Lisa: [showing off a tomato the size of a beach ball] I've grown a
futuristic tomato by fertilizing it with anabolic steroids. Bart: The kind that help our Olympic athletes reach new peaks of
excellence? Lisa: The very same.
I was doing a norba race and once I finished I chilled out on the trail to watch some of the other heats. I saw a guy on a very sweet, expensive and light-looking XC bike carry over a 6-inch log.
In the same race I finished just ahead of a guy I see often on the circuit. He rides on an old rigid bike, and he was hammering through the bony sections anyway. I've broken a rigid bike (stem failed) on the same trail. If had any suspension at all he probably would have toasted me.
The moral ends up being that gear helps, but honing your skills on crappy gear helps you appreciate the pricier stuff even more. When coming up, skill and fitness are paramount - everything else is secondary, and it makes a lot of sense to save your money early on to make sure you like the sport and to get a fitness and skill base going.
> It's hard to get the adrenaline rush of a fight/flight response when > your body is expecting a mild vibration.
I understand that you value this facet of the sport as a core component of your personal enjoyment. I'm just pointing out that this is not the same for everyone.
> And biking isn't a combat sport...
It's a good comparison, nevertheless. A 5-foot drop can be harrowing and adrenaline inducing, and painful whether you stick it or not (depending on your rig and skill - it hurts for me every time!). The point is that the rush is not the only valid reason for doing a 5-foot drop. You might just want to weave it into your flow or you could just be testing your suspension or showing off in order to get laid.
Anything else is the same. Combat sports can stimulate ones interest in tactics, stealth, electronics, reenactment, whatever - adrenaline is not strictly neccessary for enjoyment. I would think that even in paintball, a sense of detachment and calm would make for a better player. It certainly makes for a better trials/trick rider. Nervous folks overgrip, and stay too rigid. Cool heads ride with finess and don't sweat the tricky stuff.
Why is it only serious if there is pain involved? Why do people constantly need to establish some "hard core" pecking order to everything?
> There's no real incentive not to get shot, besides the lack of points.
Maybe there's no incentive to play paintball without someone getting their organs shredded by hot, flesh-piercing projectiles. Roar! Seriously, the "get a life, play paintball" argument is laughable coming from grown men who wear ghilli suits and shoot each other in a make-believe battlefield.
I love bikes. I especially like riding single track, freeride, and trials. I'd be an idiot if I called road cycling a joke because there is generally less blood involved. Not everyone needs to experience pain to feel alive, just us masochists:)
The "Laser Challenge" sets have a bomb that is ordinarily set off with a toggle switch - one direction for slow fuse, another for long fuse. It's a fairly simple hack to rip out the switch and substitute with an SCR and an IR photoresistor to allow remote detonation of the short fuse option. Then you can set minefields and set them off from a safe distance - Laser Geneva Conventions be damned!
My original (pedantic) point, which apparently got lost in the larger debates, was that there certainly wasn't a dearth of intelligence, casualty estimates, stragegy, and diplomacy involved. To believe that there was "no telling" if it was a good or bad strategic decision is naive... there were lots of data as other replies have pointed out.
Anyone familiar with the moral debate (which I don't remember trying to enter...) knows about Dresden at least, and the utilitarian viewpoint in general. That comparitive "ethics" always come up is indicative of the fact that the only consistently sensical framework for analyzing decisions in wartime is cold and by the numbers. Once in a war, survival trumps any sense of right and wrong. Arguing about Truman's A-bomb decision in terms of the latter doesn't really make sense to me, unless some extraordinary circumstances were involved, such as Truman pocketing an Imperial peace offering and bombing the Japanese anyway. Otherwise, it was just a measured decision by a country fighting for its survival.
> There's know way of telling how many lives were saved as a result of the war > ending then compared to going on for however longer it would have went without > it.
If there's no way of knowing, then isn't it impossible to say exactly whether it was a good or bad decision?
> In fact, the biggest threat the USA faces today is not from any organized state > but from stateless terrorists who would love to get ahold of nuclear weapons, > but don't have a government worth of resources to develop what history has > proven is quite a hard thing to come accross and control.
The hardest part, by far, is obtaining enough fissile material. Luckily for terrorists and not so lucky for there targets, the cold war left behing lots of fissile material, some of which has gone missing according to the news.
For those who are interested in what the natives went through as well as the navy guys, check out Radio Bikini. There's some good clips of the blasts, too.
The article hints about the shelving of a Romulan War plot in Enterprise - it could that this sudden movie move is due to the impending demise of the series - maybe season 4 has been dumped in favor fast-forwarding to some pre-planned final season arc.
If the last episode of Enterprise is any clue, it could be that Remans are used as front-line troops. Remans are different enough to technically be a different species. Does anyone know if Trek has pinned down the Remans' status as a species?
