That is what I love about Colorado. I think it is one of only two states where you can put state constitutional amendments on the ballot. That is how things like balanced budgets, laws about election financing (until the supreme court overturned that one for everyone with money= speech) and many other good things. Politicians will never vote for term limits or pretty much anything else to limit their power, they won't pass laws requiring fracking to be done in a safe manner and inspected. Thankfully here the votes can sign a petition, put it on the ballot and vote for it directly. Even with marijuana legalization the state government is carrying that out and even though the governor disagrees with it he is still actively getting it working because that is what the people voted for.
Bullet control is likely to work much better for a while. We seem farther off for doing things like molecular construction which you would need for making bullets. Background checks for buying bullets is probably also a very good idea. I just don't see much hope in controlling the actual guns and so it mostly just serves as a PR issue but it won't change anything.
Bullying can also go way over the line and teachers rarely step in to stop it. Kids do learn coping skills, they are not always skills you want them to learn. Some of them have learned that shooting their classmates gets rid of the problem. It is hard to stand up to 20+ kids that want to beat you up because the teacher pointed out that you wrecked the curve for the entire class. You start to learn other methods to deal with problems. You do things like read up on human anatomy and learn nerve strikes. Kids are some of the nastiest creatures around and adults can and should intervene to keep things from getting out of hand.
I largely see the second amendment issues as ones that won't matter for long. 3D printing technology is getting better and cheaper very quickly. We will have to come up with a better way to deal with gun violence because people are just going to print guns.
The problem has to be dealt with at the cause. Why does so much gun violence occur? Why can't we figure out ways to help people sooner so it does not come to that? What systems issues in our society contribute to that problem and how can they be modified to minimize this problem?
I do like the idea of smaller government but I have seen no evidence that either party actually believes in it. Under both of them they continue to grow government at pretty much the same pace. Now for local elections that can be different but at the national level I don't see evidence either way. At the local level though (especially school board type stuff) I find I just can't support republicans. All the anti science stuff I see as a long term threat to the economic ability of the country. It is very hard to explain genetic engineering to someone or how you can use directed evolution to create a bacteria to destroy a specific toxin if they don't understand even the basics of evolution. Sure the evolution taught in schools is so dumbed down it is essentially incorrect. That is mostly due to evolution being very complex and those teaching it at the high school level don't really understand it either. It is really too bad they can't teach people evolution from the microorganism level.
I think that it did work in the past and will continue to work very short term into the future. I just think it will be ineffective in 5-10 years and so a different solution must be found. If we try to solve the problem entirely with gun control then all the causes of violence will remain but the availability of guns via 3D printing will increase.
The only problem I have with gun control is I don't think it will work anymore. In the past I think that magazine limits, more background checks etc would work. Now with 3D printers becoming cheap and available and the technology improving rapidly I don't think there is anything that can realistically be done to control how many people have guns and what kinds of guns they have or how large the magazines are. I don't see the point in passing ineffectual laws.
Overall we do have to come up with a system to decrease gun violence but controlling guns is probably not the way to do it.
I end up pretty similar. I have both liberal and conservative ideas. I also have some ideas that people will say are liberal or conservative that I have for completely different reasons. Some ideas I see as neither liberal or conservative, they just make sense when considering costs.
For instance if doing X costs Y dollars but preventing the problem costs Z and ZY then I propose we do prevention. It is not liberal or conservative.
What I find it comes down to though is that I care more about social issues that economic ones. So I end up voting for the liberal side even though I agree with the conservatives on many points. My views on abortion is that I don't have the right to make that choice for someone else , they should have that choice. My views on gay marriage are the same. It is not something I am going to do it, it won't harm me in any way but I have seen friends die in the hospital and I have talked to people that could not be with their loved ones because of laws that only allow family and I consider that wrong as hell if not outright evil.
If the republicans took a more liberal social policy and an actual conservative fiscal policy I would find it much easier to support them. I don't really like the democrats fiscal policies very much but I still support them because I believe people should have the right to marry who they want and have an abortion if they want.
The rational actor model the system is based on is definitely not true. I suspect a large part of the economic problems we keep having are because the underlying models our economy is based on are not compatible with how people actually act. I wonder what the next economic system will be. None of them last forever and this one is due for replacement.
