Yep. We seem to be a lot better at finding the balance than they were. It's not really surprising, since they were driven by an ideology, whereas more or less we are driven by moderation and practicality. I can't think of any time, in any place, where a purified ideology was successful in stable governance. You should think about that.
Okay, thanks, that's informative. But western law neither forbids eating shrimp nor having gay sex. When people say "Sharia law" do they mean actual law, enforced by the state, in the way I understand it? Like, the police would come enforce a law that I pray five times a day? or is it "law" in a different sense? I always get the idea that it's the former, and I know most Muslim states aren't secular like I'd want, but I still wouldn't want anyone enforcing prayer laws, let alone stoning laws.
You don't need to convince me that all religions and ideologies come in shades of gray, nor that Muslims as a whole are commonly slandered according to the worse of their lot. I'm agreed on that, and I welcome whatever you can tell me about Sharia. But what I know if it is scary, and I wouldn't want any part of it.
Do you agree or disagree that it is shenanigans to require a 5000% markup on video cables in order to use the video functioanlity of the 'pod to watch videos on your TV?
Do you object to my use of the phrase "requires $40 video cables" without including the implied phrase "in order to do what is done with those cables"?
Does my lack of enthusiasm for Apple products make you feel threatened in your own taste for those products?
Really I can't figure out what angle you have a problem with.
Well, my opinion formed many moons ago based on much more than this article. As I stated, it was long before today that I was compelled to give up on Apple products. Yes, as you say, they are products which "work for its intended purpose", and that purpose does certainly come with Apple's standard set of shenanigans, and maybe some new ones too.
I'm not an overall Apple hater. I still use and love my MBP 17; it is awesome. I recommend Macs to certain friends and family. I listen to my iPod every day. But it was that iPod which finally broke the camel's back, because it requires $50 video cables only from Apple, whereas my previous-gen iPod gladly accepted 97-cent cables from a generic company. THAT is shenanigans. What shenanigans does the Apple TV have? I don't know because I don't own one and never looked into it, but I'm positive there are many. It works with iTunes, according to you, so right there is a whole giant set of shenanigans.
There are a lot of people who don't mind, or never cross those shenanigans, but I mind, and I crossed them too often to ignore them. I wish the market would pressure Apple to keep making awesome products without the shenanigans, but I don't expect that to happen, so I'll have to keep suffering, not able to participate in their great products. In another year or so I'll be buying a new laptop, and I'll finally sail off from the beaches of the Mac family, into the varied oceans of open source, completely, and forever. Wish me luck. Enjoy the Apple TV.
Me personally? No probably not. We elect professionals to do that job (to know better than we ourselves know), and we watch them carefully.
But yes, in general, there are certain few people with superior judgment and perspective, whom the rest of us would do well to follow, more or less. The hard part is selecting those people and keeping them honest.
But sure, yes, there are a hell of a lot of people who don't know what is best for themselves -- and aren't even withing rounding error of that threshold. They are true idiots, truly bad at living, and yes we can improve the world by forcing different behavior on them. This is not at all a controversial statement, and it's simply that you and I draw the line in different places.
For instance, surely you would say that a police officer "can do a better job of deciding what people need" than the rapist he arrests. The question is whether a big-government bureaucrat who wants to establish a local fire department "knows better" than person who sets fires in barrels near their double-wide trailer in an area of the country where there is no fire protection. Or, whether a big-government regulator who wants to keep lead out of children's toys "knows better" than a mother who could, theoretically, buy a lead test kit for each and every toy she buys at Wal Mart.
Yes, I know there are people who would rather that guy suffer consequences, and that mother's child to die of lead poisoning. I just disagree with those people. I think we can find people who can do a better job of making those decisions than the people themselves. It's a sliding scale and we are right to watch the balance carefully.
