many of the same characteristics...
True. I already avoid all GM foodstuffs, so I doubt that it will cause me to change anything I do.
I complained about the license to our company lawyer, and his response was "They have not legal basis to enforce it". I switched away from MS as my only defense. Later, for a similar reason, but introduced more sneakily, I also switched away from Apple. (They introduced new language in a "mandatory security upgrade".)
As at first Linux didn't have a decent word processor, this made things difficult. (My choices were AbiWord, HTML, or Tex...UGH! I generally used HTML.) Fortunately StarOffice soon became available...and evolved into OpenOffice. But music score editors are still a bit primitive. I can use Frescobaldi, etc., but my wife refuses to learn, so she uses MusicScore and emits Lilypond with I reformat in Frescobaldi. And even that isn't up to Finale or Sibelius.
YES. Management never, or rarely, reads legal documents.
P.S.: This does not absolve management of responsibility. The lawyers are acting as their agent, so they are responsible for what is done in their name. This is also true for the Board of Directors, and for the corporation itself. They are all guilty, to approximately the same degree. Unfortunately, were this to lead to a legal suit it would be only the stockholders in the corporation that paid. This is an incredible mis-alignment of responsibility. Those who don't know about the misdeed are (essentially) the only ones that pay.
A. I accept that it was the lawyers.
B. The lawyers were acting as agents of the corporation and of management and of the board of directors, so they are *ALL* guilty.
I believe it was judge Learned Hand who said they could neither be put in prison nor commit treason. And in a strict sense he was correct, but the members of the board of directors and the top management could be put in prison as the legal representatives of the corporation. And I feel that if the coporation commits negligent homocide, then they *should* be so imprisoned. And they could be called felons for the rest of their lives, and forbidden the right to vote or to own arms (unless other felons also have those rights). And "own" should be extended to mean either in person or by proxy. I.e., nobody should be allowed those right when acting as their agent.
The board of directors and top management.
On a more serious note, a coproate death penalty means the dissolution of the corporate charter and dispersal of its assets to creditors, and then, if any are left, to stockholders. I do feel that this is insufficient, and some extremely harsh penalty should be imposed on the members of the Board of Directors and on the top management of the corporation, but that is not, strictly speaking, within the jurisdiction of the "corporate death penalty".
What evidence would you expect to find?
You are right, that I don't have anything in the way of good evidence. I have only the evidence of judges making decisions the are flagrantly illegal, and which are to the benefit of local politicians. And since I'm not a lawyer, my idea of "flagrantly illegal" doesn't carry much weight.
So lets just consider the MS anti-trust case, where the first judge found against MS, was quoted by a journalist as saying things that weren't complimentary to MS *after he had pronounced judgement* and was then removed from the case and replaced by a different judge who gave MS only nominal penalties, which were actually even to their advantage.
I'm sure it was purely coincidence that between the first judge's ruling and the appointment of the second judge, MS began making large political donations.
The Pentagon Papers was 30 years ago. The government has changed what it claims to be allowed to do in that period. E.g., it has "suspended" Habeus Corpus. And it has instituted a system where "law enforcement" officers are allowed to profit by confiscating the property of people on accusation of a crime without waiting for conviction.
You can claim that "national security letters are just used to investigate", but since those very letters usually forbid the recipient from revealing what they demant, this cannot be proven. To say that they are only used in this way can only be based on what the government claims they are used for, and it has repeatedly lied.
I think you're wrong. Both sides go in for regulation, regardless of their rhetoric. (Cicero originally formalized rhetoric as a way of lying in a convincing manner, and taught it in a school for Roman politicians.)
They do tend to regulate different things, but neither side ever seems to undo the other sides regulations, no matter how adversely they may affect the citizenry. After all, they need something to vilify their opponents about.
FWIW, Guiness is the only beer I currently consider worthwhile. But the Guiness I see says on the label that it is brewed in the US, and so would be affected by this ruling.
As someone else said, it is best at room temperature. Cold it's merely acceptable. Most stout I find unpalatable.
But think how much fun doing the comparisons could be!
I think you overstate the inefficiency of ethanol as a fuel...though perhaps you need to tune your engine differently to take advantage of it.
OTOH, it is a remarkably poor fuel when one considers the costs of originally producing it. Sugar cane is much more plausible, but doesn't grow in the same areas. The best argument for corn derived ethanol fuel that I can see is that any corn used as fuel won't be turned into fructose syrup. AFAIKT, this is basically a government subsidy to the large growers. A very inefficient one, too.
IIUC, his lawyers requested that certain materials not be produced, and in doing so quoted a section of the state law which exhempted a particular category of material from being required to be produced. If you don't like the phrasing, talk to the people who wrote the law. His lawyers were just doing their job, and making it easy for the judge.
I don't think they count as science...until the make predictions that match the later observed results. Then they do.
Unfortunately, as you pointed out actually recreating the simulation can be absurdly difficult. And if it's not reproducable, then it's not science.
That said, when I worked at a transportation study commission, we used models all the time. We never deceived ourselves that they were correct, but they were a lot better than just guessing. Policies were built based around their 20-year projections. Often we'd have several very different 20-year projections based on different assumptions about what would be done in between. (Would this transit project be successful? Would that bridge be built? What effect would building the other highway have on journey-to-work times?) The results were never accurate. They were subject to political manipulation...but so was what projects would be built. It was a lot better than just guessing, but it sure was a lot short of science.
I think of this frequently when I read about the models, and the problems that people have with accepting their projections. Usually the problems aren't based in plausibility, but rather in what beliefs make them comfortable. And in those cases I tend to believe the models. But I sure don't think of them as "sound science".
OTOH: Do you trust the "Four Color Theorum"? It's a mathematical proof that any map can be colored with four colors, with no two adjacent patches having the same color except at a single point. The proof is so complex that no human can follow it. Do you trust it? Would you trust it if a lot of money was riding on the result?
Even math is less than certain. Complex proofs are only as trustworthy as every step in them multiplied, and both people and computers make mistakes. There are lots of illusions that prove that people will frequently dependably make the same mistake. So you can't really trust math. But just try to find something more trustworthy. You need to learn to live with less than certainty, because certainty is always an illusion.
Who's going to tell the judge no? Who's going to enforce it?
Sometimes a judge will be so egregiously corrupt that the higher courts will discipline them, but it's quite infrequent, and I've never heard of it happening when he was acting to support the local politicos. (And even then the "discipline" is generally trivial in comparison to the offense.)
Are you certain about the "state secrets act"? It seems to me that National Security Letters cover the same ground...and then some.
The Republicans who were responsible for emancipation (as an act of war against the rebellious South) is only vaguely related to the current Republican party. The Democrats have a closer link, and again, the civil rights movement was a political attack against the Dixiecrats, who pretended to be Democrats, but actually had an independent agenda.
P.S.: Given what the Federal Govt. has become, are you so sure states' rights was a bad idea? You can trace the current Federal Govt. back to the centralization imposed (by both sides!) during the Civil War.
P.P.S.: Under privitization, prisons have become defacto sources of slave labor. So don't claim that slavery has been eliminated. It's nature has been changed, but it isn't gone.
Just because you are convinced a particular technology is going to succeed doesn't mean that you want it to do so. Betting can, thus, be better than investing.