The founding fathers made no such decision. The tax exempt status of religion was something decided in the middle 1800's.
I've checked into the "tax exempt" provisions. I don't qualify. So I'm being taxed to support your religion, and don't expect me to believe that this is fair. ALL religions should be taxed just like any other entertainment. THAT would be fair.
You are both right and wrong. You're right that they were, for much of the time, the sole provider of many social services. But you're wrong, because they were selective in their provision of them, and selective on ideological grounds.
Also your argument that religions are not taxed because it would be a violation of free religion is both silly and wrong. Only SOME religions benefit from this freedom from taxation. Those with large centralized organizations. Individual and small group religious actions (i.e., independent of a centralized religious organization) don't receive any such benefit. So, in a real sense, my religion is being taxed to benefit your religion. That's hardly equal handed. And free religion would only mean that religion was not taxed in a way distinct from other similar businesses. (I would generally think that religions should be classed with other forms of entertainment for taxation purposes. And the government seems to agree as long as we aren't talking about they kind of religion that they give special tax breaks to.)
I don't think that missionary outreach programs deserve ANY tax benefit. ANY. If it weren't for the "Congress shall make no law..." amendment I'd think that they should be a heavy additional tax as a socially detrimental activity that it would be too disruptive to make illegal.
Why is that braindead? The original deal was that the churches would provide social services so that the government wouldn't need to. In recompense for providing this service, the churches were relieved from taxation. Then they didn't follow through.
It's rather like the deal the telcos made to provide everyone with broadband access in exchange for oodles of money, which they didn't follow through on, and didn't return the money for. Granted it wasn't enough money to pay for what they promised, but they sought the deal, they weren't coerced. Ditto for the churches in the prior example. In both cases I suspect they never intended to carry through.
I hope you don't think the US govt. is much more interested in protecting citizen's rights. The media are doing a very good job of keeping us misinformed. (I checked out the aftermath of another news story last week.)
P.S.: I'm not saying that the style in which the US power structure abuses citizen's rights are the same as that of the Chinese govt. (I *think* the Chinese system is simpler, but that may just be because I've never looked at it close up.) In the US the desire appears to be to function more through intimidation than through actions that leave readily visible permanent injuries. (Among it's citizens. For foreigners the US appears to be more violent and capricious than the Chinese.)
P.P.S.: This can be exemplified by the taser. It rarely leaves permanently visible damage. But it seems, by report, to be used freely and with little cause. I expect that quite soon it will become considered (among oppressed groups within the US) praiseworthy to snipe at cops. Threatening and intimidating is one thing, but when you start widespread torture, you are breeding a case for retaliation.
I *DO* advocate abolition of (parts of) our system. E.g., the change made around the time of the civil war legalizing lobbyists should be revoked immediately. Also the change freeing the churches from taxation. And the writing (it wasn't even a law or a legal decision) that corporations were legal persons. Probably also the constitutional amendment allowing direct election of Senators rather than having the states decide upon them as they saw fit.
I suspect astroturfing is going on. There's too many trolls, and too many opinions that seem unreasonable.
Never think that only corporations engage in astroturfing. If anything, governments have more need to shape public opinion.
Imagine, though, what kind of a job it would be for a non-geek to have the job of reading slashdot, and deciding how to post. That's probably why so many of the opinions seem wrong-headed.
You are projecting the justification that you think the ggp(another grand or two?) used onto him. At no point did he say why he believed that the modifications were morally proper even if illegal.
What make you think the current situation can fairly be described as a balance? I certainly wouldn't characterize it in such a fashion.
I'm not sure what the proper term for a copyright should be, perhaps 17 years with one optional renewal. But I'm quite sure that if there is not strong and enforcably guaranteed provision that when the work comes out of copyright it enters public domain, then it should not be entitled to ANY copyright protection.
P.S.: For software that means that both the source code and the entire tool-chain used to create it must become available. For textual and multi-media works it would mean the approximate equivalent. The ENTIRE release free of DRM. And the tools used to build it. (Musical scores, artwork, etc. Not the physical instruments and tools themselves. This is far beyond what the copyright office currently holds or requires...but if DRM is to be allowed, that's the minimum that it would take for me to begin to consider whether a fair balance had been struck.
