Exxonsecrets is also founded on a logical fallacy of ad homminem attacks or guilt by association - Associated with Exxon? Must be wrong. Work for an organisation that Exxon gives a donation to? Must be a stooge!
It's not an invalid point, when the great-grandparent post impugned all scientists who take government funding and then find evidence of global warming. The GGPP essentially said, "These government agencies have their Nefarious Agenda and people who get money from them are whoring themselves out, finding global warming because that leads to funding". The GPP then retorted "But private industry has an even larger motivation to find the other way, so you'd expect that funding whores would flock there". In that context, the idea of looking at funding sources is legitimate.
Um, sure I can. I can blame the party that actually does these things, rather than the one they tar with the label. I can blame the party that sweeps up 500 people and dumps them in a camp with no attempt to sort out the guilty and dangerous from the innocent and unlucky -- at least, no attempt until the courts forced it. I can blame the party that engaged in and then supported illegal wiretapping of American citizens in contravention of a law on the books and functioning for nearly 30 years. I can blame the party that detained American citizens without charge, denying them habeus corpus, a fair trial, or even access to counsel. I can blame the party whose President took a world's worth of sympathy and support and somehow twisted it into unprecendented -- and unprecedently widespread -- derision, loathing, and hate. I can blame the party whose President abrogated the Geneva Conventions. I can blame the party whose President ignored the advice of top military leaders and launched a ill-conceived war of choice under false pretenses against a nation that had nothing to do with the attacks that created the climate of fear allowing such a step.
I can blame the Republicans. You know why? Because it's their goddamned fault! I'm tired of this "both parties are just the same" bullshit. It's yet another myth propagated by people who know better but who need to hide the odious stench of their own misdeeds.
Restore the rule of law. Safeguard American liberty. Vote Democat on November 7
I can almost guarentee all these crazy power-grabbing laws will be either revoked or "sunsetted" by the Bush administration if his party looses the Presidential election.
What makes you think he'll allow the possibility of the Republicans losing the election?
The point of this party is to perpetuate its grasp on the government forever, no matter how many cherished freedoms, constitutional guarantees, or simple decent principles they have to jettison along the way. Ask the Democratic legislators from Texas who had to flee their state in an attempt to stop a controversial mid-term redistricting...
Those were spoken when the lander touched down. Six-plus hours later, the astronauts did an EVA, during which Armstrong said his famous "a", or not.
Or, to put too fine a point on it, your phrase was the first spoken from the lunar surface; Armstrong's "One small step..." was the first phrase spoken on the lunar surface.
The issue today is, was that a temporary lapse or a fundamental shift in the American polity? Considering that the House just legalized torture, I'm tending toward the latter.
This has the effect of curtailing suits that are filed simply to harass defendants, or to promote failing business models as the only choice available to the consumer, lest they be bankrupted in court.
But doesn't it also suppress legitimate suits by small players? A family believes that Johnny's cancer was caused by the chemicals dumped by a big company into the local pond. Can the family really afford to take on a huge company? Sure, you'd like to think the little guy would win, especially if he has facts on his side. But realistically, a team of high-powered lawyers can often overwhelm the talent a single family can hire... and then the family is liable to pay the fees of those same high-priced attorneys? I would think a lot of people would opt not to file the suit.
In essence, the company's deep pockets become a fleet of strategic bombers waiting in reserve, swooping down and annihilating any consumer that dares squeak.
I have never seen a "tort reform" that addresses that concern.
And in still other news, people actually read the text of the law and notice that it specifies "reasonable accomodation". No one's saying Target should change its business. The judge is saying that it's OK to proceed with the parts of the lawsuits dealing with the physical stores -- actually quite a limited ruling. The web-only parts were thrown out.
You couldn't sue Apple for making iPods because the deaf can't hear them. Since what an iPod does is, at root, auditory, there is no reasonable accommodation. But if Apple made the video iPod such that you had to use your hearing to navigate the video collection, they could conceivably be in trouble...