Have you noticed that most of the "internet native" generations that people keep referring to don't seem to actually use it to find information. I find that most of them play games on facebook, make silly twitter postings, post pictures of their weekend on facebook etc. On average I would say most of them know less about finding information online since they have never really had to think about how to find information and instead mostly just click on links that friends give them. It leads to tempest in a teacup type situations but little actual understanding.
Systems are also too complex to be made close to the purchase point right now. Nanomaterials are a great example of that. They have some extremely impressive capabilities, especially the medications, but they are HARD to make. They are seriously nasty evil bitches to make and very easy to screw up. There is really no way a regular person will ever understand that enough to make wise purchasing decisions. The world is just too complex now to have an economic system based on the consumer having informed consent and informed choice.
After they spilled all that oil in the gulf of mexico they would certainly qualify. Also they certainly operate in America since they are a multinational corporation regardless of their name.
Most of the adults I know that game do it on the PC and use steam or they order games online from places like amazon. Having a credit card and a busier lifestyle makes places like gamestop a lot more annoying to go to. Also remember that major stores like BestBuy also stock all the same video games that people are likely to buy and they are far nicer to deal with than gamestop. It could just be that gamestop's demographic is skewed young. That does not mean that gamers in general or the time involved is skewing the same way.
Sure EA is not a great company. Actually I think they are pretty bad but they are not even in the top 10 for the worst companies. Given that we have companies like Monsanto around there is no way that EA is actually worse. We have companies like BP that deal hundreds of billions of dollars in environmental damage and the taxpayer gets most of the bill and somehow EA is worse because they have DRM and crappy servers? We have some drug companies that have made fraudulent journal articles in order to push medications that they know are lethal but are very hard to trace back to them and even when they are caught pay tiny fines compared to the money they made and somehow EA is worse?
Yeah I just don't buy it at all. This is more like some kind of internet popularity contest and it is popular for people to hate EA. Most people have no clue about what evil companies actually do because they don't really look around them. If EA is the worse company you know of then grow up and look around the world a bit and find out what worst really is.
I agree completely. However giving how quick our tech is advancing right now buying someone a year without using chemo is worth it. Various nanotech treatments/cures are progressing very rapidly. A year from now we might have a complete cure or a range of other passive treatments. Besides just giving someone a year in which the cancer will not be causing them pain, allowing them to live a normal life etc would be worth it.
I know that at this early stage there are definitely not guarantees that it even works on humans. However, at this point, it is not like he can really get worse. I have had friends die from cancer and one of the reasons I went back to school was to help make many lab bench science cures practical industrial ones. If this has any chance at all of working it would be nice if he could try it, it could stop the spread of the cancer giving him a lot more time for other things to develop and it could even completely cure the cancer.
These new immune system type nanotherapies are amazing. The idea of basically planting flags on cancer cells that your immune system will then recognize as something to be destroyed is probably one of the most creative ways to deal with cancer I have seen. Nothing toxic, your body deals with the problem at its own pace, the macrophages tell the other cells in the area to start replicating into the areas they are removing. You also don't have a toxic shock effect of so many cells dieing all at once since the therapy does not kill the cancer cells, it just marks them for destruction by your immune system.
It looks like we are very close to having real treatments and cures and I want to end the suffering that people go through with cancer. The drugs many people end up on towards the end are pretty bad and nobody should go through that.
If I am sitting somewhere already why should a smoker have the right to impose their smoke on me. I am not talking about going to where they are, I am talking about them coming to where I am at the time. I can be sitting on a bench enjoying a nice day, waiting at a bus stop etc but it becomes my job and many others jobs to move because a smoker chose that spot to light up.
Also it isn't exactly just a personal desire given that we have very good evidence on the damage of second hand smoke. They have the right to harm themselves not others and people that don't want to be harmed should not have the onus placed on them to accommodate the smokers at every turn.
I do think we need laws about you smoking around other people though. That is something I find very annoying how can you be sitting somewhere and someone will come up to you and smoke. They have the right to harm themselves, they don't have the right to harm you.
Everyone on this ship basically had informed consent. I have no issues with what they did nor do we need laws against it. The coast card should be paid though by the person that owned the ship though for the costs of the rescue since what they where doing was pretty stupid.
