No you're wrong. You say "The standard hourly rate" as if it's some kind of legal benchmark uniform across all teachers, which of course it isn't. No matter how much or little a teacher is paid, and no matter how many paychecks per year a teacher received (9 or 12), the effect is the same, which is that working as a teacher pays X dollars per calendar year. If they paid teachers only once a year, the effect would still be the same -- X dollars per year.
My mom was a teacher. She got 12 paychecks a year, sort of, but it only happened 9 times, because the last check before summer vacation was 4 times as big. Still, it didn't matter, she made her X dollars for teaching school for one year.
A teacher paid 9 times per year has the same opportunity to work in the summer as one paid 12 times per year.
If a teacher doesn't think his X dollars per calendar year is enough, then he won't work the job. And in fact that's a big problem, many people don't teach because the pay is too low. Still, the whole 75% thing is a red herring, it's an empty statement, it means nothing. Yeah, teacher pay is low in many places (not in my state though, second highest in the nation), and that's a problem, and you can point at it and say it's only three quarters of what a teacher might get in another job, but our whole conversation is about how that's not a relevant holistic argument because of the huge vacation benefits.
Good point, and I totally agree. Let me try another example.
We wouldn't want cops running around refusing to arrest people who rape and murder elderly grandmothers in full view of their weeping adolescent adopted grandchildren, just because the cop is himself a rapist-murder with a penchant for the elderly.
You are still addressing the law instead of the enforcement. My point is that cops are there to enforce laws. I don't want cops to make the law, I want my legislators to make the law -- I want cops to enforce them as blindly as possible.
Legislatures give police some priorities; executives give them some priorities; and I guess the rest they make for themselves. But if you want cops to come up with priorities, don't complain when they are ignoring your petty thievery in preference for whatever they think is important.
I agree with you, man, that busting a dude for using free wifi is totally ridiculous, but really, what do you want the cop to do? Let the guy break the law? Ignore for one moment that you think it's a dumb law (I think so too), just ask yourself whether you want cops to be running around deciding when and where to enforce the law? I don't want that. I want the cop to always enforce every law, and let the courts sort it all out. That's what the courts are for. And of course my preference overall is to have far, far fewer laws, especially shit laws like this one.
Still, it's not the cop's fault, it's the voters' fault for electing and re-electing legislators that pass these bad laws.
OR, if you prefer, it's no one's fault, because the voters like the law, and it's our problem if we don't like it. Fuck us, we're not the majority.
You can call it a salary for 9 months, or a salary for 12 months, either one and it's the same, because you still make the same and you don't have to work in the summer. If you can work another job for three months to make even more money, then that's gravy. I won't grant you that summer months off are anything but vacation time. The official term for it is even "summer vacation".
You are right, though, there are in-service days and training days. Nevertheless, those happen on in-service days, which are school holidays for the students; while federal (and state) holidays the teachers still get as off days. And there are enough federal holidays to be significant -- I know, because I don't get them off at my job, and I curse on every one of them: "What the hell do you mean I have to work on Columbus Day! That's ridiculous!" (Just kidding, Columbus Day is an absurd holiday.)
For the record, I think teaching is a really hard and underappreciated job which deserves a fair salary. Nevertheless, to discount the enormous vacation time is untenable.
On the time off: I get three weeks a year, recently raised up from two weeks per year. Teachers get three months, plus two weeks at Christmas, plus a week at spring break, plus all federal holidays. That's 15 to 16 weeks per year, five times or more than I get. I would instantly trade my three flexible weeks for a teacher's 16 inflexible weeks. I wouldn't even take one second to think about it.
Just sayin'. I think teachers are great and should be paid adequately, but their benefits make up for a LOT of up-front salary.
With a bachelor's degree, I made just about that much as a computer programmer. But frankly, software development is just a manufacturing job, and I have no expectation that my field of manufacture will survive in this country any better than any other. The business of America is business, so that's where the money is.
Law enforcement is a hard one. Laws come from different people than the people who enforce them, and generally we want to defer to the laws themselves (The Rule Of Law), which is the same as deferring to the people who made the laws. For instance, we expect the President to obey the law, not just to act willy nilly. Same with cops: we hire them to enforce the law. We wouldn't want cops running around refusing to arrest people for cocaine possession just because the cops is a blowhead. We want cops to enforce the laws, and that is right and proper. If the cop is enforcing a bad law, the fault is with the law (...with the legislators...with the voters), not with the cop.