Night clubs don't have to admit everyone that comes knocking. is this the same thing?
It probably depends on what criteria they use to deny someone. I'm pretty sure a night club that posted a "Whites Only" sign -- or never let in anyone of color -- would find itself in court and losing. But I'm not an ADA or civil rights lawyer, so what do I know?
Someone isn't very good at political theory. Your vote can count even if it doesn't determine the outcome. (We'll leave aside all the obvious Diebold jokes about the vote not actually being counted.) Sure, most likely the contest will have a margin of more than one vote. That doesn't mean the individual votes didn't "count" (that's how we know the margin) or that they didn't "matter" (since they contributed to the aggregate outcome).
It's a really whiny, 2nd-grade kind of voter who demands his or her vote be the determining factor...
Technically aren't they just forbidden from having a non-zero "rest mass"?
Modern formulations recognize only rest mass. The concept of "relativistic mass" (that increases as you speed up) leads to a minefield of misconceptions stemming from the application of Newtonian connotations of "mass".
Of course, for any amount of energy, you can compute the equivalent mass by dividing by c^2. But that is, at best, a shorthand. The real issue is, gravity is generated by energy (of any type) and not by mass.
Sweden's Watergate? Then we can expect...
on
Sweden's Watergate
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
... in twenty-ish years, the people disgraced and chastened here will -- having nursed the interpretation that they were betrayed by democracy -- worm their way back into power, un-do any reforms that this sparks, and then lead Sweden into a disastrous war of choice under false pretenses lobbed against an isolated tinhorn dictator who was not not complicit in a major terrorist attack on their country. Bonus points if the tinhorn dictator happens to have been immplicated in a bizarre plot to assasinate the Prime Minister's father right after the father himself stepped down from the PM-ship.
Do you have any clue what "statute of limitations" even means? No matter how you slice it, this boils down to gotcha justice: We "know" you're guilty but these pesky constitutional or staturoty restrictions keep gumming up the works. But we're gonna "get" you, by God!
It's still an attempt to punish people for a crime of which the State is not otherwise able to convict them. It's wrong, pure and simple. Being put on an emotionally-charged list (such as a sex offender list) is not something that should be treated casually, by administrative fiat.
Let's ignore the constitutional issues here, what about the people who are falsely accused?
These are the same issue! What do you think is the root for all those awkward contitutional issues in the first place? No wonder the basic freedoms of this nation are withering, when people can abstract out "constitutional issues" as distinct from "protection of the innocenet"...
I'm sure someone involved in this process had the best of intentions seeing cases fall apart on technicalities or something, but
As much damage is done by self-righteous do-gooders as by all the evil men in the world. It's the same sin, an unshakable conviction that:I am Right" and so no limits can apply.
If a jury doesn't convict you of drunk driving, does that excuse you from paying the speeding ticket you were pulled over for?
No. But it does excuse me from suffering the penalties of the drunk driving statute. The speeding ticket is for a separate offense. Here's a situation: I am driving under the speed limit. A police officer pulls me over for DUI but the breathalyzer registers negative. Are you arguing that it's right for the cop to give me a speeding ticket? To make up for the fact he can't make the DUI stick?
This is a horrible game of "gotcha" justice. It gives the same momentary satisfaction as watching a vigilante wrestle the Bad Guy to the ground. But it's poison to the rule of law, which is the only hope for real sustained justice.
You don't get to "make up" for alleged failures of the system. There is a crime on the books here (sex offenses). THis new law allows the state to assign a penalty (being listed) for merely having someone think you might commit that crime. This isn't a nuanced attempt to find a balance of competing state interests. It's a blatant end-run around due process, the rule of law, and all those other pesky things that slow down a trial and get in the way of the more satisfying conviction and execution.