Owning guns is another problematic one. The problem is it places others at risk that are not the person making the stupid decision. However I also think that with 3D printers getting more advanced that issue is largely one that is not longer possible to regulate and needs to be solved other ways that regulation. Mostly I think we need better education systems and other societal systems in place to deal with violence so people don't feel a need to have guns. So don't take them away, don't regulate them away, try to create an environment where people no longer see the need for them and they just don't get them anymore.
It is my understanding that during various major oil spills the companies involved did not have to pay the total costs of the damages incurred and most of the tab was picked up by taxpayers. That kind of thing should not be happening. Oil spills will happen,they should be part of the cost of doing businesses and insurance should be held for them or money saved to cover them.
It is not right that the public picks up the tab for business practices that cost us all severely. It should also not be possible to just declare bankruptcy instead of being able to pay the cost of the damage done. You should have to carry insurance for likely amounts of damage your company can incur so the public is not left holding the bill if you do something that causes a lot of damage. Otherwise you just encourage the behavior.
I wonder what technologies we would most likely be using right now and how quickly they would progress and how much effort would be put into making them better without so many businesses able to keep using their current business models and passing the costs onto the public. I wonder what the menu at McDonalds would look like, what would be the most common food in the supermarket, what kinds of transportation would we use etc.
If you allow someone to pollute without charging them for it and the EPA, health insurance etc picks up the cost that is a subsidy to that industry. Removing that subsidy is not suddenly a tax.
I have read a fair number of reports on natural gas fracking sites that did not put the concrete liners in correctly (not far enough down, insufficient thickness etc) and there are so many of them they are not being inspected often enough. This allows companies to get away with many practices. This is a defacto subsidy for that industry since they are not paying the full costs of their activities. Other people are having to picks up those costs.
I don't know if the industry would still be profitable or not without exemptions from things like the clean water act but industries should not be able to externalize their costs. I also feel the same way about solar panels and the toxic chemicals that it takes to make some of them. If those toxic chemicals are being dumped without the company paying the full cost of dealing with the damage caused that is also a subsidy and should be removed.
All these externalized costs and subsidies are massively distorting how things are done. It is favoring certain technologies over others while we all pay the price.
The nuclear industry should also not have protection from accidents. The coal industry should not be able to legally pollute the air the way they do (with particulates, gases, damage in extracting coal etc) without paying for it either. I am not for ending only certain of these subsidies. I want to eliminate nearly all of them (except ones subsidizing things like healthy food, insurance etc for the poor).
For some reason many people see externalizing costs as completely okay and not a subsidy but if you suggest taking away the ability to externalize costs that is seen as a tax.
I often wonder how cheap coal would be if the full costs had to be paid for using it instead of the taxpayer and others being stuck with the environmental, medical etc bills. Is natural gas really a cheap power source? If they had to pay the full cost of the environmental damage they are doing how cheap would it be?
I do know that natural gas fracking could be done safely but it would also be more expensive than it is now and companies are cutting too many corners. Would natural gas fracking still be a good source of natural gas if it had to be done safely?
If a company makes 1 million in profit but costs the society 2 million in medical and environmental issues that is a loss for the society not a profit and we need to realize that.
So when will this quality of editing staff actually manifest in better edited articles? After having to read far too many journal articles in a pretty wide range of journals the quality has been pretty universally poor.
Quality should cost more. However just because something costs more does not mean it is high quality.
If they actually did a good job of filtering articles and made actually peer reviewed the articles in them for accuracy you would have a point. However what I have seen is that journal articles are just as full of errors and flat out fabrications as any other regular source is.
In the end the journals are not doing their jobs of filtering content and that is all they actually provide. What is worse is that professors are often given raises based on how many journal articles are published not who they are published with so there is a great incentive to make crappy journals with lots of bad articles that accept anyone in order to further the cycle.
The system we have now is massively corrupt and waste of time and money. I don't know if open journals will actually make things better I do know that it is unlikely that they can make things worse.
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That is what I love about Colorado. I think it is one of only two states where you can put state constitutional amendments on the ballot. That is how things like balanced budgets, laws about election financing (until the supreme court overturned that one for everyone with money= speech) and many other good things. Politicians will never vote for term limits or pretty much anything else to limit their power, they won't pass laws requiring fracking to be done in a safe manner and inspected. Thankfully here the votes can sign a petition, put it on the ballot and vote for it directly. Even with marijuana legalization the state government is carrying that out and even though the governor disagrees with it he is still actively getting it working because that is what the people voted for.