> What's "burgeoning" about the middle class? They're a potential threat -- the > long-term goal is to shrink it, not expand it. (Another benefit of restricting > education to the descendants of the upper class.:)
I didn't intend to say they were growing or not... I was thinking hypothetically that if a representative democracy were to emerge, it would be based on a dominant middle class gaining much more political control.
> A tyranny of the majority is a feature, not a bug, except that you have to keep > the people sufficiently homogenized to pull it off without splitting the country > up and reducing the amount of power you have.
In terms of the sanctity of individual rights, majority rule seems like it would most certainly be a bug... though I guess you're speaking from the perspective of the entrenched power (just for kicks, or???)
> if the populations of Mormon Utah and Hippy California aren't sufficiently > similar, you cease to be able to rule both.
What would happen if we gave CA political autonomy from the Union? Or Scotland from the UK? Or Bangladesh from Pakistan?:)
> thirty some odd ones have been deemed 'credible'...whatever that means.
Sounds like you have to look for overturned convictions of Patriot Act violations, and then read the opinions and see if they indicate that law enforcement acted improperly.
> It easy for me to say tell somebody this is a bad thing, (which it probably is), > but if I can't offer up any proof as to how it harms people, what good is my > opinion?
The current lack of oversight of FISA means that cover-ups are possible. Past abuses tell us that when cover-ups are possible due to lack of oversight, that abuse is a highly probable consequence. Doesn't that mean there is a logical basis for concern even without specific examples? If you put a baby in an airtight box, you don't need to open the box up to know what's inside. Hint: it's not a baby happily living off a previously unknown scuba tank.
> Popular democracy helps to entrench political power
probably you typoed and meant "responsible democracy?"
> As part of that educated middle class, popular democracy is a (pardon the pun:) > great leap forward as far as I'm concerned.
But where does a burgeoning middle class get its numbers? From a shrinking lower class, a hyper-taxed rich class, both?
What happens if a representative democracy takes over - what about the tyranny of the majority? Maybe state/local rights could enjoy a resurgence and lead to a successfully pluralistic, confederate system
"The problem with legislation like this is that it is a slippery slope to accepting the government's ability to monitor your activities any time, any where, for any reason."
Upon reading this again, I'll retract and concede that you're right, and the assertion is too broad to be technically valid as a slippery slope.
Maybe a better argument would be to say the Patriot Act is a slippery slope towards abuses of surveillance powers - essentially, that Patriot Act allows the FISC to issue warrants, and the FISC's mostly unchecked secrecy creates a new mechanism for abuse.
Of course, I could be wrong and there might be a reason that the potential for abuse in FISC is covered. I'd be relieved to hear that this is the case.
Yeah, you got me there. I should have said that an educated middle class can come to despise a responsible democracy, because they have their own ideas about how to steer the body politic and resent being somewhat removed from the process.
I didn't mean to imply that one was better than the other - I can't say I personally have come to a hard conclusion about that.
Encryption can actually place a bullseye on communications. It's probably better to use a combination of encryption and steganography-like methods.
If internet cafes become difficult to use, criminals will easily be able to adapt. Computers are just getting cheaper and net access more ubiquitous - in a while, monitoring libraries will have virtually no ill effect on criminals.
> Agents still have to get a warrant for specific records. Are libraries really > such sacred places that they shouldn't answer to warrants?
But before, in the spirit of the good old Bill of Rights, the warrants were issued by a grand jury in a criminal case. Now they can get one from the FISA, which is essentially a closed-door intelligence court - originally intended to prevent abuses, but realistically enables them.
The problem now is that the educated middle class doesn't benefit from responsible democracy. Possible solutions: reduce opportunities for education, indoctrinate some and subjugate the rest, amend the system... just throwing ideas out there.
The "slippery slope" argument isn't always fallacious. It's just something that is easily misused but can still sound authoritative. It's valid if the end result is immediate (i.e., the slope is short) or if the causal relationships in the steps leading to the result are obvious.
Another kind of fallacious argument is the straw man, which you just employed. GP never said that the government should never have police powers. The bottom of his "slippery slope" is the right of the state to spy on citizens. In that case, the causal relationship between the cause and the undesired result is short and unambiguous... one of the few examples of a successful slippery slope argument.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree, I don't want Some Dumbass cyclist wearing MP3 glasses to pull out in front of me and ruin my week.
Lisa: [showing off a tomato the size of a beach ball] I've grown a
futuristic tomato by fertilizing it with anabolic steroids.
Bart: The kind that help our Olympic athletes reach new peaks of
excellence?
Lisa: The very same.
100% agree.
