If the stores aren't supposed to sell those games to minors, why are adults who give the games to minors exempt?
Because what you suggest involves telling the citizenry that raising well-adjusted, normal children is somehow their (the parents') responsibility. You never lose an election telling the voters that some faceless Enemy is threatening their way of life. You never win an election by telling the voters it's all their fault.
Given a large enough sample of similar cases you can make reasonable estimates of the odds. The example you semi-quote sounds more like C3PO talking about surviving the trip through the asteroid belt. (Yes, I'm a geek, let's move on.) In an Empire spanning allegedly millions of worlds, people have probably flown through asteroid belts tens or hundreds of thousands of times even in just recent history. So 3PO just needs to know what fraction of them survived and invert it.
It's really bad when the characters encounter a situation which they admit is without precedent, and then one quotes a probability.
Sure, its good for civilization that people do boring stuff, but for the individual its just pointless. I live for myself, not for the rest of the world, than [sic] you.
I hope you begin and end every day thanking whatever powers you believe in that not everyone is like you. It's a recipe for disaster. The system can only support a small number of parasites... of which you, by your admission, are one.
Surly not, Africa is such a stable continent.........
Right. And I'm sure that has so much more to do with their DNA than with, say, the fact that the Europeans came in and screwed them over for five centuries? And I'm sure it's also genetics that ensured that the most prosperous and stable countries are the ones which just happened not to have fallen to colonial administration?
Please. The only reason there's even a tenuous, spurious apparent link between ethnicity and crime is yahoos have used the differences in appearance caused by minute genetic variation to justify beating up on significant subsets of the human species.
You might have a more direct argument against GM, which at one point was in the habit of buying well-functioning transit systems (primarily trolleys), dismantling them, replacing them with buses, and then running down the bus service so people would buy private autos instead. See for example here.
To the extent that Exxon and other big energy companies lobby against clean air laws, mandated fuel efficiency, etc., one could argue they are contributing to climate-change deaths. 'Course that still doesn't let the individual consumer off the hook. Lots o'blame to go around on this one...
The 150,000 is not an indicator that they're "making stuff up". In fact, if anything, it's an indicator that they're not. As a general rule, it's the whackos and crazies who claim to measure huge system effects to absurdly high resolution.
Clearly, for this number, it is a statistical estimate, the grungy output of which is then rounded to a convenient near number.
Running from a fight isn't always the right thing to do. And if you think Iraq is a fiasco, look at how many people died from not standing up to Hitler early enough. Hint: it's not measured in thousands, but TENS of MILLIONS.
Actually... there is an emerging consensus among historians that Neville Chamberlain quite possibly has gotten a raw deal. Despite the video-friendly meme of returning from Munich waving the paper and saying "Peace in our time", Chamberlain had a pretty good grasp of the diplomatic and military situation. In 1938, the British rearmament had barely begun, the British people were not ready to endure a war, and -- most importantly -- the Chain Home system of radar stations had not yet been deployed. The balance of power was stacked heavily in favor of Germany but it was also clear that, with the Allies finally starting to wake up (and their economies starting to stir), that balance would increasingly tilt toward them. Chamberlain knew that. Hell, even Hitler knew that -- it's why he was pushing so hard for (limited) war in 1938 and why he flew into a rage when Chamberlain "tricked" him into a peace conference.
So maybe the lesson from history actually is, sometimes, it's a good idea to wait out the situation. Sometimes, time really is on your side... no matter how it looks at the moment.
Of course, the other lesson of history is, you're gonna get roasted for "appeasement".
How is the outcome of that any better than if they forward the letter?
Because when the dance is done, the University is on a different side. This, I think, is another of those "there are two types of people in the world..." things. Some people judge on outcome only. Since, in either case, the students are sued, the University should take the path that consumes the fewest resources -- i.e., the U should send the letters and so avoid being named in the suit as well.
Others judge by intent as well. In the current case, the University is working for the RIAA against (arguably) the interests of its students. At the very least, it is tacitly condoning the bullying tactics of the RIAA. If they forced the association to go through with a John Doe suit, then they would be taking a principled stand. Of course the stand would cost them, but that's what makes principled stands rare and noteworthy.