Yes, and that's a good thing. It's important. All the things you mention -- rules of admissibility, statutes of limitations, right to face an accuser, and so on -- were implemented for a reason. These "technicalities" protect the citizen from the untrammeled power of the State. They are the bedrock of the rule of law. I realize that the rule of law has taken on a quaint aura lately but please, can we agree that we shouldn't jettison it wholesale?
A colm and calm exterior is not sufficient to guarantee the veracity of a message, however it is a prerequisite
So all those people marching and chanting and acting up in the 1950s and 1960s were wrong? Equal civil rights is not a moral imperative in a free society? Should people just go back to the back of the bus?
Obviously passion doesn't guarantee truth. But it doesn't guarantee falsehood either. In fact I think passion is a good thing. Caring deeply is a good thing. Yes, it shouldn't degenerate into a deafening roar but that doesn't mean you should only whisper.
Indeed, a truly developed position admits of both passion and deliberation.
The invisible hand is only one-half of Adam Smith capitalism. It's the half that sounds nicer and all hunky-dory, but there's another side. It's called the "pin factory". Assume that one pin maker learns (before all others) to divide the labor in his factory (it's the 18th centurty, so all owners are "he"). This will be more efficient. So this manufacturer will be able to undercut his competition a little, garnering a slightly higher market share.
But the advantages of division of labor scale.
This means that the larger factory derives a proportionately greater benefit from division of labor. It's better to divide the tasks when you're moving 10,000 pins a day than 100. Thus, the factory with the highest throughput will have the lowest per-unit costs... meaning they can drop their price to garner even more market share, putting them even a little bit further ahead on the curve -- and the cycle repeats. Very rapidly you end up with only one pin factory, because its costs are so much lower than any competitor than it can drive them out of business. Then it's a monopoly "regulated" only by keeping its price just low enough to keep competition out.
In other words, monopoly is a natural outcome of capitalism. It's not the only natural outcome, though in fact it seems much more stable than a free market of many diverse players.
It's entry cost that determines how stable this is. In a market like telecom, where the cost of entry is high (laying fiber, getting right-of-way, building a network), it can be damn stable, even without governmental help. One reason that cell phone service is less monopolistic than landline service is that the physical cost of "string" the network is much lower, since you don't have to lay cable.
Knoweldge and the Wealth of Nations is an excellent, extremely readable introduction to the Pin Factory.
I'd love to see the news headlines when MegaTelco Inc. gets prosecuted for carrying child porn and their executives are held personally liable and end up going to prison.
That makes for good theater but bad law. You can't have secret laws in a free society; everything had to be out in the open. (I know, I know -- it's possible to bury a law so that no one knows it's there. Possible but sleazy.)
The point of a law like this would be to preserve net neutrality, not to punish people after they've broken it. We (OK, me; I can't speak for you) want it not to be broken in the first place.
Glial cells apparently aren't really just placeholders and heaters. Scientific American ran a really good article a while back called "Did Scientists Miss Half the Brain?". (There is what appears to be a summary at this location.) It details a modern understanding of brain structure, which has overturned the former conception of glial cells as "just" structural elements supporting neurons. It would seem that glial cells can both sense and emit neurotransmitters, and those neurotransmitters can affect the operation of neurons. So linked to the electrochemical network we usually think of as the brain is another purely chemical one as well.
Also, even in humans, there is a "superabundance" of glial cells, in that there are approximately 10 glial cells for every neuron.
Secondly, while the FISA judges may be responsive, the FISA application is over one hundred pages long, and takes a normal human more than 72 hours to fill out!
No, I'm sorry. You're going to have to source this pretty well before I'll believe it. If a FISA warrant application took more than 72 hours (3 days) to fill out, then only a little over 100 could be processed each year. In the 36 years of the court (from 1978 until 2004), over 18,000 warrants were granted. That's more than five times the amount possible with your estimate.