That's a great point, which I concede. But what is indicated when a person says "Sharia law" except those parts of it which are in stark and troubling contrast to the legal traditions of the west? Cutting off the hands of theives and stoning to death women who take off their scarves -- that's what is scary, and if I have maligned all of Sharia by thinking of those things, then for that I apologize. It is perhaps a sickening subset of the whole which I find scary. (And there is also a sickening subset of western law, but it is a very very small subset.)
I see what you are saying, but I guess my perspective is different. I honestly believe that a large number of individual conservatives, and the conservative movement generally, has an ideological opposition to things that are good for the environment. It's not that they hate the environment per se, it's that they don't care about it, and start out from the presumption that anything good for the environment conflicts with the rest of their ideology, and that is sufficient to lead them down the path to opposing it. This is odd because in the past it was the pro-labor liberals who weren't so concerned with the environment, and it was the pro-hunting conservatives who wanted to 'conserve' nature. But now, I just don't think it's that way. But I don't want to argue about it, so I won't throw any more mud. You can have the last word if you want it.
Word up on the idiots and assholes. Damn, it pains me. Not only are Dems idiots and assholes (some of them), but they are and have for fifty years been completely impotent and unable to get anything done. God, it's embarrassing.
Well, the important thing is that you have found a way to feel superior to those people, who feel superior to you. It's a wonderful cycle where everybody wins.
Huh, nope, not willing to jump through any hoops. Either the device works, or it doesn't go in my living room. If it comes bundled with shenanigans, I don't pay for it. Despite their really awesome products, I had to stop buying Apple gear a few years ago for that reason: the shenanigans made me feel like a chump, and that feeling wasn't worth the slightly nicer products.
Sorry about that. The conservative political movement hates solar. I recognize that there are individual outliers in any movement. I know, it sucks when your political bedfellows are assholes and idiots, and make you look like the same. As a Dem, I totally sympathize.
Sure, the weakness of free market theory is that it is based on the idea that people will take actions required to solve problems in the markets, and unfortunately that isn't true. For the most part, until a problem is very large indeed, most people won't take action to solve it. That means that in free (unregulated) markets, consumers have to put up with small, medium, and large-size problems, and are only saved from extra-large size ones, which are big enoguh. So, we use regulation to solve some of those small, medium, and large-size problems.
History is the simple proof. If free markets solved consumer problems, then why would there ever be a situation in which people were clamoring for government action? Government action would never be required if free markets worked according to theory. The very existence of regulation is itself a repudiation of free market theories.
Markets respond to pressures, yes; but not absolutely, and importantly not well enough. So to improve free markets, we regulate them, resulting in much superior non-free markets, and consumers benefit.
I'm going to have to call that out as total bullshit. (Not bullshit from you, presumably, but bullshit from whatever spin doctor sold you that story.) Removing the panels was a political action, just as putting them up was a political action. I won't accept a retort based on "cost reasons" because Reagan spent more and ran more of a deficit than any President ever. Conservatives hate solar, so the conservative removed solar installed by the previous tree-hugger President, and all the conservatives in country were happy with the act.
Wow, good thing they never publicized that! He certainly would have lost re-election, since nobody would vote for a namby-pamby hippie tree-hugging solar-loving weirdo.
It depends on your definition of "return", which for some people includes more than dollars; and it also depends on whether you are talking about technology from the 90s or technology from today, which is significantly better ("significantly" is the operative term"). But let's ignore the second point and focus on the first: he can justify it many ways; the most obvious way is with environmental concerns. Do you reject that justification, or had never heard of it?
Nope, the standard isn't absolute sureness, it's beyond a reasonable doubt (or something like that, I'm not trying to make a legal argument). There was no reasonable doubt that the house was clear. That is my assumption based on the fact that the firefighters didn't act, and also based on my assumption that firefighters wouldn't allow a human to die in a fire no matter what the fee.
It's fine, you can attack my assumptions, because that's all they are -- and I wasn't there at the fire myself (were you?). If my assumptions are totally wrong, then my conclusions could be too.