This is all for the sake of argument. I am no lawyer and I don't know what options the University actually has. One knows that if this were criminal, their hands would be tied. Civil cases are murkier, I think. Also, the University might have decided that the students are engaging in illegal downloading and so don't deserve the protection beyond what was offered.
Yes, the RIAA are evil, and deal with despicable business practices. No, musicians are not sellouts for getting payed to do what they love.
You admit up front that the organization is "evil" (at least, unethical) and is using "despicable" tactics. You sign with them anyway, in the hopes of making money. How is that anything but selling out? You are literally selling your integrity.
Look, maybe it's hard for someone to make a living as a musician without signing (though of course it is possible). Boo-hoo. You don't have a right to that living. Like any other job, it's going to involve some cost. For my job, I have to grade papers -- it's part of the price I pay to be a teacher. Every year I have to balance what I'm asked to do against what I get out of it. If my school told me to solicit money from the kids, or their parents (beyond tuition), I would quit. I wouldn't do it and then whine that they were "forcing" me to do something bad because I deserve to work here.
Bands signing with the RIAA are helping the association maintain its near-monopoly on music, which is a key pillar of their "despicable" tactics. No one signing today could reasonably claim to not know what the RIAA does or how it behaves -- and if you don't, it's because you're being negligent in informing yourself about your business "partners". Each person is going to have to make their own decision as to whether the benefit outweighs the burden... but bands who sign are part of the problem and don't get a free pass just because it's "doing something they love".
Fair enough. Except of course that in this case, the "price" of the immigrant laborer is artificially low, as they were allowed in under the assumption that there were no qualified Americans. In other words, Congress lowered the entry requirements (and hence the cost) for a reason that turns out this company is trying to compromise. It sounds a little like fraud to me.
Interesting. To me, the idea of just "voting with your feet" -- allowing the company to continue to do wrong, just so long as it doesn't directly affect you -- strikes me as what's wrong with society today. Maybe it's just because I am a child of New York City and grew up during the period where my city almost died because people fled their problems rather than trying to solve them. Sometimes it makes sense to get out of a bad situation. Sometimes, though, the right thing to do is fix the bad situation.
This is really just the expected, but warped, end result of a morality system that is Manichean: Either you're a saint or you're Satan.
It is entirely possible for the US to have done bad things and still have been superior to the USSR. I would in fact argue that's actually the case. The US did terrible things that were both mistaken (i.e., counterproductive) and wrong (i.e., unethical). There's a lot of blood on our hands and it will take decades to get clean, if it's even possible. All of that said, you have to be out of your mind to argue seriously that the USSR and the USA were moral equivalents. And as someone else pointed out, perhaps the best proof is the extreme effort required by the Soviets to keep their citizens in. The flow of people was overwhelmingly East to West.
It's hilarious to see the US attacked for "not allowing elections" in Korea and Viet Nam (making us the Big Bad), whereas the USSR was just "licking its wounds" and would have been all daisies-and-sugar if we (the Big Bad, remember) hadn't been such bullies.
Ask the Poles about those "free and open elections" promised by Uncle Joe and allowed, oh, never while the USSR stood.
I don't know why but I am still amazed whenever I read a post that makes the leap from "the US made mistakes during the Cold War" to "There never really was a Communist threat". That's just absurd. We certainly should have played truer to our ideals but the fact that we didn't doesn't make the wolf into a sheep.
Why is it only the US seems to "get" freedom of speech?
Oh, we don't. We got lucky, in our history, in that the right group of guys at the right moment in time did "get" it. But the vast majority of the country has never really understood or embraced the principle -- any more than the majority has understood or embraced freedom of religion. Enlightenment-style democracy is hard and most people are, and have been, unwilling to exert themselves to be worthy of it.
Just because it isn't unconstitutional doesn't mean it isn't wrong.
Yeah, but "just because it isn't constitutional" does mean the Supreme Court shouldn't touch it (except for the limited cases of original jurisdiction, of course).