Okay, but don't blame the cop, he was literally just doing his job. What, you want him to pick and choose what laws to enforce? Blame the legislators... and while you're at it, blame the people really at fault: the voters.
You are trying to make a moral argument now, but the original point was about the legal concept of free speech. I agree, XM Radio sucks, and are bad people, or whatever; and they might have broken a private contract; and they might have done some false advertising. But none of that makes it an issue of free speech.
Finally on this point:
I never "flat out said there is a law against Opie and Anthony starting their own satellite radio service", I have no idea where you got that from.
I got the idea from when I said
they could build... their own satellite radio service. There is no law stopping them
You responded and said
Ah, but there is a law stopping them.
So, you wrote a sentence saying that there is a law stopping Opie and Anthony from doing the hard work of building their own satellite radio service, and I read that sentence, so that's where I got the idea.
Firstly, don't call me sad unless you want me to call you a cockless putzwad. And don't accuse me of being conditioned by corporations unless you want -- uh, let's see what can I do about that -- want me to laugh at how ridiculously wrong you are. I'm a libertarian, and my favorite Constitutional amendment is the 9th, which I was waiting for you to reference in your post, but you never did, perhaps because you aren't familiar with it.
Now on to your points, which are valid on the surface but when you look beneath them, rest on nothing. Satellite radio is a private enterprise, licensed by the government. Anyone who wants to pay the fees for a license, and pay for a bunch of satellites launched into orbit, can have their own satellite radio station. Despite your saying so, there is in fact no law which grants the two, soon to be one, satellite radio companies a monopoly over satellite radio, much less over telecommunication in general. As I said, there is no law stopping someone, including Opie and Anthony themselves, from scrounging the gigantic resources necessary to start such a company. And if they do all that work, one of the benefits is that they get veto power over the communications broadcast over their own, private, nongovernmental radio service.
Let me put it shortly: anyone who works hard enough at it can have their own satellite radio service.
In fact I DO notice my rights eroding and being squandered -- by the government. If the government passes a law saying I can't enjoy a right I previously enjoyed, then if I try to enjoy it again, they will motherfucking put my skinny white ass in motherfucking prison. But a corporation can't do that, despite their best efforts -- at least not without help from the government. If a corporation doesn't like something I do, they can try to sue me, that's about it. Or, if I am using their company resources to do the thing they don't like, then they can exclude me from using those resources. That's exactly what happened to Opie and Anthony -- they did something their employer didn't like, so they got shitcanned. That sucks for them, but it's hardly an issue of lost free speech. Opie and Anthony can still go to your house (I mean, Ivan Todoroski, YOUR very own house) and say whatever they want, so long as you permit them to say it. If they say something you don't like, then you can do just like the corporation, and kick them the fuck out of your house.
Let me put it shortly: you have the right to control your own forum, and so does everyone else.
Maybe I'm not giving you enough credit. You flat out said there is a law against Opie and Anthony starting their own satellite radio service. Do you want to defend that point by providing a link to that law? Or would you rather concede that you are talking out of you ass?
So if someone is rich enough to silence any dissenting viewpoint from his, he's not infringing on their free speech because he's not the governement?
I can't conceive of a way even the richest of men could "silence any dissenting viewpoint from his" in a free country. What would the man do, buy my kitchen so I can't say what I want there? Own every piece of real estate on earth, so there is no free forum left? Even the public ones, like parks and the National Mall? And he would do all of this with no help from the government?
Okay, I have to say that your hypothetical situation is impossible, but if I grant it for the sake of argument, then yes, he is STILL not infringing on the freedom of speech, because the country is still a free country, he is not the government, and that makes it an issue of censorship, or stifling opposing opinions, or the conflicting rights of different individuals -- not an issue of free speech.
If something is wrong when the power is political, it is also wrong when the power is financial.
Oh, yeah dude, it's definitely wrong, it's just not free-speech wrongness. In the case at hand, it might or might not be wrong, but in your hypothetical, where a maniacal trillionaire monopolized all private speech, it would certainly be "wrong".