I was doing a norba race and once I finished I chilled out on the trail to watch some of the other heats. I saw a guy on a very sweet, expensive and light-looking XC bike carry over a 6-inch log.
In the same race I finished just ahead of a guy I see often on the circuit. He rides on an old rigid bike, and he was hammering through the bony sections anyway. I've broken a rigid bike (stem failed) on the same trail. If had any suspension at all he probably would have toasted me.
The moral ends up being that gear helps, but honing your skills on crappy gear helps you appreciate the pricier stuff even more. When coming up, skill and fitness are paramount - everything else is secondary, and it makes a lot of sense to save your money early on to make sure you like the sport and to get a fitness and skill base going.
unless you throw some hills into the equation... then rider fitness starts to matter again :)
> It's hard to get the adrenaline rush of a fight/flight response when
> your body is expecting a mild vibration.
I understand that you value this facet of the sport as a core component of your personal enjoyment. I'm just pointing out that this is not the same for everyone.
> And biking isn't a combat sport...
It's a good comparison, nevertheless. A 5-foot drop can be harrowing and adrenaline inducing, and painful whether you stick it or not (depending on your rig and skill - it hurts for me every time!). The point is that the rush is not the only valid reason for doing a 5-foot drop. You might just want to weave it into your flow or you could just be testing your suspension or showing off in order to get laid.
Anything else is the same. Combat sports can stimulate ones interest in tactics, stealth, electronics, reenactment, whatever - adrenaline is not strictly neccessary for enjoyment. I would think that even in paintball, a sense of detachment and calm would make for a better player. It certainly makes for a better trials/trick rider. Nervous folks overgrip, and stay too rigid. Cool heads ride with finess and don't sweat the tricky stuff.
Why is it only serious if there is pain involved? Why do people constantly need to establish some "hard core" pecking order to everything?
:)
> There's no real incentive not to get shot, besides the lack of points.
Maybe there's no incentive to play paintball without someone getting their organs shredded by hot, flesh-piercing projectiles. Roar! Seriously, the "get a life, play paintball" argument is laughable coming from grown men who wear ghilli suits and shoot each other in a make-believe battlefield.
I love bikes. I especially like riding single track, freeride, and trials. I'd be an idiot if I called road cycling a joke because there is generally less blood involved. Not everyone needs to experience pain to feel alive, just us masochists
The "Laser Challenge" sets have a bomb that is ordinarily set off with a toggle switch - one direction for slow fuse, another for long fuse. It's a fairly simple hack to rip out the switch and substitute with an SCR and an IR photoresistor to allow remote detonation of the short fuse option. Then you can set minefields and set them off from a safe distance - Laser Geneva Conventions be damned!
My original (pedantic) point, which apparently got lost in the larger debates, was that there certainly wasn't a dearth of intelligence, casualty estimates, stragegy, and diplomacy involved. To believe that there was "no telling" if it was a good or bad strategic decision is naive... there were lots of data as other replies have pointed out.
Anyone familiar with the moral debate (which I don't remember trying to enter...) knows about Dresden at least, and the utilitarian viewpoint in general. That comparitive "ethics" always come up is indicative of the fact that the only consistently sensical framework for analyzing decisions in wartime is cold and by the numbers. Once in a war, survival trumps any sense of right and wrong. Arguing about Truman's A-bomb decision in terms of the latter doesn't really make sense to me, unless some extraordinary circumstances were involved, such as Truman pocketing an Imperial peace offering and bombing the Japanese anyway. Otherwise, it was just a measured decision by a country fighting for its survival.
> That's why to date terrorists haven't gotten a hold of any.
Surely you mean that's why they _probably_ don't have any?
> but we have tools to find it.
Hopefully we are almost done finding it.
er, their targets.
> There's know way of telling how many lives were saved as a result of the war
> ending then compared to going on for however longer it would have went without
> it.
If there's no way of knowing, then isn't it impossible to say exactly whether it was a good or bad decision?
> In fact, the biggest threat the USA faces today is not from any organized state
> but from stateless terrorists who would love to get ahold of nuclear weapons,
> but don't have a government worth of resources to develop what history has
> proven is quite a hard thing to come accross and control.
The hardest part, by far, is obtaining enough fissile material. Luckily for terrorists and not so lucky for there targets, the cold war left behing lots of fissile material, some of which has gone missing according to the news.
For those who are interested in what the natives went through as well as the navy guys, check out Radio Bikini. There's some good clips of the blasts, too.
The article hints about the shelving of a Romulan War plot in Enterprise - it could that this sudden movie move is due to the impending demise of the series - maybe season 4 has been dumped in favor fast-forwarding to some pre-planned final season arc.