"Right or wrong" is a function of the legislature. Courts deal in "legal or illegal" (or, for the Supremes, "constitutional or unconstitutional"). I for one am glad that's the way it is, because that's a lot more adjudicable. Getting agreement on what's written down in the law and how the facts fit that -- that's hard but doable. Getting agreement on "right and wrong" requires deliberation, consensus building, and usually, compromise -- and that's better suited to a democratically elected legislature than an appointed judge.
Of course that's long, messy, and almost never fully satisfying -- which is why almost everyone (even those most loudly decrying "activist judges") clamor for the courts to "settle" issues.
The claim Firefly fans have that high sales of the DVD imply high viewer figures does not seem to be born out by circumstances.
OK. So what are the lines of evidence that says otherwise? Because I think the prima facie implication of high sales is that, you know, someone is buying them. If millions of sets sell, that would seem to imply that millions of people want to watch the show. I concede that these might be other explanations, but none of them are as obvious as that.
Just to be clear: You're saying something like: People are rotten. Because people are rotten, real life is harsh. Because real life is harsh, we need to become better people (to reduce the harshness, I suppose). Utopias would imply an existence without that motivation, so we'd all stay rotten people. Hence, it's good that no utopias do or can exist.
But... the point of a utopia is exactly that people aren't rotten (in the utopia). It's not about easy living -- natural disasters can still occur, people still die, etc. It's about everyone working together for the net greater good. It's about people not competing in a life that's nasty, brutish, and short. So if a utopia did exist, its inhabitants wouldn't need to better themselves.
I agree that utopias don't exist in the Universe we inhabit. But I'm not sure I buy the idea that the impossibility of a utopia is a good thing. It sounds a lot like rationalization to me.
Side snark: Of course "There's no such thing as a utopia--real or virtual". The name was chosen by Sir Thomas More specifically from the Greek that means "no place" or "place that cannot exist".:)
It's funny you should mention that. 'The People' get to vote for their government, not their television.
It's funny you should mention that. The powers that be present two nearly identical candidates on television and 'the people' get to vote for the one they like the most, really doesn't sound very empowering.
And that's why it's the end of the Republic -- because the citizenry accepts that. Despite overheated claims on both sides, most elections in America are in fact legal and fair. It isn't Soviet Russia where there are insurmountable legal barriers to running. But Americans don't care enough (or don't have enough faith or whatever) to demand real choices and real candidates -- or, for that matter, even to run for office on any level. Most people just want to feel their opinion is heard somewhere. Democracy is hard work and touch-tone dialing the latest American Idol null poll is easy.
People say they don't vote because the system is unresponsive. But in fact, the system is unresponsive because they don't vote.
There's also a horizon problem, in that most Americans want a payoff within a short time period -- an hour, tops, but preferably before the end of the next commercial break. Real change takes time, as real systems have social inertia. So we can't be bothered to focus on any process long enough to achieve real success.
But in the end, the hell of it is, this truly is a representative democracy. We get exactly whom we deserve, and they're Just Like Us. More's the pity.
You're right. People had to buy the Firefly discs. They had to decide to commit $50ish to get 13 episodes, many of which they probably didn't see on TV due to Fox' crazy scheduling. They had to see a series shown out of order and believe it was worth watching. And of course, Firefly also ends abruptly, with major questions unanswered and the Big Bad Plot just beginning to be revealed.
Yet, with all those reasons not to buy, people went out and bought it anyway. Babylon 5 had five years to build a fan base and had a complete arc with a definite end. (OK, and then an extra, useless season, but hey...) Firefly had enough time to do little more than promise something good, and it was brutally clear that promise was not going to be fulfilled on network TV. People bought the discs anyway.
But all of the yin and yang here is irrelevant. What mattered about the Firefly sales is, they were sales... people committing cold, hard cash -- the only thing TV executives actually give a damn about. And people are still committing that cash, three years after cancellation.
If the attorneys were fired as a way to interfere in ongoing corruption investigations -- as has been alleged though admittedly not proven -- then I'm pretty sure it is illegal. Even if it isn't illegal, it's "improper enough" that it does justify the time and effort expended by Congress. People have a right and a need to know if the justice system is being politicized to that extent.