Yah, okay, but it CAN be said on a private airwave (or any other private forum) -- just not that particular one, because THE PERSON WHO OWNS THE FORUM CONTROLS THE FORUM. Sorry for the caps, it seems you didn't understand that salient and essential point from my original post.
If Opie and Anthony want to say whatever *they* want, then they need their own forum. For their own forum, they can use their living room, or they could build their own concert hall, or their own satellite radio service. There is no law stopping them, thus no government control of their speech, and that makes it not a free speech issue. But if they want to use someone else's forum, then they should get used to *sharing* control over their content.
Yes, it is clear that you are not American and not acquainted in American law. The reason this isn't a free speech issue per se is that there are two speakers here each attempting to assert themselves. The first speaker is Opie and Anthony, who want to say something controversial; the second speaker is their employer, the owner of the forum (XM radio), who wants to say that the controversial thing is bad. These two speakers' rights are opposed in this case; you can't have both. In America (not sure what country you're from) we recognize Opie and Anthony's right to say what they want, and we also recognize the forum owner's right to leverage their own forum in whatever way they deem appropriate (actually, we do have some limitations, like profanity on public airwaves, but that's the general concept). Both of these rights are clearly defined, so if Opie and Anthony want to say their thing, they will have to find a forum which will permit to say it.
So concisely, this isn't a free speech issue because Opie and Anthony still have the right to say what they want, just not wherever they want to say it.
In this specific instance, it seems like a bummer for Opie and Anthony because XM Radio promised them they would be uncensored. Nevertheless, that would amount to a contractual dispute, not a free speech issue.
TLDs are fairly decentralized. If a community of people wanted to start their own parallel TLD system, they could. In fact, people HAVE done this with varying degrees of success, mostly very slight. All you have to do is come up with a TLD system which is compelling and people will support it.
I'm surprised to see Microsoft's server software in there. I'm not surprised because I thought IIS was insecure, I'm surprised because I didn't realize it wasn't secure, I just assume it was, and buggy generally, like all other Microsoft software. Certainly, the few MS programs I've used were buggy (XP, Word, Vis Stu, SQL Server) so I assumed they all were. If Microsoft has the institutional ability to make bug free software, then why don't they make more of it? Why don't they share the magic team of wizards who built IIS with the rest of the company?
Maybe I should ask for corroboration. Is IIS really bug free software? I mean, at lease for security bugs?
I totally agree, it's not age, it's interest -- or, as I phrase it, willful ignorance. Last year my mom complained that I had screwed up her television and she had no idea how to fix it. She had turned on the TV and the picture didn't show up, so she gave up then and there. I walked over to the cable box and pressed its power button, and the picture appeared. She said she had no way of knowing to do that, that only a young'n would know those fancy tricks, and I told her that if she weren't capable of understanding that you have to turn on a device to use it, then she would never be able to operate anything mechanical. She perfectly well knew the cable box had to be powered on, she was just willfully ignorant, she didn't want to try to solve the problem. She knows the vacuum needs to be turned on, she knows the car and barbeque need to be turned on, she knows a faucet needs to be turned on, but she lives in willful ignorance of new things. Not necessarily electronics -- she has no problem with the radio, the microwave, the television, but anything new she refuses to attempt to understand.
She said she wanted me to teach her, and I told her I could never overcome willful ignorance, she had to change that first. Sometimes, you have to show some tough love...
Yes, that was exactly my first reaction, too. Oh, what? A judge didn't understand a concept in a legal case before him? Even a concept that is well understood, even among uneducated people? In that case, I would certainly hope a judge would stop proceedings, ask for clarification, acknowledge his ignorance with humility, receive some explanation graciously, then get on with things. I imagine that most judges do this, with varying degrees of humility.
I think one particular pitfall is when judges accept a metaphor for a complicated subject, without understanding the limitations of the metaphor. For instance, the metaphor that software is like a book, which led to software being licensed instead of sold. Bad understanding of a bad metaphor led to a bad decision with bad results. Thankfully, this judge didn't do that.
Okay. You sound very reasonable, and it seems we agree. And we all love clean fresh air (I moved to Alaska to get it) -- I think having clean air stands on its own, no need for superfluous and tenuous connections to global warming.
