Goodness, it would be awesome if all the Libertarians would move to New Hampshire and squawk to themselves so the rest of us don't have to hear about it anymore. Don't get me wrong, I love New Hampshire, I went to college there and it's a beautiful place. But if we can find a corner of the country to keep all the kooks, that would be swell. Even better, it would be a wonderful teachable example of how that kind of immoderate ideology leads to ruin, but it would be sad to watch a great state go on for probably several decades or longer before its implosion was too much for even Libertarians to ignore. We would all watch in amazement, shaking our heads in disbelief.
There are no serious Libertarian candidates. That's the nature of Libertarianism. No serious, thoughtful person takes that ideology seriously. It makes perfect sense as explained, it just doesn't happen to jive with the reality of human behavior, so it is forever assigned to the minds of people who choose to believe simple platitudes instead of paying attention to the vagaries and difficult-to-explain nuances of human nature.
Every man has his price. I'd gladly go tell Baidu everything I know. My price for that would be... hmmm... $150K up front and $200K annually, after taxes. If I don't have to actually live in a communist country while helping out, then it's half that amount. Call me, Baidu!
Damn. Some mod was going through here calling us all Offtopic (which is true, I suppose) instead of Informative (which is also true). I guess that's a judgment call.
No, I didn't understand it. I came along after the story title was changed, but when I see Supreme's referring to the Supreme Court (or its justices), I don't "understand" it as a contraction, I understand it as a mistake, because it is.
And fine, it's a mistake -- a common mistake at that. But it's not reasonable to claim that it is a valid contraction.
The apostrophe is largely used to show contractions or missing letters. "Supreme" is here an abbreviation for "Supreme court justices". So "Supreme's", though annoying, cannot be said to be grammatically incorrect.
Did you just suggest that "Supreme's" is a contraction of "Supreme court justices"? As in Supreme[ court justice]s? If that's what you mean, I find that preposterous. Contractions are only meaningful when generally accepted. You can't just leave out a few words and call it a contraction.
Of course they do, don't be silly. That's the whole point, that sometimes the majority decides to have a market regulation. We do it all the time, why would you say they don't have the right? That's nonsense, of course they have the right. We have thousands and thousands of those.
Yeah, or keep it in your house, or keep it away from me, or whatever. We draw different lines in different circumstances. It's all a sliding scale of balancing priorities.
Fail. I never mentioned free markets. In fact we are specifically talking about regulated, non-free markets, that's the entire point of the conversation.
I'm not trying to say it makes sense, I'm trying to say that it's reality. It is in fact how people make decisions -- or, don't. You denying that is exactly what I meant when I said for some crazy reason some market-minded people refuse to recognize it. You (and I too) might wish that people were rational decision makers using perfect information to choose between perfectly competitive products, but that's not reality. Some people cleave to the reality; other people cleave away from it.
(Requiring food labeling removes the right of companies not to be interfered with. We force labeling upon food manufacturers because the increased information is worth the tradeoff of the lost freedom.)
10 states had been denied their suffrage in the Senate
Just to be sure we're on the same page here -- are you talking about the ten states which had waged a war to show that they refused to be part of that Senate? Like, those ten states? Or do you mean ten states that were actually trying to be part of the union?
And okay, if you have some cockamayme story about how certain amendments are invalid blah blah, then you can have the last word as I ignore you.
Well, there were allegations of fraud of course but I don't know if any evidence was ever presented. Anyway, are you sure that fraud can trigger an election re-do? Like, have you ever heard of that happening in the USA?
Oh no! Actually I disagree on that one. I know the traditional definition, but I support a change to that definition.
"Circular logic" is a much better and more descriptive way to describe what you call "begging the question". "Circular logic" is catchy and immediately suggests the rhetorical problem.
While at the same time, English really needs a catchy idiom for when one statement leads logically to a need to answer another question. You might say that the statement figuratively (not literally!) begs for the question to be answered.
So, I prefer the new meaning of "begging the question", although I recognize that it is frustrating to live during the time period when that definition changes. Personally, I choose to use "circular logic", and avoid "begging the question" altogether, just to avoid the controversy.
Market theory is premised on perfect knowledge, perfect competition, and rational deciders. As it turns out, all of those premises are wrong, more or less. (They are each somewhat true, but less so than untrue. That's why reality somewhat matches the theory, but less so than not.)