Bullet control is likely to work much better for a while. We seem farther off for doing things like molecular construction which you would need for making bullets. Background checks for buying bullets is probably also a very good idea. I just don't see much hope in controlling the actual guns and so it mostly just serves as a PR issue but it won't change anything.
Bullying can also go way over the line and teachers rarely step in to stop it. Kids do learn coping skills, they are not always skills you want them to learn. Some of them have learned that shooting their classmates gets rid of the problem. It is hard to stand up to 20+ kids that want to beat you up because the teacher pointed out that you wrecked the curve for the entire class. You start to learn other methods to deal with problems. You do things like read up on human anatomy and learn nerve strikes. Kids are some of the nastiest creatures around and adults can and should intervene to keep things from getting out of hand.
I largely see the second amendment issues as ones that won't matter for long. 3D printing technology is getting better and cheaper very quickly. We will have to come up with a better way to deal with gun violence because people are just going to print guns.
The problem has to be dealt with at the cause. Why does so much gun violence occur? Why can't we figure out ways to help people sooner so it does not come to that? What systems issues in our society contribute to that problem and how can they be modified to minimize this problem?
I do like the idea of smaller government but I have seen no evidence that either party actually believes in it. Under both of them they continue to grow government at pretty much the same pace. Now for local elections that can be different but at the national level I don't see evidence either way. At the local level though (especially school board type stuff) I find I just can't support republicans. All the anti science stuff I see as a long term threat to the economic ability of the country. It is very hard to explain genetic engineering to someone or how you can use directed evolution to create a bacteria to destroy a specific toxin if they don't understand even the basics of evolution. Sure the evolution taught in schools is so dumbed down it is essentially incorrect. That is mostly due to evolution being very complex and those teaching it at the high school level don't really understand it either. It is really too bad they can't teach people evolution from the microorganism level.
I think that it did work in the past and will continue to work very short term into the future. I just think it will be ineffective in 5-10 years and so a different solution must be found. If we try to solve the problem entirely with gun control then all the causes of violence will remain but the availability of guns via 3D printing will increase.
The only problem I have with gun control is I don't think it will work anymore. In the past I think that magazine limits, more background checks etc would work. Now with 3D printers becoming cheap and available and the technology improving rapidly I don't think there is anything that can realistically be done to control how many people have guns and what kinds of guns they have or how large the magazines are. I don't see the point in passing ineffectual laws.
Overall we do have to come up with a system to decrease gun violence but controlling guns is probably not the way to do it.
I end up pretty similar. I have both liberal and conservative ideas. I also have some ideas that people will say are liberal or conservative that I have for completely different reasons. Some ideas I see as neither liberal or conservative, they just make sense when considering costs.
For instance if doing X costs Y dollars but preventing the problem costs Z and ZY then I propose we do prevention. It is not liberal or conservative.
What I find it comes down to though is that I care more about social issues that economic ones. So I end up voting for the liberal side even though I agree with the conservatives on many points. My views on abortion is that I don't have the right to make that choice for someone else , they should have that choice. My views on gay marriage are the same. It is not something I am going to do it, it won't harm me in any way but I have seen friends die in the hospital and I have talked to people that could not be with their loved ones because of laws that only allow family and I consider that wrong as hell if not outright evil.
If the republicans took a more liberal social policy and an actual conservative fiscal policy I would find it much easier to support them. I don't really like the democrats fiscal policies very much but I still support them because I believe people should have the right to marry who they want and have an abortion if they want.
The rational actor model the system is based on is definitely not true. I suspect a large part of the economic problems we keep having are because the underlying models our economy is based on are not compatible with how people actually act. I wonder what the next economic system will be. None of them last forever and this one is due for replacement.
Have you noticed that most of the "internet native" generations that people keep referring to don't seem to actually use it to find information. I find that most of them play games on facebook, make silly twitter postings, post pictures of their weekend on facebook etc. On average I would say most of them know less about finding information online since they have never really had to think about how to find information and instead mostly just click on links that friends give them. It leads to tempest in a teacup type situations but little actual understanding.