Even though people have been tongue-in-cheek, I've seen a useful distinction here: Democrats who commit fraud tend to prefer voter fraud -- people voting twice, the dead voting, etc. Republicans who commit fraud tend to prefer election fraud -- gaming the system, disenfranchising voters, making "mistakes" that can't be corrected before the election, etc.
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Because what you suggest involves telling the citizenry that raising well-adjusted, normal children is somehow their (the parents') responsibility. You never lose an election telling the voters that some faceless Enemy is threatening their way of life. You never win an election by telling the voters it's all their fault.
Given a large enough sample of similar cases you can make reasonable estimates of the odds. The example you semi-quote sounds more like C3PO talking about surviving the trip through the asteroid belt. (Yes, I'm a geek, let's move on.) In an Empire spanning allegedly millions of worlds, people have probably flown through asteroid belts tens or hundreds of thousands of times even in just recent history. So 3PO just needs to know what fraction of them survived and invert it.
It's really bad when the characters encounter a situation which they admit is without precedent, and then one quotes a probability.
I hope you begin and end every day thanking whatever powers you believe in that not everyone is like you. It's a recipe for disaster. The system can only support a small number of parasites... of which you, by your admission, are one.
And there it is, ladies and gentlemen -- the root cause of the decline of Western civilization and the fall of the American republic...
Indeed, the best sign that progressivism is on the right track is the vitriol it suffers from both sides...
Right. And I'm sure that has so much more to do with their DNA than with, say, the fact that the Europeans came in and screwed them over for five centuries? And I'm sure it's also genetics that ensured that the most prosperous and stable countries are the ones which just happened not to have fallen to colonial administration?
Please. The only reason there's even a tenuous, spurious apparent link between ethnicity and crime is yahoos have used the differences in appearance caused by minute genetic variation to justify beating up on significant subsets of the human species.
You might have a more direct argument against GM, which at one point was in the habit of buying well-functioning transit systems (primarily trolleys), dismantling them, replacing them with buses, and then running down the bus service so people would buy private autos instead. See for example here.
To the extent that Exxon and other big energy companies lobby against clean air laws, mandated fuel efficiency, etc., one could argue they are contributing to climate-change deaths. 'Course that still doesn't let the individual consumer off the hook. Lots o'blame to go around on this one...
Are you really quibbling with sig figs?
The 150,000 is not an indicator that they're "making stuff up". In fact, if anything, it's an indicator that they're not. As a general rule, it's the whackos and crazies who claim to measure huge system effects to absurdly high resolution.
Clearly, for this number, it is a statistical estimate, the grungy output of which is then rounded to a convenient near number.
Actually... there is an emerging consensus among historians that Neville Chamberlain quite possibly has gotten a raw deal. Despite the video-friendly meme of returning from Munich waving the paper and saying "Peace in our time", Chamberlain had a pretty good grasp of the diplomatic and military situation. In 1938, the British rearmament had barely begun, the British people were not ready to endure a war, and -- most importantly -- the Chain Home system of radar stations had not yet been deployed. The balance of power was stacked heavily in favor of Germany but it was also clear that, with the Allies finally starting to wake up (and their economies starting to stir), that balance would increasingly tilt toward them. Chamberlain knew that. Hell, even Hitler knew that -- it's why he was pushing so hard for (limited) war in 1938 and why he flew into a rage when Chamberlain "tricked" him into a peace conference.
So maybe the lesson from history actually is, sometimes, it's a good idea to wait out the situation. Sometimes, time really is on your side... no matter how it looks at the moment.
Of course, the other lesson of history is, you're gonna get roasted for "appeasement".
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!"
Because when the dance is done, the University is on a different side. This, I think, is another of those "there are two types of people in the world..." things. Some people judge on outcome only. Since, in either case, the students are sued, the University should take the path that consumes the fewest resources -- i.e., the U should send the letters and so avoid being named in the suit as well.