Imperfect knowledge: If you want to go to a bar, but you only know about smokey bars (maybe because there are only smokey bars), then you will sigh and go to a smokey bar. You have no choice.
Imperfect competition: Maybe there is a non-smokey bar, but other qualities of a bar make it preferable to you. So you sigh and go to the bar which you otherwise prefer, despite the smoke.
Irrational decision: Maybe you never really thought about bars being smokey, like you just assume they all have smoke and that's the price of admission. The thought literally never occurred to you to choose a non-smokey bar.
My guess is that it is the first of those: almost all bars were smokey, so there was hardly any choice to be made. People wanted to go to a drinking establishment, and that meant going to a smokey bar.
I relate this to food labeling. Americans like their food labels, so why did it take legislation to get them? Why didn't the market provide food labels? Think about it: if you walked into a grocery store and none of the food was labeled, would you walk out and starve to death? No, you would just buy the available food. That's a failure of market theory -- basically because market theory isn't very good at matching reality.
Okay, I think that's a reasonable definition of "power": whatever you can get away with. I still don't think that's what the OP meant, but I think that is a reasonable way to define the "powers" of a President. Well put.
You make a compelling argument; I am compelled. Putting up a sign SHOULD be innocuous, but it often isn't, and that's a good point. I can still see it both ways, but you have brought me over the line to your side. Well argued.
As winwar said, the names are checked against voter reg records. (In the state of Alaska, at least.) It was a difficult and frustrating task because people have bad penmanship, and records often don't cross reference, such as when a person has recently changed addresses. But a human being actually verifies each and every signature.
Slashdot Mirror
Goodness, it would be awesome if all the Libertarians would move to New Hampshire and squawk to themselves so the rest of us don't have to hear about it anymore. Don't get me wrong, I love New Hampshire, I went to college there and it's a beautiful place. But if we can find a corner of the country to keep all the kooks, that would be swell. Even better, it would be a wonderful teachable example of how that kind of immoderate ideology leads to ruin, but it would be sad to watch a great state go on for probably several decades or longer before its implosion was too much for even Libertarians to ignore. We would all watch in amazement, shaking our heads in disbelief.
There are no serious Libertarian candidates. That's the nature of Libertarianism. No serious, thoughtful person takes that ideology seriously. It makes perfect sense as explained, it just doesn't happen to jive with the reality of human behavior, so it is forever assigned to the minds of people who choose to believe simple platitudes instead of paying attention to the vagaries and difficult-to-explain nuances of human nature.
And Ron Paul is a great example of that.
evil will always triumph because good is dumb /oblig
Every man has his price. I'd gladly go tell Baidu everything I know. My price for that would be... hmmm... $150K up front and $200K annually, after taxes. If I don't have to actually live in a communist country while helping out, then it's half that amount. Call me, Baidu!
Thanks for the link that was hilarious. +5, Funny.
Damn. Some mod was going through here calling us all Offtopic (which is true, I suppose) instead of Informative (which is also true). I guess that's a judgment call.
No, I didn't understand it. I came along after the story title was changed, but when I see Supreme's referring to the Supreme Court (or its justices), I don't "understand" it as a contraction, I understand it as a mistake, because it is.
And fine, it's a mistake -- a common mistake at that. But it's not reasonable to claim that it is a valid contraction.
not necessarily the only possible test (and they don't say what the other tests might include.
You just made all Lisp programmers very, very nervous.
The apostrophe is largely used to show contractions or missing letters. "Supreme" is here an abbreviation for "Supreme court justices". So "Supreme's", though annoying, cannot be said to be grammatically incorrect.
Did you just suggest that "Supreme's" is a contraction of "Supreme court justices"? As in Supreme[ court justice]s? If that's what you mean, I find that preposterous. Contractions are only meaningful when generally accepted. You can't just leave out a few words and call it a contraction.
It's not their property, and yet they have the right anyway. Are you talking about reality, or the way you wish the world were?
Sometime in the late 1990s. A few people never got the news.
Of course they do, don't be silly. That's the whole point, that sometimes the majority decides to have a market regulation. We do it all the time, why would you say they don't have the right? That's nonsense, of course they have the right. We have thousands and thousands of those.