Not that it's actually relevant. FISA is the law of the land. The US Code makes it clear that FISA is the sole law governing this sort of surveillance. Wiretapping in contravention of FISA is illegal. Period. If the President thinks the law is bad, he has this amazing option: He can ask Congress to fix the law. He didn't do that. Not only has he never indicated what is "wrong" with FISA; he actually said that FISA (as updated after 9/11) provided him with the tools he needed -- at precisely the same time he began breaking the law.
These post facto justifications are exactly that: Rationalizations after the fact so as to obfuscate the fundamental issue, which is: The President knowingly, willfully, and repeatedly broke the law. Everything else is window dressing and dross.
OK, thanks. It's important to get the details right, since the wackos on the other side are going to harp on every mis-statement (while ignoring the bald-faced lying engaged in by the President).
Slashdot Mirror
It's not an invalid point, when the great-grandparent post impugned all scientists who take government funding and then find evidence of global warming. The GGPP essentially said, "These government agencies have their Nefarious Agenda and people who get money from them are whoring themselves out, finding global warming because that leads to funding". The GPP then retorted "But private industry has an even larger motivation to find the other way, so you'd expect that funding whores would flock there". In that context, the idea of looking at funding sources is legitimate.
Um, sure I can. I can blame the party that actually does these things, rather than the one they tar with the label. I can blame the party that sweeps up 500 people and dumps them in a camp with no attempt to sort out the guilty and dangerous from the innocent and unlucky -- at least, no attempt until the courts forced it. I can blame the party that engaged in and then supported illegal wiretapping of American citizens in contravention of a law on the books and functioning for nearly 30 years. I can blame the party that detained American citizens without charge, denying them habeus corpus, a fair trial, or even access to counsel. I can blame the party whose President took a world's worth of sympathy and support and somehow twisted it into unprecendented -- and unprecedently widespread -- derision, loathing, and hate. I can blame the party whose President abrogated the Geneva Conventions. I can blame the party whose President ignored the advice of top military leaders and launched a ill-conceived war of choice under false pretenses against a nation that had nothing to do with the attacks that created the climate of fear allowing such a step.
I can blame the Republicans. You know why? Because it's their goddamned fault! I'm tired of this "both parties are just the same" bullshit. It's yet another myth propagated by people who know better but who need to hide the odious stench of their own misdeeds.
Restore the rule of law. Safeguard American liberty. Vote Democat on November 7
What makes you think he'll allow the possibility of the Republicans losing the election?
The point of this party is to perpetuate its grasp on the government forever, no matter how many cherished freedoms, constitutional guarantees, or simple decent principles they have to jettison along the way. Ask the Democratic legislators from Texas who had to flee their state in an attempt to stop a controversial mid-term redistricting...
Those were spoken when the lander touched down. Six-plus hours later, the astronauts did an EVA, during which Armstrong said his famous "a", or not.
Or, to put too fine a point on it, your phrase was the first spoken from the lunar surface; Armstrong's "One small step..." was the first phrase spoken on the lunar surface.
Oh, that's easy. 2004 November 2.
The issue today is, was that a temporary lapse or a fundamental shift in the American polity? Considering that the House just legalized torture, I'm tending toward the latter.
Thanks. That was really informative.
But doesn't it also suppress legitimate suits by small players? A family believes that Johnny's cancer was caused by the chemicals dumped by a big company into the local pond. Can the family really afford to take on a huge company? Sure, you'd like to think the little guy would win, especially if he has facts on his side. But realistically, a team of high-powered lawyers can often overwhelm the talent a single family can hire
In essence, the company's deep pockets become a fleet of strategic bombers waiting in reserve, swooping down and annihilating any consumer that dares squeak.
I have never seen a "tort reform" that addresses that concern.
And in still other news, people actually read the text of the law and notice that it specifies "reasonable accomodation". No one's saying Target should change its business. The judge is saying that it's OK to proceed with the parts of the lawsuits dealing with the physical stores -- actually quite a limited ruling. The web-only parts were thrown out.
