The current pope, like the last one, also believes that it's a good idea to preach against prophylactics in sub-Saharan Africa where AIDS is making ravages among his flock.
Or to put it another way, morality is the intersection of desired behaviour for two replicators, the genetic replicator that is the human being, and the socio-cultural memetic replicator that is the societal memetic system. Each has different imperatives and they don't always concur.
If my happiness depends on a functioning society, it's in my interest to have others follow behaviour that benefit me through that society. But if there's a behaviour that's beneficial for the group but bad for an individual, that individual is likely to avoid the behaviour if the personal negative repercussions are severe enough.
It takes a high level of situational understanding and attachment to a group to be willing to suborn one's own selfish desires for the benefit of the group. Unattached young men aren't usually the best candidates for making that choice in favour of the group. Basic training in the army, for instance, involves conditioning an individual to ensure that they will follow orders that protect their group at the possible expense of their own welfare. That conditioning usually involves attacking the young men's sense of self worth and remaking it contingent on their participation in the group.
As a last bit of food for thought, "moral" behaviour from certain individuals that benefits their group may be counterproductive for the group if other individuals in the group do it. For instance, large scale immunizations benefit a population only if there's a large fraction of the population which is immunized (>75%). However it can be harmful to individuals with abnormal immune responses to be subjected to strong frequent immunization stimuli like multi-agent immunization shots (i.e. flu shots), to the extent that it can severely exacerbate their immune disease and impair their ability to contribute to the group. Very few people have a sufficiently developed ethical understanding to be able to deal with such an apparent moral inconsistency.
Well I don't think that a list of survival behaviours for living on an otherwise unpopulated island with no hope of rescue really constitutes a moral framework. The only moral question in such a situation I can think of is whether you choose to keep on living as best you can, give up and die, or whether you can't make a clear decision between the two because you've lost hope but the survival instinct is too strong. After all, you can't reproduce and that's the other major instinctual imperative. Nearly all your decisions will flow from the choice to continue living or not, and from your personal tendencies and abilities for observation, deduction, knowledge retention, foresight, planning, and determination. They can only become "wrong" in the context of someone else with different abilities that would lead them to different choices given the base "moral" choice.
But otherwise, I'll concur you're right about ethics vs. morality not really being semantically separate. I'm just looking for shorthand descriptions for the different approaches for ethical/moral behaviour in relationships between individuals vs. the advantages of a particular behaviour for a socio-cultural group as a whole in spite of its potential disadvantages for individuals within that group.
As I said, I think that generally the benefits for the group outweigh the benefits for the few. But the answer isn't always clear cut. Something that may seem advantageous for the individual and disadvantageous for the group in the short run may be advantageous for the group in the long run. For instance allowing behaviour that leads to greater personal happiness at the expense of short term productivity may be better for the group if it avoids bouts of social unrest that waste most of the group's productivity. I think of religious-based moral systems as memetic systems and therefore assume that they have developed in a competitive environment and that they can show great insight into how to deal with some problems caused by the human condition and living in society. However they are also a product of the environment in which they developed and don't adjust well to rapid change. So while religious moralities provide useful insights into how humans and societies interact, some parts of them are no longer relevant to the conditions in a modern 21st century developed nation or even a not-so-modern 21st century undeveloped nation, other parts are applicable to the latter and not the former, and yet other parts are still applicable to all.
I think we're arguing two sides of the same coin on A.
You said "There were, in my understanding, a couple main reasons for monogamous relationships - separation of labor, which increases the amount of food a family can produce for their young,"
And I said "It's a codification and enforcement of one particular reproductive strategy that helps provide a stable environment for raising kids." Increasing the amount of food for the young is one aspect of a stable environment for raising kids. A dominant one I'll grant you, but not the only one, particularly in a society with increasing social and technological complexity.