My wife had a great answer to a neighbor who believes that global warming is myth. She said to him, "By taking the steps to reduce greenhouse gases that cause global warming, we will be cleaning up the air. And I don't know about you, but I like clean air."
That's an answer, but it's hardly a good answer, let alone a "great" one. Liking clean air would only absolutely suggest reducing greenhouse gases if reducing greenhouse gases had only the effect of creating clean air and possibly reducing global warming -- but that is not the case, it also has other effects ("externalities"). The most popular externality is reduction in global economy, which we generally recognize as bad. So the question then becomes, what do we prefer, cleaner air and possibly lowered global warming, or a bigger nicer economy? The answer depends on how much of each we'd get, and how important each is to us. Happily, often we don't have to choose between them, and can have both, which many people believe is the case with global warming.
Compare to pesticides. I've heard stupidass environmentalists say we should totally ban all pesticides, because pesticides cause cancer. If we did that, the price of (for instance) fruit would increase, since it would be more expensive to produce and bring to the customer. If the price is higher, people will eat less fruit. But, the vitamins in fruit protect against cancer! So then, the question is, would we prefer less pesticides leading to less cancer but higher fruit prices leading to more cancer; or more pesticides, leading to more cancer, but cheaper fruit leading to less cancer? Which one is the dominant variable? This one is easier than the global warming question, because it's easier to make a good guess at what action will lead to less cancer (ignoring other externalities), and luckily that answer keeps our fruit cheap, attractive, and cancer reducing.
So, okay, global warming may or may not be a problem, and dirty air may or may not be a problem, but taking expensive steps to curb air pollution because you hope it will slow global warming, and selling it to people because people like clean air, is cheating. If you can't sell the global warming argument, you aren't allowed to invent correlations and pretend they represent the whole picture.
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Nah, I prefer candidates whose beliefs and rhetoric are based on facts.
No you're wrong. You say "The standard hourly rate" as if it's some kind of legal benchmark uniform across all teachers, which of course it isn't. No matter how much or little a teacher is paid, and no matter how many paychecks per year a teacher received (9 or 12), the effect is the same, which is that working as a teacher pays X dollars per calendar year. If they paid teachers only once a year, the effect would still be the same -- X dollars per year.
My mom was a teacher. She got 12 paychecks a year, sort of, but it only happened 9 times, because the last check before summer vacation was 4 times as big. Still, it didn't matter, she made her X dollars for teaching school for one year.
A teacher paid 9 times per year has the same opportunity to work in the summer as one paid 12 times per year.
If a teacher doesn't think his X dollars per calendar year is enough, then he won't work the job. And in fact that's a big problem, many people don't teach because the pay is too low. Still, the whole 75% thing is a red herring, it's an empty statement, it means nothing. Yeah, teacher pay is low in many places (not in my state though, second highest in the nation), and that's a problem, and you can point at it and say it's only three quarters of what a teacher might get in another job, but our whole conversation is about how that's not a relevant holistic argument because of the huge vacation benefits.
Good point, and I totally agree. Let me try another example.
We wouldn't want cops running around refusing to arrest people who rape and murder elderly grandmothers in full view of their weeping adolescent adopted grandchildren, just because the cop is himself a rapist-murder with a penchant for the elderly.
You are still addressing the law instead of the enforcement. My point is that cops are there to enforce laws. I don't want cops to make the law, I want my legislators to make the law -- I want cops to enforce them as blindly as possible.
Legislatures give police some priorities; executives give them some priorities; and I guess the rest they make for themselves. But if you want cops to come up with priorities, don't complain when they are ignoring your petty thievery in preference for whatever they think is important.
I agree with you, man, that busting a dude for using free wifi is totally ridiculous, but really, what do you want the cop to do? Let the guy break the law? Ignore for one moment that you think it's a dumb law (I think so too), just ask yourself whether you want cops to be running around deciding when and where to enforce the law? I don't want that. I want the cop to always enforce every law, and let the courts sort it all out. That's what the courts are for. And of course my preference overall is to have far, far fewer laws, especially shit laws like this one.
Still, it's not the cop's fault, it's the voters' fault for electing and re-electing legislators that pass these bad laws.
OR, if you prefer, it's no one's fault, because the voters like the law, and it's our problem if we don't like it. Fuck us, we're not the majority.