You couldn't sue Apple for making iPods because the deaf can't hear them. Since what an iPod does is, at root, auditory, there is no reasonable accommodation. But if Apple made the video iPod such that you had to use your hearing to navigate the video collection, they could conceivably be in trouble...
Exactly! That's why racial discrimination in commerce spontaneously disappeared right after the Civil War.
Oh, wait...
It probably depends on what criteria they use to deny someone. I'm pretty sure a night club that posted a "Whites Only" sign -- or never let in anyone of color -- would find itself in court and losing. But I'm not an ADA or civil rights lawyer, so what do I know?
Someone isn't very good at political theory. Your vote can count even if it doesn't determine the outcome. (We'll leave aside all the obvious Diebold jokes about the vote not actually being counted.) Sure, most likely the contest will have a margin of more than one vote. That doesn't mean the individual votes didn't "count" (that's how we know the margin) or that they didn't "matter" (since they contributed to the aggregate outcome).
It's a really whiny, 2nd-grade kind of voter who demands his or her vote be the determining factor...
Modern formulations recognize only rest mass. The concept of "relativistic mass" (that increases as you speed up) leads to a minefield of misconceptions stemming from the application of Newtonian connotations of "mass".
Of course, for any amount of energy, you can compute the equivalent mass by dividing by c^2. But that is, at best, a shorthand. The real issue is, gravity is generated by energy (of any type) and not by mass.
... in twenty-ish years, the people disgraced and chastened here will -- having nursed the interpretation that they were betrayed by democracy -- worm their way back into power, un-do any reforms that this sparks, and then lead Sweden into a disastrous war of choice under false pretenses lobbed against an isolated tinhorn dictator who was not not complicit in a major terrorist attack on their country. Bonus points if the tinhorn dictator happens to have been immplicated in a bizarre plot to assasinate the Prime Minister's father right after the father himself stepped down from the PM-ship.
Actually, they've decided they prefer power to either.
Do you have any clue what "statute of limitations" even means? No matter how you slice it, this boils down to gotcha justice: We "know" you're guilty but these pesky constitutional or staturoty restrictions keep gumming up the works. But we're gonna "get" you, by God!
It's still an attempt to punish people for a crime of which the State is not otherwise able to convict them. It's wrong, pure and simple. Being put on an emotionally-charged list (such as a sex offender list) is not something that should be treated casually, by administrative fiat.
These are the same issue! What do you think is the root for all those awkward contitutional issues in the first place? No wonder the basic freedoms of this nation are withering, when people can abstract out "constitutional issues" as distinct from "protection of the innocenet"...
As much damage is done by self-righteous do-gooders as by all the evil men in the world. It's the same sin, an unshakable conviction that
No. But it does excuse me from suffering the penalties of the drunk driving statute. The speeding ticket is for a separate offense. Here's a situation: I am driving under the speed limit. A police officer pulls me over for DUI but the breathalyzer registers negative. Are you arguing that it's right for the cop to give me a speeding ticket? To make up for the fact he can't make the DUI stick?
This is a horrible game of "gotcha" justice. It gives the same momentary satisfaction as watching a vigilante wrestle the Bad Guy to the ground. But it's poison to the rule of law, which is the only hope for real sustained justice.
You don't get to "make up" for alleged failures of the system. There is a crime on the books here (sex offenses). THis new law allows the state to assign a penalty (being listed) for merely having someone think you might commit that crime. This isn't a nuanced attempt to find a balance of competing state interests. It's a blatant end-run around due process, the rule of law, and all those other pesky things that slow down a trial and get in the way of the more satisfying conviction and execution.
Yes, and that's a good thing. It's important. All the things you mention -- rules of admissibility, statutes of limitations, right to face an accuser, and so on -- were implemented for a reason. These "technicalities" protect the citizen from the untrammeled power of the State. They are the bedrock of the rule of law. I realize that the rule of law has taken on a quaint aura lately but please, can we agree that we shouldn't jettison it wholesale?