I'll continue, using "separation of labour" in quotes because either parent of non-mammalian offspring can care for/feed them interchangeably. The advantages of "separation of labour" for raising offspring are an evolutionary advantage for the male only if he can insure that the offspring is his. Otherwise he's wasting his energy on raising another's offspring without reproducing and any instincts for pair-bonding behaviour will not be passed on. The female's genes always win because she's always the biological mother but her offspring can only reap the advantages of the separation of labour if she can find a male willing to raise the offspring. That chance is improved if she pair-bonds as well, but the genetic feedback loop is not as strong as it is for the male's genes.
Hence the preference for some males for a monogamous relationship and the instincts in many species to discourage or fight secondary suitors. "Pair-bonding" would seem to be a biological advantage that long predates "marriage" as a socio-religious concept. However in certain primates like the gorillas (which are dominant polygamous), you also have examples of females occasionally having secret trysts with unattached foreign males rather than the dominant male of the tribe to increase genetic diversity. You also have observations of subordinate males sometimes having non-consensual sex with females. I maintain that they are mainly different reproduction strategies and that pair bonding is just one of those, but one which has provides more benefits for society in the production of new members.
When referring to psychological advantage, what I was referring to was the study of human nature and human behaviour. Psychology doesn't have to exist as a modern science for people to observe that children with two parents get better care and generally develop better than children with only one or no parents. Or to observe that you have a higher than average representation of single parent offspring causing trouble in a society. You also don't need to have an understanding of germ theory to see a correlation between people going mad (from syphilis) and a history of anal sex or large numbers of sexual partners.
If the leader of a group, or someone with significant influence, makes those observations and manages to decrease the destructive behaviour, the group will prosper and the meme will spread. while pair-bonding instincts may have been at the root of marriage customs, and related reproductive advantages at the root of proscriptions against extra-marital sex, its secondary advantages for the containment of STDs would also have helped those societies and memes spread. That said, nowadays, we have much more effective methods of decreasing the propagation of STDs than the advocation of abstinence. Advocating now against prophylactics and contraception and in favour of abstinence instead is, I think, deeply ignorant and immoral.
An interesting side question is: over the long term, does the marriage meme actually weaken the biological pair-bond imperative because it is partially replaced by social one which enforces on those without the instincts the same behaviours and benefits of those with them? Or do the instincts get stronger or remain unaffected instead?
Anyways the real point was that the OP claimed that society was structured around marriage. I think that marriage is just one part of the me
can we build a battery pack good enough for 790 mile range, with NO loss of power over that range, that weighs 250lbs?
No, but that may be why they're looking at fuel cells which have different performance characteristics than battery packs.
My guess is that they really want to use it for military/police UAVs where getting rid of the noise from a combustion engine will seriously improve stealth operation modes. Smaller surveillance-oriented versions could perhaps be dropped from a mother ship and have smaller range requirements than you indicate.
"What do I do when morality conflicts with ethics?"
You decide which is more important to you. The main conflicts within the US today lie between those who believe in an ethics-based interpretation of the constitution, vs. those who think "morality" is more important. Do you believe more in individual freedoms or in the good of the whole?
And fundamentally, morality and society is more important. Even if you're so physically and intellectually gifted that you would do quite well even under the breakdown of society, you would probably still be less well off than you are now (unless you live in poverty in the third world, which is why society breaks down there so much more easily). But the religious fundamentalists are advocating a version of morality which has become partially obsolete due to advancement in technology and knowledge, so their crappy understanding of morality tends to give it an undeservedly bad reputation.
However, society is structured around marriage, so from its perspective adultery is a bad thing. I totally agree with other parts of your post that seem to claim that the difference between ethics and morals is that ethics are about what is good for individuals whereas morals are what is good for society. However the morals aren't an end in themselves. Society and customs can change and adapt, what doesn't change is the underlying reasons for the customs and morals. Marriage exists for two reasons:
a) It's a codification and enforcement of one particular reproductive strategy that helps provide a stable environment for raising kids. It makes more psychologically-balanced citizens and helps social stability as a result, as opposed to the "impregnate every woman you can" strategy that spreads its adopters' genes but generally doesn't produce as well-rounded citizens. b) By requiring marriage for intercourse, you limit exchange of sexual body fluids. If you don't have prophylactics, there is a whole class of diseases with decreased levels of transmission (and reduced chances of turning into a pandemic) as a result. Those diseases can decrease worker productivity, and hence are bad for society. See AIDS and Africa.