You can call it a salary for 9 months, or a salary for 12 months, either one and it's the same, because you still make the same and you don't have to work in the summer. If you can work another job for three months to make even more money, then that's gravy. I won't grant you that summer months off are anything but vacation time. The official term for it is even "summer vacation".
You are right, though, there are in-service days and training days. Nevertheless, those happen on in-service days, which are school holidays for the students; while federal (and state) holidays the teachers still get as off days. And there are enough federal holidays to be significant -- I know, because I don't get them off at my job, and I curse on every one of them: "What the hell do you mean I have to work on Columbus Day! That's ridiculous!" (Just kidding, Columbus Day is an absurd holiday.)
For the record, I think teaching is a really hard and underappreciated job which deserves a fair salary. Nevertheless, to discount the enormous vacation time is untenable.
On the time off: I get three weeks a year, recently raised up from two weeks per year. Teachers get three months, plus two weeks at Christmas, plus a week at spring break, plus all federal holidays. That's 15 to 16 weeks per year, five times or more than I get. I would instantly trade my three flexible weeks for a teacher's 16 inflexible weeks. I wouldn't even take one second to think about it.
Just sayin'. I think teachers are great and should be paid adequately, but their benefits make up for a LOT of up-front salary.
With a bachelor's degree, I made just about that much as a computer programmer. But frankly, software development is just a manufacturing job, and I have no expectation that my field of manufacture will survive in this country any better than any other. The business of America is business, so that's where the money is.
Law enforcement is a hard one. Laws come from different people than the people who enforce them, and generally we want to defer to the laws themselves (The Rule Of Law), which is the same as deferring to the people who made the laws. For instance, we expect the President to obey the law, not just to act willy nilly. Same with cops: we hire them to enforce the law. We wouldn't want cops running around refusing to arrest people for cocaine possession just because the cops is a blowhead. We want cops to enforce the laws, and that is right and proper. If the cop is enforcing a bad law, the fault is with the law (...with the legislators ...with the voters), not with the cop.
Okay, but don't blame the cop, he was literally just doing his job. What, you want him to pick and choose what laws to enforce? Blame the legislators... and while you're at it, blame the people really at fault: the voters.
You are trying to make a moral argument now, but the original point was about the legal concept of free speech. I agree, XM Radio sucks, and are bad people, or whatever; and they might have broken a private contract; and they might have done some false advertising. But none of that makes it an issue of free speech.
... their own satellite radio service. There is no law stopping them
Finally on this point:
I never "flat out said there is a law against Opie and Anthony starting their own satellite radio service", I have no idea where you got that from.
I got the idea from when I said
they could build
You responded and said
Ah, but there is a law stopping them.
So, you wrote a sentence saying that there is a law stopping Opie and Anthony from doing the hard work of building their own satellite radio service, and I read that sentence, so that's where I got the idea.
Firstly, don't call me sad unless you want me to call you a cockless putzwad. And don't accuse me of being conditioned by corporations unless you want -- uh, let's see what can I do about that -- want me to laugh at how ridiculously wrong you are. I'm a libertarian, and my favorite Constitutional amendment is the 9th, which I was waiting for you to reference in your post, but you never did, perhaps because you aren't familiar with it.
Now on to your points, which are valid on the surface but when you look beneath them, rest on nothing. Satellite radio is a private enterprise, licensed by the government. Anyone who wants to pay the fees for a license, and pay for a bunch of satellites launched into orbit, can have their own satellite radio station. Despite your saying so, there is in fact no law which grants the two, soon to be one, satellite radio companies a monopoly over satellite radio, much less over telecommunication in general. As I said, there is no law stopping someone, including Opie and Anthony themselves, from scrounging the gigantic resources necessary to start such a company. And if they do all that work, one of the benefits is that they get veto power over the communications broadcast over their own, private, nongovernmental radio service.
Let me put it shortly: anyone who works hard enough at it can have their own satellite radio service.