Systems are also too complex to be made close to the purchase point right now. Nanomaterials are a great example of that. They have some extremely impressive capabilities, especially the medications, but they are HARD to make. They are seriously nasty evil bitches to make and very easy to screw up. There is really no way a regular person will ever understand that enough to make wise purchasing decisions. The world is just too complex now to have an economic system based on the consumer having informed consent and informed choice.
After they spilled all that oil in the gulf of mexico they would certainly qualify. Also they certainly operate in America since they are a multinational corporation regardless of their name.
Most of the adults I know that game do it on the PC and use steam or they order games online from places like amazon. Having a credit card and a busier lifestyle makes places like gamestop a lot more annoying to go to. Also remember that major stores like BestBuy also stock all the same video games that people are likely to buy and they are far nicer to deal with than gamestop. It could just be that gamestop's demographic is skewed young. That does not mean that gamers in general or the time involved is skewing the same way.
Sure EA is not a great company. Actually I think they are pretty bad but they are not even in the top 10 for the worst companies. Given that we have companies like Monsanto around there is no way that EA is actually worse. We have companies like BP that deal hundreds of billions of dollars in environmental damage and the taxpayer gets most of the bill and somehow EA is worse because they have DRM and crappy servers? We have some drug companies that have made fraudulent journal articles in order to push medications that they know are lethal but are very hard to trace back to them and even when they are caught pay tiny fines compared to the money they made and somehow EA is worse?
Yeah I just don't buy it at all. This is more like some kind of internet popularity contest and it is popular for people to hate EA. Most people have no clue about what evil companies actually do because they don't really look around them. If EA is the worse company you know of then grow up and look around the world a bit and find out what worst really is.
I agree completely. However giving how quick our tech is advancing right now buying someone a year without using chemo is worth it. Various nanotech treatments/cures are progressing very rapidly. A year from now we might have a complete cure or a range of other passive treatments. Besides just giving someone a year in which the cancer will not be causing them pain, allowing them to live a normal life etc would be worth it.
This is not chemotherapy. That is one reason this is such an interesting direction we are going in trying to develop a cure for cancer.
There are some amazing nanotech cancer drugs that look like they are just starting human trials like this one http://www.medicaldaily.com/articles/14434/20130328/cancer-treatment-cd47-miracle-bullet-breast-colon-bladder-antibody-eat-macrophage-immune.htm
I know that at this early stage there are definitely not guarantees that it even works on humans. However, at this point, it is not like he can really get worse. I have had friends die from cancer and one of the reasons I went back to school was to help make many lab bench science cures practical industrial ones. If this has any chance at all of working it would be nice if he could try it, it could stop the spread of the cancer giving him a lot more time for other things to develop and it could even completely cure the cancer.
These new immune system type nanotherapies are amazing. The idea of basically planting flags on cancer cells that your immune system will then recognize as something to be destroyed is probably one of the most creative ways to deal with cancer I have seen. Nothing toxic, your body deals with the problem at its own pace, the macrophages tell the other cells in the area to start replicating into the areas they are removing. You also don't have a toxic shock effect of so many cells dieing all at once since the therapy does not kill the cancer cells, it just marks them for destruction by your immune system.
It looks like we are very close to having real treatments and cures and I want to end the suffering that people go through with cancer. The drugs many people end up on towards the end are pretty bad and nobody should go through that.
Maybe the rock oxidized once in our atmosphere and thus changed color?
If I am sitting somewhere already why should a smoker have the right to impose their smoke on me. I am not talking about going to where they are, I am talking about them coming to where I am at the time. I can be sitting on a bench enjoying a nice day, waiting at a bus stop etc but it becomes my job and many others jobs to move because a smoker chose that spot to light up.
Also it isn't exactly just a personal desire given that we have very good evidence on the damage of second hand smoke. They have the right to harm themselves not others and people that don't want to be harmed should not have the onus placed on them to accommodate the smokers at every turn.
So long as you only harm yourself I agree.
I do think we need laws about you smoking around other people though. That is something I find very annoying how can you be sitting somewhere and someone will come up to you and smoke. They have the right to harm themselves, they don't have the right to harm you.