If you don't want kids and take precautions that don't just stop pregnancy but also prevent the spread of STDs, I don't really see that as innately immoral. If you lie to your partners to get them into bed, then that's unethical. The sexual revolution and the pill were problems because they weakened a) and didn't address b)
So due to the above, I don't really have a problem with gay marriage. a) The custom against sodomy is due to the spread of disease due to anal intercourse. The tissues of the colon didn't evolve to take the stresses of that activity and the resulting micro-tears provide too easy an infection path. If you didn't have any understanding of germ theory and you saw enough libertines or practitioners of anal sex dying of syphilis, you would probably think they were being punished by some supernatural entity as well. I hear it's a slow and painful way to die. So is anal sex while protected against infection still sodomy? Not in my book. It's not my cup of tea, but I don't have a problem with it if you take the right precautions.
b) If two gays get married in an exclusive relationship then it decreases their chance of getting and passing on STDs. That's bad for society how?
There, fixed that for you. For nuclear power plants to be safe in the US, you have to have them built and run by non-profit or governmental organizations and heavily supervised by a third-party. Why? Because profit-oriented companies in the US repeatedly place profit first and safety second unless they are forced to. Since your governmental system is currently far too susceptible to lobbying and a private nuclear industry (building billion dollar plants) has plenty of money to throw around over time to weaken government oversight, the only way to have a safe nuclear program in the US (and probably elsewhere) is to take the profit motive out of the equation. Yes, it will be less "efficiently" run than if private ventures were used, but it will be safer. With nuclear, that's a tradeoff you should be willing to take, otherwise you risk having more accidents and uselessly setting back the industry for another 4 or 5 decades.
Letting him interfere with the judicial branch means that he is essentially above the law as he can quash legal challenges as he sees fit. Like, for instance, the illegal spying lawsuit that's been thrown out for "national security" reasons. I don't know why people have started to throw around the word "fascism"...
Or like the eight US attorneys who were fired because they were getting a little too close to improprieties by Republicans or because they wouldn't speed up an investigation into one alleged Democrat lawmaker's improprieties to meet an election timetable. They were fired under the pretense of poor job performance even though "at least five of [the U.S. attorneys] received positive job evaluations before they were ordered to step down" and one of the fired U.S. attorneys, John McKay, of the Western District of Washington, received a "glowing performance review" from the Justice Department seven months before he was forced out
Some of their replacements are poorly qualified Republican political flunkies.
Your other line of defense against fascism was the 4th estate and it's pretty clear in whose pocket the media conglomerates are in now.
You may not have fascism yet, but the stage is well set.
So he couldn't have rented a camera that would allow him to take a picture of the thief in low light levels? With the gun as backup if the thief came after him?
I'm not familiar with the case, but is there any indication that the farmer's safety was in danger? Or did he decide to shoot first and ask questions later? I agree the farmer was being wronged, but it does seem as though he may have used excessive force. If he is in jail, then it sounds like a judge or jury thought so too.
How could Gore have voted for the invasion since he was no longer a Senator in 2003? He couldn't.
-- My personal impression of US capitalist "libertarians" is that they come off as spoiled brats who want to be able to do whatever they want, Tragedy of the Commons be damned.
Sounds like DRM that ties a key to hardware is incompatible with reliable storage mechanisms required for enterprise-class systems.
There. Fixed that for you. Enterprises don't put up with this crap if an alternative exists, and they often have the purchasing power to ensure that alternative exists. Consumers shouldn't have to either.