YES!! *BOTH* Santa Cruz Operations and Caldera had decent coders, and much of what Caldera coded did end up in Linux. It was licensed under the GPL. (I'm not sure about Santa Cruz Operations. It's code would have been Unix, and possibly BSD licensed, though I'm not sure. But they wrote very good code.)
It's only in the last seven years that SCOx has become a destructive parasite. (Mind you, Caldera was failing because, though they had a business mind set, they didn't understand the FOSS community...to the point where they tried to sell their version of Linux with a per-seat license.)
Because in Fortran IV variable names beginning with i-n (I think) were by default integer values, the rest were by default float. And it wasn't originally standard to declare all of your variables. That came in with Algol.
Ok. But do remember also: Non-pasteurized milk tastes more like milk. Non-homogenized milk tastes more like milk. Non-refrigerated milk tastes more like milk. And especially: Milk that's still warm from the cow tastes more like milk.
P.S.: I, personally, guarantee that last one. There's an extreme difference, but I know of no way to preserve the flavor.
Ok. I'll say it then. Academic scientists shouldn't be trusted either. This is a part of the creed of science. *TRUST NOBODY*
Now, then, the question is how does one progress in such a context. The answer is evaluate multiple results testing the same thesis. By multiple people. In multiple organizations.
This is made difficult when researchers suppress results, but that's not a block, merely an impediment. What's a block is when researchers hide to whom they are beholden.
Therefore, if an article is clearly labeled as coming from scientists working at Pepsi-Cola which makes products x, y, and z that might be affected by these results, then I have no qualms about accepting the publication. But that warning is almost never present. (And do remember that academic scientists often have commercial grant givers.)
I've run into the spelling Ockham's Razor several times recently, but when I ran into it during the 1950's and 1960's it was spelled Occam's Razor. Why should one choose one spelling over the other?
P.S.: I note that my spell checker likes Occam's and doesn't like Ockham's. It can't be a USian vs. British thing, because the places that I originally encountered it were SF books by British authors.
Yes, I'm influenced by advertising. I own one Penguin Computing computer and one ZAReason Laptop. I don't buy prepared dry cereals, I by chopped oats. Also oat bran. I buy from bulk suppliers.
I've forgotten what Apple is currently calling their computers, except that it's some sort of Macintosh. (Which, I think, makes it a raincoat rather than an apple, but I may have that backwards.) O, laptop. I forget. Something pro? Toyota makes a Prius. I don't know any other models, unless Dodge still makes a Dasher.
OTOH, Pepsi Cola hits the spot Twelve full ounces, that's a lot Twice as much for a nickel too! Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you! (and then something I can't remember, because I always ended up replacing it with: Holy holy holy holy hole-y ghost.) As you can tell, that was quite awhile ago.
Funny thing, it's been years, possibly decades, since I've bought a Pepsi. (Of course, I don't buy cokes either. Occasionally I buy a Mountain Dew...which I've never heard an ad for, though they do benefit from: My uncle Bill a still on the hill Where he makes a rare mountain brew. The birds in the sky get so drunk they can't fly On that good.. old.. moun.. tain.. dew. etc. )
Disagreeing with a law doesn't mean you don't understand it.
I'll agree that I don't understand many laws, and don't understand any of them completely. But one doesn't need to understand a law to understand that when it is applied it produced injustice.
P.S.: I defy you to find a single person on earth who has even read once all the laws that might apply to them. I'm not demanding understanding, just having read them.
It's systematic...designed into the system. Even 1/4 of the population voting "Other" wouldn't make any difference.
Hell, even 1/3 \wouldn't make any difference unless they all voted the same way. And it's doubtful that 1/2 would make a difference.
P.S.: There's a reasonable chance that Pat Paulson might have gotten more votes than any official candidate. They solved that problem my not counting those votes.
No. Third party voting fails because of the plurality voting system. If the winner was required to get over 50% of the votes, then it would be a reasonable strategy. If Instant Runoff were used it would be reasonable. If Condorcet (my favorite) were used, it would be reasonable.