I read about a half dozen stories about this fire which give some additional details, and those details are part of my understanding. You could be better or worse informed than I.
Yeah, heck, maybe this was a rare cadre of psychopathic firefighters hell-bent on doing their best to kill neighborhood children under the pretenses of a fee dispute... but I doubt it.
I disagree. There are lots of ways to know whether there was a human in the house. None of the several stories I read mentioned that there was ever any doubt.
I'm presuming based on everything I know about the law and ethics of American emergency workers. Are you willing to state that you honestly believe they would have watched humans burn alive in a trailer home and done nothing? If you aren't willing to say that, then we can happily agree on this point.
I'm going to state the plainly obvious here: you clearly operated under different rules than the fire department in this story, because nobody has been sitting around accusing them of breaking local laws with respect to animal life.
Now I'm going to ask a question to which I'm genuinely curious of the answer in your specific case: where did you draw the line for "life"? I presume you weren't saving the bacteria on the poop stains in the toilet; did you save fish? pet mice? a snake? Would you have rushed in to save a hamster from a burning building, just exactly the same as a human? Was it a sliding scale of worth for different kinds of life (like, human is most important, then pet mammals, then other pets) or was it a threshold above which all life was exactly equal (like, a baby is in one room and a dog is in another, and you go save the dog)? I presume it was the former but I'm curious what the rule actually was, and how it was put into action.
I suppose you could say that, but I'm looking around not seeing any instances of public fire departments extorting emergency fees from the public. Public services are run professionally and with an eye for serving the public instead of maximizing profits. That's why this sort of enterprise is best run by the government. And I don't want to argue about it, so if you disagree you can have the last word.
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I've heard different numbers for that "spec" but never seen any source. Do you know that for sure, or did you just hear it somewhere?
80? really? Wow, that's fast. I had to look that up for myself; here's a link: Texas Raises Rural Speed Limits to 80MPH.
Yep. We seem to be a lot better at finding the balance than they were. It's not really surprising, since they were driven by an ideology, whereas more or less we are driven by moderation and practicality. I can't think of any time, in any place, where a purified ideology was successful in stable governance. You should think about that.
Okay, thanks, that's informative. But western law neither forbids eating shrimp nor having gay sex. When people say "Sharia law" do they mean actual law, enforced by the state, in the way I understand it? Like, the police would come enforce a law that I pray five times a day? or is it "law" in a different sense? I always get the idea that it's the former, and I know most Muslim states aren't secular like I'd want, but I still wouldn't want anyone enforcing prayer laws, let alone stoning laws.
You don't need to convince me that all religions and ideologies come in shades of gray, nor that Muslims as a whole are commonly slandered according to the worse of their lot. I'm agreed on that, and I welcome whatever you can tell me about Sharia. But what I know if it is scary, and I wouldn't want any part of it.
I don't understand what your point is.
Do you agree or disagree that it is shenanigans to require a 5000% markup on video cables in order to use the video functioanlity of the 'pod to watch videos on your TV?
Do you object to my use of the phrase "requires $40 video cables" without including the implied phrase "in order to do what is done with those cables"?
Does my lack of enthusiasm for Apple products make you feel threatened in your own taste for those products?
Really I can't figure out what angle you have a problem with.
Well, my opinion formed many moons ago based on much more than this article. As I stated, it was long before today that I was compelled to give up on Apple products. Yes, as you say, they are products which "work for its intended purpose", and that purpose does certainly come with Apple's standard set of shenanigans, and maybe some new ones too.
I'm not an overall Apple hater. I still use and love my MBP 17; it is awesome. I recommend Macs to certain friends and family. I listen to my iPod every day. But it was that iPod which finally broke the camel's back, because it requires $50 video cables only from Apple, whereas my previous-gen iPod gladly accepted 97-cent cables from a generic company. THAT is shenanigans. What shenanigans does the Apple TV have? I don't know because I don't own one and never looked into it, but I'm positive there are many. It works with iTunes, according to you, so right there is a whole giant set of shenanigans.