It's good for VMware that they still have a significant edge in management and failover tools as compared to Linux-based solutions using Xen and KVM/QEMU. When the latter two start getting sufficiently sophisticated, CIOs worth their salt will look at moving to Xen or KVM not because of licencing costs, but because of the hassle (and additional failure modes) of dealing with the new Licence Manager in ESX 3.0/VI 2.0
You're kidding right? Read either Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky and you'll realize that the opposite may be what happens, since that's where the real benefit is, if you're unethical enough. Taking normal people and turning them into highly focused savants. Well OK, Autistics and Asperger's patients probably need more supervision than you would want, but you could use that as a starting point.
You would probably have to start them young though. Given that improving skill in many mental activities comes from repeated practice, perhaps savant abilities in high-functioning autism sufferers comes from the single-minded focus that soemtimes results from the autism.
It's also the form. Prior to being mined, many of those metals in their natural form are chemically bound with other atoms in minerals. Having them as leached ions in the environment (and if you're away from the coast, often eventually in the drinking water) makes them much more dangerous.
They're also short-sighted. Malaria and its anopheles mosquito carrier are also in Central and South America. With the advent of global climate change and warming, its pretty highly likely it will eventually spread to southern parts of the US as well.
Nah, while there are some who fit the profile you cite, many of them are immigrants, or children of immigrants, who traded a few years of service for a chance to become USA citizens. Soldiers who have seen many of their peers frequently discriminated against by the average American you're enjoining to rise up. If they think their citizenship and escape from poverty is on the line, they'll shoot. A good portion of the US military is effectively a mercenary army bought with a highly valuable commodity, US citizenships that allow them to legitimately work in the US economy. If the people didn't care enough about their lives to avoid re-electing the people who sent them to Iraq, why the hell should they care about that subset who are ready to overthrow the elected government and the rule of law?
USA soldiers are more noble than the idiot voters who have complacently let themselves be manipulated and let things get this bad, but they're not that noble.
Besides, who could they expect you would put in power? The head of some militia group in Montana? It's not like you could keep the elected Congress since they have the power to impeach members of the administration but have failed to do so. Clearly not trustworthy. So it's going to be survival of the fittest with whoever commands the most guns taking power. Maybe the head of the NRA? And they'll probably have a majority of Christian fundamentalists who will think it's a good idea to try all those doctors and nurses who have provided abortion services since the 60's. Capital punishment of course. Or maybe you'll get a dictator who gets bought by corporate interests for a real fascist state. Internal revolutions can be a real bitch. Seriously, learn from the French experience on this one, for once.
Oh, no, I was completely serious. I wanted to make it clear how such a feature easily could be abused to prevent legitimate recordings, in manners fundamentally dangerous to democracy and modern civilization.
Heck, it cuts both ways! I could see criminals using it to prevent security recording devices from functioning while they perform crimes. Say, while performing a bank robbery or to kill a police officer who has stopped them when they are carrying drugs or dead bodies in their cars. It's just ludicrous how this can be abused and the people who would promote this legislation without considering such scenarios should be branded in the press as grossly incompetent and unfit to hold those offices.
Well, if you were a politician and you wanted to make some incredibly inflammatory remarks, such as denying the holocaust, supporting cross burning, or calling somebody a macaque, you could do it with impunity by running a watermarked background music with your speech to prevent anybody from taping it. Then you could just deny any reports about what you had said as character assassination by your opposition.
That's because they want someone with no outside interests so they can work them 80 hours a week until they burn out. Not every employer is like that, thank goodness.
Hmm. That sounds like a really good idea. Have your fragile and electrostatically-sensitive CPU outside your box where it can be batted at by rodents/cats/dogs/small children. Way to think outside the box!
So you're in a canoe in the middle of a river surrounded by woods and you hear a rumble that might sound like a waterfall. That sound could also be far off thunder or a number of other explanations that seem less likely (no clouds in the sky, etc.). According to you, you shouldn't actually try to paddle closer to the edge of the river until you can see the drop off and/or the mist from the falls, even if the river is so wide and running so fast that by then you'll be doomed to go over any falls that may exist?
We need a sufficiently dangerous environment that can act as a natural selector. That's why we need to get established in space. The idiots have the advantage here but not out there. Space is a dangerous enough environment that it will quickly weed out the stupid, no matter how quickly they breed.