The voting system in the US is specifically designed to ensure that one of two superficially different groups gets elected. I don't know if it was apparent what they were doing in the early days, but it's been evident since before the time of Teddy Roosevelt. (Look up the "Bull Moose Party".) Everybody, including himself, knew that he didn't have much of a chance, but he was enough of a popular hero that he figured he might possibly have enough of one to be worth the effort. (I don't remember the cause he was fighting for...I think it was something other than personal glory, but he got creamed.)
Actually, you are correct. But that doesn't mean what you hope it means.
For political reasons the actual projections were toned down and made milder, largely by excluding models that projected faster or more extreme warming. Then they averaged the remaining projections.
Now one can argue that this makes the report invalid, but I don't see how one can say it makes it overly dramatic.
One could argue that the models are invalid. I hope you are correct. But they have been validated by predicting past results in order to obtain some estimate of how accurate they are. All current models suffer from two kinds of error: 1) We don't have enough data, and 2) The models have been oversimplified to make it possible to run projections on available computers. Using all the factors and data we have available would result in models that ran in much slower than real time.
So ALL of the models are oversimplified, and known to be so. Sorry, that's the best we can do.
P.S.: I am not associated with any author of the report or any of the models used in the report. This post is a synopsis of things that I have read in the popular scientific press.
Slashdot Mirror
The founding fathers made no such decision. The tax exempt status of religion was something decided in the middle 1800's.
I've checked into the "tax exempt" provisions. I don't qualify. So I'm being taxed to support your religion, and don't expect me to believe that this is fair. ALL religions should be taxed just like any other entertainment. THAT would be fair.
You are both right and wrong. You're right that they were, for much of the time, the sole provider of many social services. But you're wrong, because they were selective in their provision of them, and selective on ideological grounds.
Also your argument that religions are not taxed because it would be a violation of free religion is both silly and wrong. Only SOME religions benefit from this freedom from taxation. Those with large centralized organizations. Individual and small group religious actions (i.e., independent of a centralized religious organization) don't receive any such benefit. So, in a real sense, my religion is being taxed to benefit your religion. That's hardly equal handed. And free religion would only mean that religion was not taxed in a way distinct from other similar businesses. (I would generally think that religions should be classed with other forms of entertainment for taxation purposes. And the government seems to agree as long as we aren't talking about they kind of religion that they give special tax breaks to.)
I don't think that missionary outreach programs deserve ANY tax benefit. ANY. If it weren't for the "Congress shall make no law..." amendment I'd think that they should be a heavy additional tax as a socially detrimental activity that it would be too disruptive to make illegal.
Why is that braindead? The original deal was that the churches would provide social services so that the government wouldn't need to. In recompense for providing this service, the churches were relieved from taxation. Then they didn't follow through.
It's rather like the deal the telcos made to provide everyone with broadband access in exchange for oodles of money, which they didn't follow through on, and didn't return the money for. Granted it wasn't enough money to pay for what they promised, but they sought the deal, they weren't coerced. Ditto for the churches in the prior example. In both cases I suspect they never intended to carry through.
I hope you don't think the US govt. is much more interested in protecting citizen's rights. The media are doing a very good job of keeping us misinformed. (I checked out the aftermath of another news story last week.)
P.S.: I'm not saying that the style in which the US power structure abuses citizen's rights are the same as that of the Chinese govt. (I *think* the Chinese system is simpler, but that may just be because I've never looked at it close up.) In the US the desire appears to be to function more through intimidation than through actions that leave readily visible permanent injuries. (Among it's citizens. For foreigners the US appears to be more violent and capricious than the Chinese.)
P.P.S.: This can be exemplified by the taser. It rarely leaves permanently visible damage. But it seems, by report, to be used freely and with little cause. I expect that quite soon it will become considered (among oppressed groups within the US) praiseworthy to snipe at cops. Threatening and intimidating is one thing, but when you start widespread torture, you are breeding a case for retaliation.
That's why you analyze a random sample of them under an electron microscope...layer by layer.
Then you either check each layer against the design specs, if you have them, or model each layer and predict what various input signals will do.