Everyone on this ship basically had informed consent. I have no issues with what they did nor do we need laws against it. The coast card should be paid though by the person that owned the ship though for the costs of the rescue since what they where doing was pretty stupid.
Owning guns is another problematic one. The problem is it places others at risk that are not the person making the stupid decision. However I also think that with 3D printers getting more advanced that issue is largely one that is not longer possible to regulate and needs to be solved other ways that regulation. Mostly I think we need better education systems and other societal systems in place to deal with violence so people don't feel a need to have guns. So don't take them away, don't regulate them away, try to create an environment where people no longer see the need for them and they just don't get them anymore.
It is my understanding that during various major oil spills the companies involved did not have to pay the total costs of the damages incurred and most of the tab was picked up by taxpayers. That kind of thing should not be happening. Oil spills will happen ,they should be part of the cost of doing businesses and insurance should be held for them or money saved to cover them.
It is not right that the public picks up the tab for business practices that cost us all severely. It should also not be possible to just declare bankruptcy instead of being able to pay the cost of the damage done. You should have to carry insurance for likely amounts of damage your company can incur so the public is not left holding the bill if you do something that causes a lot of damage. Otherwise you just encourage the behavior.
I wonder what technologies we would most likely be using right now and how quickly they would progress and how much effort would be put into making them better without so many businesses able to keep using their current business models and passing the costs onto the public. I wonder what the menu at McDonalds would look like, what would be the most common food in the supermarket, what kinds of transportation would we use etc.
If you allow someone to pollute without charging them for it and the EPA, health insurance etc picks up the cost that is a subsidy to that industry. Removing that subsidy is not suddenly a tax.
I have read a fair number of reports on natural gas fracking sites that did not put the concrete liners in correctly (not far enough down, insufficient thickness etc) and there are so many of them they are not being inspected often enough. This allows companies to get away with many practices. This is a defacto subsidy for that industry since they are not paying the full costs of their activities. Other people are having to picks up those costs.
I don't know if the industry would still be profitable or not without exemptions from things like the clean water act but industries should not be able to externalize their costs. I also feel the same way about solar panels and the toxic chemicals that it takes to make some of them. If those toxic chemicals are being dumped without the company paying the full cost of dealing with the damage caused that is also a subsidy and should be removed.
All these externalized costs and subsidies are massively distorting how things are done. It is favoring certain technologies over others while we all pay the price.
The nuclear industry should also not have protection from accidents. The coal industry should not be able to legally pollute the air the way they do (with particulates, gases, damage in extracting coal etc) without paying for it either. I am not for ending only certain of these subsidies. I want to eliminate nearly all of them (except ones subsidizing things like healthy food, insurance etc for the poor).
For some reason many people see externalizing costs as completely okay and not a subsidy but if you suggest taking away the ability to externalize costs that is seen as a tax.
I often wonder how cheap coal would be if the full costs had to be paid for using it instead of the taxpayer and others being stuck with the environmental, medical etc bills. Is natural gas really a cheap power source? If they had to pay the full cost of the environmental damage they are doing how cheap would it be?
I do know that natural gas fracking could be done safely but it would also be more expensive than it is now and companies are cutting too many corners. Would natural gas fracking still be a good source of natural gas if it had to be done safely?
If a company makes 1 million in profit but costs the society 2 million in medical and environmental issues that is a loss for the society not a profit and we need to realize that.
So when will this quality of editing staff actually manifest in better edited articles? After having to read far too many journal articles in a pretty wide range of journals the quality has been pretty universally poor.
Quality should cost more. However just because something costs more does not mean it is high quality.
If they actually did a good job of filtering articles and made actually peer reviewed the articles in them for accuracy you would have a point. However what I have seen is that journal articles are just as full of errors and flat out fabrications as any other regular source is.
In the end the journals are not doing their jobs of filtering content and that is all they actually provide. What is worse is that professors are often given raises based on how many journal articles are published not who they are published with so there is a great incentive to make crappy journals with lots of bad articles that accept anyone in order to further the cycle.
The system we have now is massively corrupt and waste of time and money. I don't know if open journals will actually make things better I do know that it is unlikely that they can make things worse.
I preorder almost nothing. I would preorder Fallout 4 though.
I would guess that I preorder a game very few years. Most are not good enough I would want to do that.