In fact I DO notice my rights eroding and being squandered -- by the government. If the government passes a law saying I can't enjoy a right I previously enjoyed, then if I try to enjoy it again, they will motherfucking put my skinny white ass in motherfucking prison. But a corporation can't do that, despite their best efforts -- at least not without help from the government. If a corporation doesn't like something I do, they can try to sue me, that's about it. Or, if I am using their company resources to do the thing they don't like, then they can exclude me from using those resources. That's exactly what happened to Opie and Anthony -- they did something their employer didn't like, so they got shitcanned. That sucks for them, but it's hardly an issue of lost free speech. Opie and Anthony can still go to your house (I mean, Ivan Todoroski, YOUR very own house) and say whatever they want, so long as you permit them to say it. If they say something you don't like, then you can do just like the corporation, and kick them the fuck out of your house.
Let me put it shortly: you have the right to control your own forum, and so does everyone else.
Maybe I'm not giving you enough credit. You flat out said there is a law against Opie and Anthony starting their own satellite radio service. Do you want to defend that point by providing a link to that law? Or would you rather concede that you are talking out of you ass?
So if someone is rich enough to silence any dissenting viewpoint from his, he's not infringing on their free speech because he's not the governement?
I can't conceive of a way even the richest of men could "silence any dissenting viewpoint from his" in a free country. What would the man do, buy my kitchen so I can't say what I want there? Own every piece of real estate on earth, so there is no free forum left? Even the public ones, like parks and the National Mall? And he would do all of this with no help from the government?
Okay, I have to say that your hypothetical situation is impossible, but if I grant it for the sake of argument, then yes, he is STILL not infringing on the freedom of speech, because the country is still a free country, he is not the government, and that makes it an issue of censorship, or stifling opposing opinions, or the conflicting rights of different individuals -- not an issue of free speech.
If something is wrong when the power is political, it is also wrong when the power is financial.
Oh, yeah dude, it's definitely wrong, it's just not free-speech wrongness. In the case at hand, it might or might not be wrong, but in your hypothetical, where a maniacal trillionaire monopolized all private speech, it would certainly be "wrong".
Still, not a free speech issue.
I don't know about others, but mine doesn't.
Yah, okay, but it CAN be said on a private airwave (or any other private forum) -- just not that particular one, because THE PERSON WHO OWNS THE FORUM CONTROLS THE FORUM. Sorry for the caps, it seems you didn't understand that salient and essential point from my original post.
If Opie and Anthony want to say whatever *they* want, then they need their own forum. For their own forum, they can use their living room, or they could build their own concert hall, or their own satellite radio service. There is no law stopping them, thus no government control of their speech, and that makes it not a free speech issue. But if they want to use someone else's forum, then they should get used to *sharing* control over their content.
Wow, seriously. So, how much did you get awarded in your lawsuit against them? Did you have to go it alone or did you make it a class action?
(Disclaimer: I am not an American, nor a lawyer)
Yes, it is clear that you are not American and not acquainted in American law. The reason this isn't a free speech issue per se is that there are two speakers here each attempting to assert themselves. The first speaker is Opie and Anthony, who want to say something controversial; the second speaker is their employer, the owner of the forum (XM radio), who wants to say that the controversial thing is bad. These two speakers' rights are opposed in this case; you can't have both. In America (not sure what country you're from) we recognize Opie and Anthony's right to say what they want, and we also recognize the forum owner's right to leverage their own forum in whatever way they deem appropriate (actually, we do have some limitations, like profanity on public airwaves, but that's the general concept). Both of these rights are clearly defined, so if Opie and Anthony want to say their thing, they will have to find a forum which will permit to say it.
So concisely, this isn't a free speech issue because Opie and Anthony still have the right to say what they want, just not wherever they want to say it.
In this specific instance, it seems like a bummer for Opie and Anthony because XM Radio promised them they would be uncensored. Nevertheless, that would amount to a contractual dispute, not a free speech issue.
TLDs are fairly decentralized. If a community of people wanted to start their own parallel TLD system, they could. In fact, people HAVE done this with varying degrees of success, mostly very slight. All you have to do is come up with a TLD system which is compelling and people will support it.
How would you overhaul it?
I'm surprised to see Microsoft's server software in there. I'm not surprised because I thought IIS was insecure, I'm surprised because I didn't realize it wasn't secure, I just assume it was, and buggy generally, like all other Microsoft software. Certainly, the few MS programs I've used were buggy (XP, Word, Vis Stu, SQL Server) so I assumed they all were. If Microsoft has the institutional ability to make bug free software, then why don't they make more of it? Why don't they share the magic team of wizards who built IIS with the rest of the company?