You might still miss something, but nobody could be reasonably sure that you would miss it.
I *DO* advocate abolition of (parts of) our system. E.g., the change made around the time of the civil war legalizing lobbyists should be revoked immediately. Also the change freeing the churches from taxation. And the writing (it wasn't even a law or a legal decision) that corporations were legal persons. Probably also the constitutional amendment allowing direct election of Senators rather than having the states decide upon them as they saw fit.
And several others.
I suspect astroturfing is going on. There's too many trolls, and too many opinions that seem unreasonable.
Never think that only corporations engage in astroturfing. If anything, governments have more need to shape public opinion.
Imagine, though, what kind of a job it would be for a non-geek to have the job of reading slashdot, and deciding how to post. That's probably why so many of the opinions seem wrong-headed.
You are projecting the justification that you think the ggp(another grand or two?) used onto him. At no point did he say why he believed that the modifications were morally proper even if illegal.
I have no idea who Jeremy Clarkson is, but I don't let the laws determine my idea of right and wrong. Safe and unsafe is a different matter.
If you think that laws determine morality, then you are as much a moral idiot as someone who lets his local priest decide that for him.
The contract (or check) written in berry juice wouldn't be sustained...because it would wash off.
(I wonder if a photo of it would make it valid?)
What make you think the current situation can fairly be described as a balance? I certainly wouldn't characterize it in such a fashion.
I'm not sure what the proper term for a copyright should be, perhaps 17 years with one optional renewal. But I'm quite sure that if there is not strong and enforcably guaranteed provision that when the work comes out of copyright it enters public domain, then it should not be entitled to ANY copyright protection.
P.S.: For software that means that both the source code and the entire tool-chain used to create it must become available. For textual and multi-media works it would mean the approximate equivalent. The ENTIRE release free of DRM. And the tools used to build it. (Musical scores, artwork, etc. Not the physical instruments and tools themselves. This is far beyond what the copyright office currently holds or requires...but if DRM is to be allowed, that's the minimum that it would take for me to begin to consider whether a fair balance had been struck.
Avoiding foreign dependency should be considered a useful side benefit. The primary benefit should be the reduction of carbon impact.
OTOH, if reduction (not, unfortunately, elimination) of foreign dependencies is what will sell you, then please notice it.
YES!!
*BOTH* Santa Cruz Operations and Caldera had decent coders, and much of what Caldera coded did end up in Linux. It was licensed under the GPL. (I'm not sure about Santa Cruz Operations. It's code would have been Unix, and possibly BSD licensed, though I'm not sure. But they wrote very good code.)
It's only in the last seven years that SCOx has become a destructive parasite. (Mind you, Caldera was failing because, though they had a business mind set, they didn't understand the FOSS community...to the point where they tried to sell their version of Linux with a per-seat license.)
Because in Fortran IV variable names beginning with i-n (I think) were by default integer values, the rest were by default float. And it wasn't originally standard to declare all of your variables. That came in with Algol.
Well, that was pretty clear. I'm not sure I believe that bit about 4,000,000 numbers, though. I think that may be intended as telemarketer repellent.
Ok. But do remember also:
Non-pasteurized milk tastes more like milk.
Non-homogenized milk tastes more like milk.
Non-refrigerated milk tastes more like milk.
And especially:
Milk that's still warm from the cow tastes more like milk.
P.S.: I, personally, guarantee that last one. There's an extreme difference, but I know of no way to preserve the flavor.
Ok. I'll say it then. Academic scientists shouldn't be trusted either. This is a part of the creed of science. *TRUST NOBODY*
Now, then, the question is how does one progress in such a context. The answer is evaluate multiple results testing the same thesis. By multiple people. In multiple organizations.
This is made difficult when researchers suppress results, but that's not a block, merely an impediment. What's a block is when researchers hide to whom they are beholden.
Therefore, if an article is clearly labeled as coming from scientists working at Pepsi-Cola which makes products x, y, and z that might be affected by these results, then I have no qualms about accepting the publication. But that warning is almost never present. (And do remember that academic scientists often have commercial grant givers.)