There are a lot of people who don't mind, or never cross those shenanigans, but I mind, and I crossed them too often to ignore them. I wish the market would pressure Apple to keep making awesome products without the shenanigans, but I don't expect that to happen, so I'll have to keep suffering, not able to participate in their great products. In another year or so I'll be buying a new laptop, and I'll finally sail off from the beaches of the Mac family, into the varied oceans of open source, completely, and forever. Wish me luck. Enjoy the Apple TV.
Ha ha ha, no it's not.
Me personally? No probably not. We elect professionals to do that job (to know better than we ourselves know), and we watch them carefully.
But yes, in general, there are certain few people with superior judgment and perspective, whom the rest of us would do well to follow, more or less. The hard part is selecting those people and keeping them honest.
But sure, yes, there are a hell of a lot of people who don't know what is best for themselves -- and aren't even withing rounding error of that threshold. They are true idiots, truly bad at living, and yes we can improve the world by forcing different behavior on them. This is not at all a controversial statement, and it's simply that you and I draw the line in different places.
For instance, surely you would say that a police officer "can do a better job of deciding what people need" than the rapist he arrests. The question is whether a big-government bureaucrat who wants to establish a local fire department "knows better" than person who sets fires in barrels near their double-wide trailer in an area of the country where there is no fire protection. Or, whether a big-government regulator who wants to keep lead out of children's toys "knows better" than a mother who could, theoretically, buy a lead test kit for each and every toy she buys at Wal Mart.
Yes, I know there are people who would rather that guy suffer consequences, and that mother's child to die of lead poisoning. I just disagree with those people. I think we can find people who can do a better job of making those decisions than the people themselves. It's a sliding scale and we are right to watch the balance carefully.
That's a great point, which I concede. But what is indicated when a person says "Sharia law" except those parts of it which are in stark and troubling contrast to the legal traditions of the west? Cutting off the hands of theives and stoning to death women who take off their scarves -- that's what is scary, and if I have maligned all of Sharia by thinking of those things, then for that I apologize. It is perhaps a sickening subset of the whole which I find scary. (And there is also a sickening subset of western law, but it is a very very small subset.)
I see what you are saying, but I guess my perspective is different. I honestly believe that a large number of individual conservatives, and the conservative movement generally, has an ideological opposition to things that are good for the environment. It's not that they hate the environment per se, it's that they don't care about it, and start out from the presumption that anything good for the environment conflicts with the rest of their ideology, and that is sufficient to lead them down the path to opposing it. This is odd because in the past it was the pro-labor liberals who weren't so concerned with the environment, and it was the pro-hunting conservatives who wanted to 'conserve' nature. But now, I just don't think it's that way. But I don't want to argue about it, so I won't throw any more mud. You can have the last word if you want it.
Word up on the idiots and assholes. Damn, it pains me. Not only are Dems idiots and assholes (some of them), but they are and have for fifty years been completely impotent and unable to get anything done. God, it's embarrassing.
Well, the important thing is that you have found a way to feel superior to those people, who feel superior to you. It's a wonderful cycle where everybody wins.
Huh, nope, not willing to jump through any hoops. Either the device works, or it doesn't go in my living room. If it comes bundled with shenanigans, I don't pay for it. Despite their really awesome products, I had to stop buying Apple gear a few years ago for that reason: the shenanigans made me feel like a chump, and that feeling wasn't worth the slightly nicer products.
Sorry about that. The conservative political movement hates solar. I recognize that there are individual outliers in any movement. I know, it sucks when your political bedfellows are assholes and idiots, and make you look like the same. As a Dem, I totally sympathize.