Others judge by intent as well. In the current case, the University is working for the RIAA against (arguably) the interests of its students. At the very least, it is tacitly condoning the bullying tactics of the RIAA. If they forced the association to go through with a John Doe suit, then they would be taking a principled stand. Of course the stand would cost them, but that's what makes principled stands rare and noteworthy.
This is all for the sake of argument. I am no lawyer and I don't know what options the University actually has. One knows that if this were criminal, their hands would be tied. Civil cases are murkier, I think. Also, the University might have decided that the students are engaging in illegal downloading and so don't deserve the protection beyond what was offered.
You admit up front that the organization is "evil" (at least, unethical) and is using "despicable" tactics. You sign with them anyway, in the hopes of making money. How is that anything but selling out? You are literally selling your integrity.
Look, maybe it's hard for someone to make a living as a musician without signing (though of course it is possible). Boo-hoo. You don't have a right to that living. Like any other job, it's going to involve some cost. For my job, I have to grade papers -- it's part of the price I pay to be a teacher. Every year I have to balance what I'm asked to do against what I get out of it. If my school told me to solicit money from the kids, or their parents (beyond tuition), I would quit. I wouldn't do it and then whine that they were "forcing" me to do something bad because I deserve to work here.
Bands signing with the RIAA are helping the association maintain its near-monopoly on music, which is a key pillar of their "despicable" tactics. No one signing today could reasonably claim to not know what the RIAA does or how it behaves -- and if you don't, it's because you're being negligent in informing yourself about your business "partners". Each person is going to have to make their own decision as to whether the benefit outweighs the burden... but bands who sign are part of the problem and don't get a free pass just because it's "doing something they love".
Fair enough. Except of course that in this case, the "price" of the immigrant laborer is artificially low, as they were allowed in under the assumption that there were no qualified Americans. In other words, Congress lowered the entry requirements (and hence the cost) for a reason that turns out this company is trying to compromise. It sounds a little like fraud to me.
Interesting. To me, the idea of just "voting with your feet" -- allowing the company to continue to do wrong, just so long as it doesn't directly affect you -- strikes me as what's wrong with society today. Maybe it's just because I am a child of New York City and grew up during the period where my city almost died because people fled their problems rather than trying to solve them. Sometimes it makes sense to get out of a bad situation. Sometimes, though, the right thing to do is fix the bad situation.
This is really just the expected, but warped, end result of a morality system that is Manichean: Either you're a saint or you're Satan.
It is entirely possible for the US to have done bad things and still have been superior to the USSR. I would in fact argue that's actually the case. The US did terrible things that were both mistaken (i.e., counterproductive) and wrong (i.e., unethical). There's a lot of blood on our hands and it will take decades to get clean, if it's even possible. All of that said, you have to be out of your mind to argue seriously that the USSR and the USA were moral equivalents. And as someone else pointed out, perhaps the best proof is the extreme effort required by the Soviets to keep their citizens in. The flow of people was overwhelmingly East to West.
It's hilarious to see the US attacked for "not allowing elections" in Korea and Viet Nam (making us the Big Bad), whereas the USSR was just "licking its wounds" and would have been all daisies-and-sugar if we (the Big Bad, remember) hadn't been such bullies.
Ask the Poles about those "free and open elections" promised by Uncle Joe and allowed, oh, never while the USSR stood.
I don't know why but I am still amazed whenever I read a post that makes the leap from "the US made mistakes during the Cold War" to "There never really was a Communist threat". That's just absurd. We certainly should have played truer to our ideals but the fact that we didn't doesn't make the wolf into a sheep.
Oh, we don't. We got lucky, in our history, in that the right group of guys at the right moment in time did "get" it. But the vast majority of the country has never really understood or embraced the principle -- any more than the majority has understood or embraced freedom of religion. Enlightenment-style democracy is hard and most people are, and have been, unwilling to exert themselves to be worthy of it.
Yeah, but "just because it isn't constitutional" does mean the Supreme Court shouldn't touch it (except for the limited cases of original jurisdiction, of course).