Maybe I should ask for corroboration. Is IIS really bug free software? I mean, at lease for security bugs?
when did the entertainment industry stop being about entertainment, and more about milking every cent out of it they can.
Like political conservatives, you are pining for a bygone era which never existed.
they need to start from some baseline, and work there way down to what they want to know
I don't understand, they need to start from some baseline, and work there way down? Where way down? Or way down to where?
I totally agree, it's not age, it's interest -- or, as I phrase it, willful ignorance. Last year my mom complained that I had screwed up her television and she had no idea how to fix it. She had turned on the TV and the picture didn't show up, so she gave up then and there. I walked over to the cable box and pressed its power button, and the picture appeared. She said she had no way of knowing to do that, that only a young'n would know those fancy tricks, and I told her that if she weren't capable of understanding that you have to turn on a device to use it, then she would never be able to operate anything mechanical. She perfectly well knew the cable box had to be powered on, she was just willfully ignorant, she didn't want to try to solve the problem. She knows the vacuum needs to be turned on, she knows the car and barbeque need to be turned on, she knows a faucet needs to be turned on, but she lives in willful ignorance of new things. Not necessarily electronics -- she has no problem with the radio, the microwave, the television, but anything new she refuses to attempt to understand.
She said she wanted me to teach her, and I told her I could never overcome willful ignorance, she had to change that first. Sometimes, you have to show some tough love...
it could be because his concept of what a website is is good enough for using, um, web sites, but not good enough for deciding this particular case.
Yeah maybe. Or maybe he just doesn't know what a website is, like he said.
Yes, that was exactly my first reaction, too. Oh, what? A judge didn't understand a concept in a legal case before him? Even a concept that is well understood, even among uneducated people? In that case, I would certainly hope a judge would stop proceedings, ask for clarification, acknowledge his ignorance with humility, receive some explanation graciously, then get on with things. I imagine that most judges do this, with varying degrees of humility.
I think one particular pitfall is when judges accept a metaphor for a complicated subject, without understanding the limitations of the metaphor. For instance, the metaphor that software is like a book, which led to software being licensed instead of sold. Bad understanding of a bad metaphor led to a bad decision with bad results. Thankfully, this judge didn't do that.
"Oh, see, a website is like a '59 Buick..."
Okay. You sound very reasonable, and it seems we agree. And we all love clean fresh air (I moved to Alaska to get it) -- I think having clean air stands on its own, no need for superfluous and tenuous connections to global warming.
My wife had a great answer to a neighbor who believes that global warming is myth. She said to him, "By taking the steps to reduce greenhouse gases that cause global warming, we will be cleaning up the air. And I don't know about you, but I like clean air."
That's an answer, but it's hardly a good answer, let alone a "great" one. Liking clean air would only absolutely suggest reducing greenhouse gases if reducing greenhouse gases had only the effect of creating clean air and possibly reducing global warming -- but that is not the case, it also has other effects ("externalities"). The most popular externality is reduction in global economy, which we generally recognize as bad. So the question then becomes, what do we prefer, cleaner air and possibly lowered global warming, or a bigger nicer economy? The answer depends on how much of each we'd get, and how important each is to us. Happily, often we don't have to choose between them, and can have both, which many people believe is the case with global warming.
Compare to pesticides. I've heard stupidass environmentalists say we should totally ban all pesticides, because pesticides cause cancer. If we did that, the price of (for instance) fruit would increase, since it would be more expensive to produce and bring to the customer. If the price is higher, people will eat less fruit. But, the vitamins in fruit protect against cancer! So then, the question is, would we prefer less pesticides leading to less cancer but higher fruit prices leading to more cancer; or more pesticides, leading to more cancer, but cheaper fruit leading to less cancer? Which one is the dominant variable? This one is easier than the global warming question, because it's easier to make a good guess at what action will lead to less cancer (ignoring other externalities), and luckily that answer keeps our fruit cheap, attractive, and cancer reducing.
So, okay, global warming may or may not be a problem, and dirty air may or may not be a problem, but taking expensive steps to curb air pollution because you hope it will slow global warming, and selling it to people because people like clean air, is cheating. If you can't sell the global warming argument, you aren't allowed to invent correlations and pretend they represent the whole picture.