Slashdot Mirror
The current pope, like the last one, also believes that it's a good idea to preach against prophylactics in sub-Saharan Africa where AIDS is making ravages among his flock.
Think of it as memetic evolution in action.
Somebody with points please mod parent up.
Or to put it another way, morality is the intersection of desired behaviour for two replicators, the genetic replicator that is the human being, and the socio-cultural memetic replicator that is the societal memetic system. Each has different imperatives and they don't always concur.
If my happiness depends on a functioning society, it's in my interest to have others follow behaviour that benefit me through that society. But if there's a behaviour that's beneficial for the group but bad for an individual, that individual is likely to avoid the behaviour if the personal negative repercussions are severe enough.
It takes a high level of situational understanding and attachment to a group to be willing to suborn one's own selfish desires for the benefit of the group. Unattached young men aren't usually the best candidates for making that choice in favour of the group. Basic training in the army, for instance, involves conditioning an individual to ensure that they will follow orders that protect their group at the possible expense of their own welfare. That conditioning usually involves attacking the young men's sense of self worth and remaking it contingent on their participation in the group.
As a last bit of food for thought, "moral" behaviour from certain individuals that benefits their group may be counterproductive for the group if other individuals in the group do it. For instance, large scale immunizations benefit a population only if there's a large fraction of the population which is immunized (>75%). However it can be harmful to individuals with abnormal immune responses to be subjected to strong frequent immunization stimuli like multi-agent immunization shots (i.e. flu shots), to the extent that it can severely exacerbate their immune disease and impair their ability to contribute to the group. Very few people have a sufficiently developed ethical understanding to be able to deal with such an apparent moral inconsistency.
Well I don't think that a list of survival behaviours for living on an otherwise unpopulated island with no hope of rescue really constitutes a moral framework. The only moral question in such a situation I can think of is whether you choose to keep on living as best you can, give up and die, or whether you can't make a clear decision between the two because you've lost hope but the survival instinct is too strong. After all, you can't reproduce and that's the other major instinctual imperative. Nearly all your decisions will flow from the choice to continue living or not, and from your personal tendencies and abilities for observation, deduction, knowledge retention, foresight, planning, and determination. They can only become "wrong" in the context of someone else with different abilities that would lead them to different choices given the base "moral" choice.
But otherwise, I'll concur you're right about ethics vs. morality not really being semantically separate. I'm just looking for shorthand descriptions for the different approaches for ethical/moral behaviour in relationships between individuals vs. the advantages of a particular behaviour for a socio-cultural group as a whole in spite of its potential disadvantages for individuals within that group.
As I said, I think that generally the benefits for the group outweigh the benefits for the few. But the answer isn't always clear cut. Something that may seem advantageous for the individual and disadvantageous for the group in the short run may be advantageous for the group in the long run. For instance allowing behaviour that leads to greater personal happiness at the expense of short term productivity may be better for the group if it avoids bouts of social unrest that waste most of the group's productivity. I think of religious-based moral systems as memetic systems and therefore assume that they have developed in a competitive environment and that they can show great insight into how to deal with some problems caused by the human condition and living in society. However they are also a product of the environment in which they developed and don't adjust well to rapid change. So while religious moralities provide useful insights into how humans and societies interact, some parts of them are no longer relevant to the conditions in a modern 21st century developed nation or even a not-so-modern 21st century undeveloped nation, other parts are applicable to the latter and not the former, and yet other parts are still applicable to all.
I think we're arguing two sides of the same coin on A.
You said "There were, in my understanding, a couple main reasons for monogamous relationships - separation of labor, which increases the amount of food a family can produce for their young,"
And I said "It's a codification and enforcement of one particular reproductive strategy that helps provide a stable environment for raising kids." Increasing the amount of food for the young is one aspect of a stable environment for raising kids. A dominant one I'll grant you, but not the only one, particularly in a society with increasing social and technological complexity.