"Right or wrong" is a function of the legislature. Courts deal in "legal or illegal" (or, for the Supremes, "constitutional or unconstitutional"). I for one am glad that's the way it is, because that's a lot more adjudicable. Getting agreement on what's written down in the law and how the facts fit that -- that's hard but doable. Getting agreement on "right and wrong" requires deliberation, consensus building, and usually, compromise -- and that's better suited to a democratically elected legislature than an appointed judge.
Of course that's long, messy, and almost never fully satisfying -- which is why almost everyone (even those most loudly decrying "activist judges") clamor for the courts to "settle" issues.
... if we're gonna find Lorien at the bottom?
It's easy to find something worth dying for. Do you have anything worth living for?
OK. So what are the lines of evidence that says otherwise? Because I think the prima facie implication of high sales is that, you know, someone is buying them. If millions of sets sell, that would seem to imply that millions of people want to watch the show. I concede that these might be other explanations, but none of them are as obvious as that.
Just to be clear: You're saying something like: People are rotten. Because people are rotten, real life is harsh. Because real life is harsh, we need to become better people (to reduce the harshness, I suppose). Utopias would imply an existence without that motivation, so we'd all stay rotten people. Hence, it's good that no utopias do or can exist.
:)
But... the point of a utopia is exactly that people aren't rotten (in the utopia). It's not about easy living -- natural disasters can still occur, people still die, etc. It's about everyone working together for the net greater good. It's about people not competing in a life that's nasty, brutish, and short. So if a utopia did exist, its inhabitants wouldn't need to better themselves.
I agree that utopias don't exist in the Universe we inhabit. But I'm not sure I buy the idea that the impossibility of a utopia is a good thing. It sounds a lot like rationalization to me.
Side snark: Of course "There's no such thing as a utopia--real or virtual". The name was chosen by Sir Thomas More specifically from the Greek that means "no place" or "place that cannot exist".
And that's why it's the end of the Republic -- because the citizenry accepts that. Despite overheated claims on both sides, most elections in America are in fact legal and fair. It isn't Soviet Russia where there are insurmountable legal barriers to running. But Americans don't care enough (or don't have enough faith or whatever) to demand real choices and real candidates -- or, for that matter, even to run for office on any level. Most people just want to feel their opinion is heard somewhere. Democracy is hard work and touch-tone dialing the latest American Idol null poll is easy.
People say they don't vote because the system is unresponsive. But in fact, the system is unresponsive because they don't vote.
There's also a horizon problem, in that most Americans want a payoff within a short time period -- an hour, tops, but preferably before the end of the next commercial break. Real change takes time, as real systems have social inertia. So we can't be bothered to focus on any process long enough to achieve real success.
But in the end, the hell of it is, this truly is a representative democracy. We get exactly whom we deserve, and they're Just Like Us. More's the pity.
You're right. People had to buy the Firefly discs. They had to decide to commit $50ish to get 13 episodes, many of which they probably didn't see on TV due to Fox' crazy scheduling. They had to see a series shown out of order and believe it was worth watching. And of course, Firefly also ends abruptly, with major questions unanswered and the Big Bad Plot just beginning to be revealed.
Yet, with all those reasons not to buy, people went out and bought it anyway. Babylon 5 had five years to build a fan base and had a complete arc with a definite end. (OK, and then an extra, useless season, but hey...) Firefly had enough time to do little more than promise something good, and it was brutally clear that promise was not going to be fulfilled on network TV. People bought the discs anyway.
But all of the yin and yang here is irrelevant. What mattered about the Firefly sales is, they were sales... people committing cold, hard cash -- the only thing TV executives actually give a damn about. And people are still committing that cash, three years after cancellation.
If the attorneys were fired as a way to interfere in ongoing corruption investigations -- as has been alleged though admittedly not proven -- then I'm pretty sure it is illegal. Even if it isn't illegal, it's "improper enough" that it does justify the time and effort expended by Congress. People have a right and a need to know if the justice system is being politicized to that extent.
Even though people have been tongue-in-cheek, I've seen a useful distinction here: Democrats who commit fraud tend to prefer voter fraud -- people voting twice, the dead voting, etc. Republicans who commit fraud tend to prefer election fraud -- gaming the system, disenfranchising voters, making "mistakes" that can't be corrected before the election, etc.