If the last episode of Enterprise is any clue, it could be that Remans are used as front-line troops. Remans are different enough to technically be a different species. Does anyone know if Trek has pinned down the Remans' status as a species?
> What's "burgeoning" about the middle class? They're a potential threat -- the :)
:)
> long-term goal is to shrink it, not expand it. (Another benefit of restricting
> education to the descendants of the upper class.
I didn't intend to say they were growing or not... I was thinking hypothetically that if a representative democracy were to emerge, it would be based on a dominant middle class gaining much more political control.
> A tyranny of the majority is a feature, not a bug, except that you have to keep
> the people sufficiently homogenized to pull it off without splitting the country
> up and reducing the amount of power you have.
In terms of the sanctity of individual rights, majority rule seems like it would most certainly be a bug... though I guess you're speaking from the perspective of the entrenched power (just for kicks, or???)
> if the populations of Mormon Utah and Hippy California aren't sufficiently
> similar, you cease to be able to rule both.
What would happen if we gave CA political autonomy from the Union? Or Scotland from the UK? Or Bangladesh from Pakistan?
> it's a damn sight better than the alternative.
If you mean right-wing collectivism, I agree.
> thirty some odd ones have been deemed 'credible'...whatever that means.
Sounds like you have to look for overturned convictions of Patriot Act violations, and then read the opinions and see if they indicate that law enforcement acted improperly.
> It easy for me to say tell somebody this is a bad thing, (which it probably is),
> but if I can't offer up any proof as to how it harms people, what good is my
> opinion?
The current lack of oversight of FISA means that cover-ups are possible. Past abuses tell us that when cover-ups are possible due to lack of oversight, that abuse is a highly probable consequence. Doesn't that mean there is a logical basis for concern even without specific examples? If you put a baby in an airtight box, you don't need to open the box up to know what's inside. Hint: it's not a baby happily living off a previously unknown scuba tank.
> Popular democracy helps to entrench political power
:)
probably you typoed and meant "responsible democracy?"
> As part of that educated middle class, popular democracy is a (pardon the pun
> great leap forward as far as I'm concerned.
But where does a burgeoning middle class get its numbers? From a shrinking lower class, a hyper-taxed rich class, both?
What happens if a representative democracy takes over - what about the tyranny of the majority? Maybe state/local rights could enjoy a resurgence and lead to a successfully pluralistic, confederate system
"The problem with legislation like this is that it is a slippery slope to accepting the government's ability to monitor your activities any time, any where, for any reason."
Upon reading this again, I'll retract and concede that you're right, and the assertion is too broad to be technically valid as a slippery slope.
Maybe a better argument would be to say the Patriot Act is a slippery slope towards abuses of surveillance powers - essentially, that Patriot Act allows the FISC to issue warrants, and the FISC's mostly unchecked secrecy creates a new mechanism for abuse.
Of course, I could be wrong and there might be a reason that the potential for abuse in FISC is covered. I'd be relieved to hear that this is the case.
Yeah, you got me there. I should have said that an educated middle class can come to despise a responsible democracy, because they have their own ideas about how to steer the body politic and resent being somewhat removed from the process.
I didn't mean to imply that one was better than the other - I can't say I personally have come to a hard conclusion about that.
I said explicitly that the Patriot Act enables the state to spy on citizens. Are you saying it doesn't?
> grand jury in a criminal case
should read "grand jury pursuant to a criminal case"
Encryption can actually place a bullseye on communications. It's probably better to use a combination of encryption and steganography-like methods.
If internet cafes become difficult to use, criminals will easily be able to adapt. Computers are just getting cheaper and net access more ubiquitous - in a while, monitoring libraries will have virtually no ill effect on criminals.
> Agents still have to get a warrant for specific records. Are libraries really
> such sacred places that they shouldn't answer to warrants?
But before, in the spirit of the good old Bill of Rights, the warrants were issued by a grand jury in a criminal case. Now they can get one from the FISA, which is essentially a closed-door intelligence court - originally intended to prevent abuses, but realistically enables them.
The problem now is that the educated middle class doesn't benefit from responsible democracy. Possible solutions: reduce opportunities for education, indoctrinate some and subjugate the rest, amend the system... just throwing ideas out there.
I've got an unoriginal idea: just google for patriot act abuses and sift through the 50,000 hits ;)
The "slippery slope" argument isn't always fallacious. It's just something that is easily misused but can still sound authoritative. It's valid if the end result is immediate (i.e., the slope is short) or if the causal relationships in the steps leading to the result are obvious.
Another kind of fallacious argument is the straw man, which you just employed. GP never said that the government should never have police powers. The bottom of his "slippery slope" is the right of the state to spy on citizens. In that case, the causal relationship between the cause and the undesired result is short and unambiguous... one of the few examples of a successful slippery slope argument.