I'll continue, using "separation of labour" in quotes because either parent of non-mammalian offspring can care for/feed them interchangeably. The advantages of "separation of labour" for raising offspring are an evolutionary advantage for the male only if he can insure that the offspring is his. Otherwise he's wasting his energy on raising another's offspring without reproducing and any instincts for pair-bonding behaviour will not be passed on. The female's genes always win because she's always the biological mother but her offspring can only reap the advantages of the separation of labour if she can find a male willing to raise the offspring. That chance is improved if she pair-bonds as well, but the genetic feedback loop is not as strong as it is for the male's genes.
Hence the preference for some males for a monogamous relationship and the instincts in many species to discourage or fight secondary suitors. "Pair-bonding" would seem to be a biological advantage that long predates "marriage" as a socio-religious concept. However in certain primates like the gorillas (which are dominant polygamous), you also have examples of females occasionally having secret trysts with unattached foreign males rather than the dominant male of the tribe to increase genetic diversity. You also have observations of subordinate males sometimes having non-consensual sex with females. I maintain that they are mainly different reproduction strategies and that pair bonding is just one of those, but one which has provides more benefits for society in the production of new members.
When referring to psychological advantage, what I was referring to was the study of human nature and human behaviour. Psychology doesn't have to exist as a modern science for people to observe that children with two parents get better care and generally develop better than children with only one or no parents. Or to observe that you have a higher than average representation of single parent offspring causing trouble in a society. You also don't need to have an understanding of germ theory to see a correlation between people going mad (from syphilis) and a history of anal sex or large numbers of sexual partners.
If the leader of a group, or someone with significant influence, makes those observations and manages to decrease the destructive behaviour, the group will prosper and the meme will spread. while pair-bonding instincts may have been at the root of marriage customs, and related reproductive advantages at the root of proscriptions against extra-marital sex, its secondary advantages for the containment of STDs would also have helped those societies and memes spread. That said, nowadays, we have much more effective methods of decreasing the propagation of STDs than the advocation of abstinence. Advocating now against prophylactics and contraception and in favour of abstinence instead is, I think, deeply ignorant and immoral.
An interesting side question is: over the long term, does the marriage meme actually weaken the biological pair-bond imperative because it is partially replaced by social one which enforces on those without the instincts the same behaviours and benefits of those with them? Or do the instincts get stronger or remain unaffected instead?
Anyways the real point was that the OP claimed that society was structured around marriage. I think that marriage is just one part of the me
can we build a battery pack good enough for 790 mile range, with NO loss of power over that range, that weighs 250lbs?
No, but that may be why they're looking at fuel cells which have different performance characteristics than battery packs.
My guess is that they really want to use it for military/police UAVs where getting rid of the noise from a combustion engine will seriously improve stealth operation modes. Smaller surveillance-oriented versions could perhaps be dropped from a mother ship and have smaller range requirements than you indicate.
"What do I do when morality conflicts with ethics?"
You decide which is more important to you. The main conflicts within the US today lie between those who believe in an ethics-based interpretation of the constitution, vs. those who think "morality" is more important. Do you believe more in individual freedoms or in the good of the whole?
And fundamentally, morality and society is more important. Even if you're so physically and intellectually gifted that you would do quite well even under the breakdown of society, you would probably still be less well off than you are now (unless you live in poverty in the third world, which is why society breaks down there so much more easily). But the religious fundamentalists are advocating a version of morality which has become partially obsolete due to advancement in technology and knowledge, so their crappy understanding of morality tends to give it an undeservedly bad reputation.
However, society is structured around marriage, so from its perspective adultery is a bad thing.
I totally agree with other parts of your post that seem to claim that the difference between ethics and morals is that ethics are about what is good for individuals whereas morals are what is good for society. However the morals aren't an end in themselves. Society and customs can change and adapt, what doesn't change is the underlying reasons for the customs and morals. Marriage exists for two reasons:
a) It's a codification and enforcement of one particular reproductive strategy that helps provide a stable environment for raising kids. It makes more psychologically-balanced citizens and helps social stability as a result, as opposed to the "impregnate every woman you can" strategy that spreads its adopters' genes but generally doesn't produce as well-rounded citizens.
b) By requiring marriage for intercourse, you limit exchange of sexual body fluids. If you don't have prophylactics, there is a whole class of diseases with decreased levels of transmission (and reduced chances of turning into a pandemic) as a result. Those diseases can decrease worker productivity, and hence are bad for society. See AIDS and Africa.