Yeah, or keep it in your house, or keep it away from me, or whatever. We draw different lines in different circumstances. It's all a sliding scale of balancing priorities.
Fail. I never mentioned free markets. In fact we are specifically talking about regulated, non-free markets, that's the entire point of the conversation.
Your car analogy is good. I also like the smokey bar story, which I think is very apt.
Same response as the last one. Makes no sense.
I'm not trying to say it makes sense, I'm trying to say that it's reality. It is in fact how people make decisions -- or, don't. You denying that is exactly what I meant when I said for some crazy reason some market-minded people refuse to recognize it. You (and I too) might wish that people were rational decision makers using perfect information to choose between perfectly competitive products, but that's not reality. Some people cleave to the reality; other people cleave away from it.
(Requiring food labeling removes the right of companies not to be interfered with. We force labeling upon food manufacturers because the increased information is worth the tradeoff of the lost freedom.)
10 states had been denied their suffrage in the Senate
Just to be sure we're on the same page here -- are you talking about the ten states which had waged a war to show that they refused to be part of that Senate? Like, those ten states? Or do you mean ten states that were actually trying to be part of the union?
And okay, if you have some cockamayme story about how certain amendments are invalid blah blah, then you can have the last word as I ignore you.
Well, there were allegations of fraud of course but I don't know if any evidence was ever presented. Anyway, are you sure that fraud can trigger an election re-do? Like, have you ever heard of that happening in the USA?
Protip: "14" is greater than "0", "9" or "10". That's how amendments work -- later ones supercede earlier ones.
And besides, I don't see how any of those amendments is relevant to the topic.
Oh no! Actually I disagree on that one. I know the traditional definition, but I support a change to that definition.
"Circular logic" is a much better and more descriptive way to describe what you call "begging the question". "Circular logic" is catchy and immediately suggests the rhetorical problem.
While at the same time, English really needs a catchy idiom for when one statement leads logically to a need to answer another question. You might say that the statement figuratively (not literally!) begs for the question to be answered.
So, I prefer the new meaning of "begging the question", although I recognize that it is frustrating to live during the time period when that definition changes. Personally, I choose to use "circular logic", and avoid "begging the question" altogether, just to avoid the controversy.
Good question.
Market theory is premised on perfect knowledge, perfect competition, and rational deciders. As it turns out, all of those premises are wrong, more or less. (They are each somewhat true, but less so than untrue. That's why reality somewhat matches the theory, but less so than not.)
Imperfect knowledge: If you want to go to a bar, but you only know about smokey bars (maybe because there are only smokey bars), then you will sigh and go to a smokey bar. You have no choice.
Imperfect competition: Maybe there is a non-smokey bar, but other qualities of a bar make it preferable to you. So you sigh and go to the bar which you otherwise prefer, despite the smoke.
Irrational decision: Maybe you never really thought about bars being smokey, like you just assume they all have smoke and that's the price of admission. The thought literally never occurred to you to choose a non-smokey bar.
My guess is that it is the first of those: almost all bars were smokey, so there was hardly any choice to be made. People wanted to go to a drinking establishment, and that meant going to a smokey bar.
I relate this to food labeling. Americans like their food labels, so why did it take legislation to get them? Why didn't the market provide food labels? Think about it: if you walked into a grocery store and none of the food was labeled, would you walk out and starve to death? No, you would just buy the available food. That's a failure of market theory -- basically because market theory isn't very good at matching reality.
Okay, I think that's a reasonable definition of "power": whatever you can get away with. I still don't think that's what the OP meant, but I think that is a reasonable way to define the "powers" of a President. Well put.
You make a compelling argument; I am compelled. Putting up a sign SHOULD be innocuous, but it often isn't, and that's a good point. I can still see it both ways, but you have brought me over the line to your side. Well argued.
As winwar said, the names are checked against voter reg records. (In the state of Alaska, at least.) It was a difficult and frustrating task because people have bad penmanship, and records often don't cross reference, such as when a person has recently changed addresses. But a human being actually verifies each and every signature.
A business is no less personal property than a house, it just happens to be open to the public.
I guess I disagree with this, and so do most people, and so does the law. I think your position is reasonable, I just don't agree with it.