Sure, the weakness of free market theory is that it is based on the idea that people will take actions required to solve problems in the markets, and unfortunately that isn't true. For the most part, until a problem is very large indeed, most people won't take action to solve it. That means that in free (unregulated) markets, consumers have to put up with small, medium, and large-size problems, and are only saved from extra-large size ones, which are big enoguh. So, we use regulation to solve some of those small, medium, and large-size problems.
History is the simple proof. If free markets solved consumer problems, then why would there ever be a situation in which people were clamoring for government action? Government action would never be required if free markets worked according to theory. The very existence of regulation is itself a repudiation of free market theories.
Markets respond to pressures, yes; but not absolutely, and importantly not well enough. So to improve free markets, we regulate them, resulting in much superior non-free markets, and consumers benefit.
Yes! That's what they believe.
And they are wrong.
I'm going to have to call that out as total bullshit. (Not bullshit from you, presumably, but bullshit from whatever spin doctor sold you that story.) Removing the panels was a political action, just as putting them up was a political action. I won't accept a retort based on "cost reasons" because Reagan spent more and ran more of a deficit than any President ever. Conservatives hate solar, so the conservative removed solar installed by the previous tree-hugger President, and all the conservatives in country were happy with the act.
Wow, good thing they never publicized that! He certainly would have lost re-election, since nobody would vote for a namby-pamby hippie tree-hugging solar-loving weirdo.
It depends on your definition of "return", which for some people includes more than dollars; and it also depends on whether you are talking about technology from the 90s or technology from today, which is significantly better ("significantly" is the operative term"). But let's ignore the second point and focus on the first: he can justify it many ways; the most obvious way is with environmental concerns. Do you reject that justification, or had never heard of it?
Maybe the German government and people take a longer view than you do.
Maybe, but sharia law is scary, and these actions are consistent with it. So, maybe, maybe not.
Nope, the standard isn't absolute sureness, it's beyond a reasonable doubt (or something like that, I'm not trying to make a legal argument). There was no reasonable doubt that the house was clear. That is my assumption based on the fact that the firefighters didn't act, and also based on my assumption that firefighters wouldn't allow a human to die in a fire no matter what the fee.
It's fine, you can attack my assumptions, because that's all they are -- and I wasn't there at the fire myself (were you?). If my assumptions are totally wrong, then my conclusions could be too.
I read about a half dozen stories about this fire which give some additional details, and those details are part of my understanding. You could be better or worse informed than I.
Yeah, heck, maybe this was a rare cadre of psychopathic firefighters hell-bent on doing their best to kill neighborhood children under the pretenses of a fee dispute... but I doubt it.
I disagree. There are lots of ways to know whether there was a human in the house. None of the several stories I read mentioned that there was ever any doubt.
I'm presuming based on everything I know about the law and ethics of American emergency workers. Are you willing to state that you honestly believe they would have watched humans burn alive in a trailer home and done nothing? If you aren't willing to say that, then we can happily agree on this point.
I'm going to state the plainly obvious here: you clearly operated under different rules than the fire department in this story, because nobody has been sitting around accusing them of breaking local laws with respect to animal life.
Now I'm going to ask a question to which I'm genuinely curious of the answer in your specific case: where did you draw the line for "life"? I presume you weren't saving the bacteria on the poop stains in the toilet; did you save fish? pet mice? a snake? Would you have rushed in to save a hamster from a burning building, just exactly the same as a human? Was it a sliding scale of worth for different kinds of life (like, human is most important, then pet mammals, then other pets) or was it a threshold above which all life was exactly equal (like, a baby is in one room and a dog is in another, and you go save the dog)? I presume it was the former but I'm curious what the rule actually was, and how it was put into action.
I suppose you could say that, but I'm looking around not seeing any instances of public fire departments extorting emergency fees from the public. Public services are run professionally and with an eye for serving the public instead of maximizing profits. That's why this sort of enterprise is best run by the government. And I don't want to argue about it, so if you disagree you can have the last word.