If you don't want kids and take precautions that don't just stop pregnancy but also prevent the spread of STDs, I don't really see that as innately immoral. If you lie to your partners to get them into bed, then that's unethical. The sexual revolution and the pill were problems because they weakened a) and didn't address b)
So due to the above, I don't really have a problem with gay marriage.
a) The custom against sodomy is due to the spread of disease due to anal intercourse. The tissues of the colon didn't evolve to take the stresses of that activity and the resulting micro-tears provide too easy an infection path. If you didn't have any understanding of germ theory and you saw enough libertines or practitioners of anal sex dying of syphilis, you would probably think they were being punished by some supernatural entity as well. I hear it's a slow and painful way to die. So is anal sex while protected against infection still sodomy? Not in my book. It's not my cup of tea, but I don't have a problem with it if you take the right precautions.
b) If two gays get married in an exclusive relationship then it decreases their chance of getting and passing on STDs. That's bad for society how?
Gravity is part of reality. It is not right, it is not wrong, it just is.
Trying to ignore or deny gravity is a good way to get hurt.
Human nature is also part of reality.
Maybe either the 2nd or 3rd definition here.
There, fixed that for you. For nuclear power plants to be safe in the US, you have to have them built and run by non-profit or governmental organizations and heavily supervised by a third-party. Why? Because profit-oriented companies in the US repeatedly place profit first and safety second unless they are forced to. Since your governmental system is currently far too susceptible to lobbying and a private nuclear industry (building billion dollar plants) has plenty of money to throw around over time to weaken government oversight, the only way to have a safe nuclear program in the US (and probably elsewhere) is to take the profit motive out of the equation. Yes, it will be less "efficiently" run than if private ventures were used, but it will be safer. With nuclear, that's a tradeoff you should be willing to take, otherwise you risk having more accidents and uselessly setting back the industry for another 4 or 5 decades.
Or like the eight US attorneys who were fired because they were getting a little too close to improprieties by Republicans or because they wouldn't speed up an investigation into one alleged Democrat lawmaker's improprieties to meet an election timetable. They were fired under the pretense of poor job performance even though "at least five of [the U.S. attorneys] received positive job evaluations before they were ordered to step down" and one of the fired U.S. attorneys, John McKay, of the Western District of Washington, received a "glowing performance review" from the Justice Department seven months before he was forced out
Some of their replacements are poorly qualified Republican political flunkies.
Your other line of defense against fascism was the 4th estate and it's pretty clear in whose pocket the media conglomerates are in now.
You may not have fascism yet, but the stage is well set.
So he couldn't have rented a camera that would allow him to take a picture of the thief in low light levels? With the gun as backup if the thief came after him?
I'm not familiar with the case, but is there any indication that the farmer's safety was in danger?
Or did he decide to shoot first and ask questions later? I agree the farmer was being wronged, but it does seem as though he may have used excessive force. If he is in jail, then it sounds like a judge or jury thought so too.
How could Gore have voted for the invasion since he was no longer a Senator in 2003? He couldn't.
--
My personal impression of US capitalist "libertarians" is that they come off as spoiled brats who want to be able to do whatever they want, Tragedy of the Commons be damned.
There. Fixed that for you. Enterprises don't put up with this crap if an alternative exists, and they often have the purchasing power to ensure that alternative exists. Consumers shouldn't have to either.