So all those people marching and chanting and acting up in the 1950s and 1960s were wrong? Equal civil rights is not a moral imperative in a free society? Should people just go back to the back of the bus?
Obviously passion doesn't guarantee truth. But it doesn't guarantee falsehood either. In fact I think passion is a good thing. Caring deeply is a good thing. Yes, it shouldn't degenerate into a deafening roar but that doesn't mean you should only whisper.
Indeed, a truly developed position admits of both passion and deliberation.
The invisible hand is only one-half of Adam Smith capitalism. It's the half that sounds nicer and all hunky-dory, but there's another side. It's called the "pin factory". Assume that one pin maker learns (before all others) to divide the labor in his factory (it's the 18th centurty, so all owners are "he"). This will be more efficient. So this manufacturer will be able to undercut his competition a little, garnering a slightly higher market share.
But the advantages of division of labor scale.
This means that the larger factory derives a proportionately greater benefit from division of labor. It's better to divide the tasks when you're moving 10,000 pins a day than 100. Thus, the factory with the highest throughput will have the lowest per-unit costs... meaning they can drop their price to garner even more market share, putting them even a little bit further ahead on the curve -- and the cycle repeats. Very rapidly you end up with only one pin factory, because its costs are so much lower than any competitor than it can drive them out of business. Then it's a monopoly "regulated" only by keeping its price just low enough to keep competition out.
In other words, monopoly is a natural outcome of capitalism. It's not the only natural outcome, though in fact it seems much more stable than a free market of many diverse players.
It's entry cost that determines how stable this is. In a market like telecom, where the cost of entry is high (laying fiber, getting right-of-way, building a network), it can be damn stable, even without governmental help. One reason that cell phone service is less monopolistic than landline service is that the physical cost of "string" the network is much lower, since you don't have to lay cable.
Knoweldge and the Wealth of Nations is an excellent, extremely readable introduction to the Pin Factory.
That makes for good theater but bad law. You can't have secret laws in a free society; everything had to be out in the open. (I know, I know -- it's possible to bury a law so that no one knows it's there. Possible but sleazy.)
The point of a law like this would be to preserve net neutrality, not to punish people after they've broken it. We (OK, me; I can't speak for you) want it not to be broken in the first place.
Glial cells apparently aren't really just placeholders and heaters. Scientific American ran a really good article a while back called "Did Scientists Miss Half the Brain?". (There is what appears to be a summary at this location.) It details a modern understanding of brain structure, which has overturned the former conception of glial cells as "just" structural elements supporting neurons. It would seem that glial cells can both sense and emit neurotransmitters, and those neurotransmitters can affect the operation of neurons. So linked to the electrochemical network we usually think of as the brain is another purely chemical one as well.
Also, even in humans, there is a "superabundance" of glial cells, in that there are approximately 10 glial cells for every neuron.
No, I'm sorry. You're going to have to source this pretty well before I'll believe it. If a FISA warrant application took more than 72 hours (3 days) to fill out, then only a little over 100 could be processed each year. In the 36 years of the court (from 1978 until 2004), over 18,000 warrants were granted. That's more than five times the amount possible with your estimate.
Not that it's actually relevant. FISA is the law of the land. The US Code makes it clear that FISA is the sole law governing this sort of surveillance. Wiretapping in contravention of FISA is illegal. Period. If the President thinks the law is bad, he has this amazing option: He can ask Congress to fix the law. He didn't do that. Not only has he never indicated what is "wrong" with FISA; he actually said that FISA (as updated after 9/11) provided him with the tools he needed -- at precisely the same time he began breaking the law.
These post facto justifications are exactly that: Rationalizations after the fact so as to obfuscate the fundamental issue, which is: The President knowingly, willfully, and repeatedly broke the law. Everything else is window dressing and dross.
OK, thanks. It's important to get the details right, since the wackos on the other side are going to harp on every mis-statement (while ignoring the bald-faced lying engaged in by the President).