I've run into the spelling Ockham's Razor several times recently, but when I ran into it during the 1950's and 1960's it was spelled Occam's Razor. Why should one choose one spelling over the other?
P.S.: I note that my spell checker likes Occam's and doesn't like Ockham's. It can't be a USian vs. British thing, because the places that I originally encountered it were SF books by British authors.
Yes, I'm influenced by advertising.
I own one Penguin Computing computer and one ZAReason Laptop.
I don't buy prepared dry cereals, I by chopped oats. Also oat bran. I buy from bulk suppliers.
I've forgotten what Apple is currently calling their computers, except that it's some sort of Macintosh. (Which, I think, makes it a raincoat rather than an apple, but I may have that backwards.) O, laptop. I forget. Something pro? Toyota makes a Prius. I don't know any other models, unless Dodge still makes a Dasher.
OTOH,
Pepsi Cola hits the spot
Twelve full ounces, that's a lot
Twice as much for a nickel too!
Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you!
(and then something I can't remember, because I always ended up replacing it with:
Holy holy holy holy hole-y ghost.)
As you can tell, that was quite awhile ago.
Funny thing, it's been years, possibly decades, since I've bought a Pepsi. (Of course, I don't buy cokes either. Occasionally I buy a Mountain Dew...which I've never heard an ad for, though they do benefit from: .. old .. moun .. tain .. dew.
My uncle Bill a still on the hill
Where he makes a rare mountain brew.
The birds in the sky get so drunk they can't fly
On that good
etc.
)
Correlation is not causation...but in this case it might be.
If I remember properly, when mice are infected with this parasite they become more aggressive and less fearful. And more likely to be eaten by a cat.
When you think about it, if you go back a million years or so being more aggressive would also make a person likely to be eaten by a cat.
Obviously we should do tests on the athletes to see if they've dosed themselves with toxoplasma in order to win the competition.
Disagreeing with a law doesn't mean you don't understand it.
I'll agree that I don't understand many laws, and don't understand any of them completely. But one doesn't need to understand a law to understand that when it is applied it produced injustice.
P.S.: I defy you to find a single person on earth who has even read once all the laws that might apply to them. I'm not demanding understanding, just having read them.
It's systematic...designed into the system. Even 1/4 of the population voting "Other" wouldn't make any difference.
Hell, even 1/3 \wouldn't make any difference unless they all voted the same way. And it's doubtful that 1/2 would make a difference.
P.S.: There's a reasonable chance that Pat Paulson might have gotten more votes than any official candidate. They solved that problem my not counting those votes.
No. Third party voting fails because of the plurality voting system. If the winner was required to get over 50% of the votes, then it would be a reasonable strategy. If Instant Runoff were used it would be reasonable. If Condorcet (my favorite) were used, it would be reasonable.
The voting system in the US is specifically designed to ensure that one of two superficially different groups gets elected. I don't know if it was apparent what they were doing in the early days, but it's been evident since before the time of Teddy Roosevelt. (Look up the "Bull Moose Party".) Everybody, including himself, knew that he didn't have much of a chance, but he was enough of a popular hero that he figured he might possibly have enough of one to be worth the effort. (I don't remember the cause he was fighting for...I think it was something other than personal glory, but he got creamed.)
Predicting the past is easy.
It's clear you've never tried. Or thought seriously about trying.
Actually, you are correct. But that doesn't mean what you hope it means.
For political reasons the actual projections were toned down and made milder, largely by excluding models that projected faster or more extreme warming. Then they averaged the remaining projections.
Now one can argue that this makes the report invalid, but I don't see how one can say it makes it overly dramatic.
One could argue that the models are invalid. I hope you are correct. But they have been validated by predicting past results in order to obtain some estimate of how accurate they are. All current models suffer from two kinds of error:
1) We don't have enough data, and
2) The models have been oversimplified to make it possible to run projections on available computers. Using all the factors and data we have available would result in models that ran in much slower than real time.
So ALL of the models are oversimplified, and known to be so. Sorry, that's the best we can do.
P.S.: I am not associated with any author of the report or any of the models used in the report. This post is a synopsis of things that I have read in the popular scientific press.