It's good for VMware that they still have a significant edge in management and failover tools as compared to Linux-based solutions using Xen and KVM/QEMU. When the latter two start getting sufficiently sophisticated, CIOs worth their salt will look at moving to Xen or KVM not because of licencing costs, but because of the hassle (and additional failure modes) of dealing with the new Licence Manager in ESX 3.0/VI 2.0
You're kidding right? Read either Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky and you'll realize that the opposite may be what happens, since that's where the real benefit is, if you're unethical enough. Taking normal people and turning them into highly focused savants. Well OK, Autistics and Asperger's patients probably need more supervision than you would want, but you could use that as a starting point.
You would probably have to start them young though. Given that improving skill in many mental activities comes from repeated practice, perhaps savant abilities in high-functioning autism sufferers comes from the single-minded focus that soemtimes results from the autism.
It's also the form. Prior to being mined, many of those metals in their natural form are chemically bound with other atoms in minerals. Having them as leached ions in the environment (and if you're away from the coast, often eventually in the drinking water) makes them much more dangerous.
They're also short-sighted. Malaria and its anopheles mosquito carrier are also in Central and South America. With the advent of global climate change and warming, its pretty highly likely it will eventually spread to southern parts of the US as well.
Nah, while there are some who fit the profile you cite, many of them are immigrants, or children of immigrants, who traded a few years of service for a chance to become USA citizens. Soldiers who have seen many of their peers frequently discriminated against by the average American you're enjoining to rise up. If they think their citizenship and escape from poverty is on the line, they'll shoot. A good portion of the US military is effectively a mercenary army bought with a highly valuable commodity, US citizenships that allow them to legitimately work in the US economy. If the people didn't care enough about their lives to avoid re-electing the people who sent them to Iraq, why the hell should they care about that subset who are ready to overthrow the elected government and the rule of law?
USA soldiers are more noble than the idiot voters who have complacently let themselves be manipulated and let things get this bad, but they're not that noble.
Besides, who could they expect you would put in power? The head of some militia group in Montana? It's not like you could keep the elected Congress since they have the power to impeach members of the administration but have failed to do so. Clearly not trustworthy. So it's going to be survival of the fittest with whoever commands the most guns taking power. Maybe the head of the NRA? And they'll probably have a majority of Christian fundamentalists who will think it's a good idea to try all those doctors and nurses who have provided abortion services since the 60's. Capital punishment of course. Or maybe you'll get a dictator who gets bought by corporate interests for a real fascist state. Internal revolutions can be a real bitch. Seriously, learn from the French experience on this one, for once.
Oh, no, I was completely serious. I wanted to make it clear how such a feature easily could be abused to prevent legitimate recordings, in manners fundamentally dangerous to democracy and modern civilization.
Heck, it cuts both ways! I could see criminals using it to prevent security recording devices from functioning while they perform crimes. Say, while performing a bank robbery or to kill a police officer who has stopped them when they are carrying drugs or dead bodies in their cars. It's just ludicrous how this can be abused and the people who would promote this legislation without considering such scenarios should be branded in the press as grossly incompetent and unfit to hold those offices.
Well, if you were a politician and you wanted to make some incredibly inflammatory remarks, such as denying the holocaust, supporting cross burning, or calling somebody a macaque, you could do it with impunity by running a watermarked background music with your speech to prevent anybody from taping it. Then you could just deny any reports about what you had said as character assassination by your opposition.
That's because they want someone with no outside interests so they can work them 80 hours a week until they burn out. Not every employer is like that, thank goodness.
Hmm. That sounds like a really good idea. Have your fragile and electrostatically-sensitive CPU outside your box where it can be batted at by rodents/cats/dogs/small children. Way to think outside the box!
So you're in a canoe in the middle of a river surrounded by woods and you hear a rumble that might sound like a waterfall. That sound could also be far off thunder or a number of other explanations that seem less likely (no clouds in the sky, etc.). According to you, you shouldn't actually try to paddle closer to the edge of the river until you can see the drop off and/or the mist from the falls, even if the river is so wide and running so fast that by then you'll be doomed to go over any falls that may exist?
We need a sufficiently dangerous environment that can act as a natural selector. That's why we need to get established in space. The idiots have the advantage here but not out there. Space is a dangerous enough environment that it will quickly weed out the stupid, no matter how quickly they breed.