While I don't find it difficult to believe in the ignorant masses, I do have to wonder how many people answered that he was a muslim just because they hate Obama and wanted to pick the answer they felt would make him look bad. But if you want demonstrably false beliefs, how many people right here on this site believe Sarah Palin said that she could see Russia from her house?
In actuality, that quote that is often attributed to her was from Tina Fey. The quote she was parodying was "They're our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska."
Don't take this as support of Sarah Palin, it's just the first example that popped into my head. But the basic idea is that I don't find it surprising that members of one political party are more likely to believe false information about a leader of the opposite party than would members of that figure's own party. In addition they're more likely to claim they believe it even if they don't.
You would need a more detailed poll that asked questions about figures in both parties to determine which party was more deluded about the other.
Nine days?? I think I would walk home. Even if its 50 miles, that could be covered in nine days.I mean holy shit, wtf is the problem over there?
From the article it doesn't look as if traffic is blocked or anything. It's just continuously highly congested for nine days straight. So it's not like you're stuck their for nine days. It's more like you're stuck there for nine hours every time you need to make the trip. Some actual numbers for how long it does take to get from one end to the other would be nice though.
It'd be difficult to alter the vote by a couple of million with electronic ballots as well. Each voting machine would need to be tampered with individually, as one would assume they would just display the overall vote for someone to manually add together.
Even assuming one person votes every 30 seconds at the machine for 16 hours straight, that's less than 2,000 votes. Now considering you don't want a number that's too obviously tampered with, that doesn't get you much benefit from the effort you put into modding the machine.
But why would a paper trail make it any more accurate? Which is easier to do without getting caught? Remove some of the papers generated and/or add false ones? Or modify the hardware in a voting machine designed with some decent security and do so in a way that can't be detected during a mandatory inspection for every election?
Too many people just assume the paper trail will be more trustworthy. I don't think it'd be much of a challenge to make a system where the paper trail is by far the easier part to tamper with.
Ultimately I'm a proponent of computerized voting. As long as we have both anonymous voting, I can't think of any method that isn't subject to corruption. In fact, a well designed voting machine could easily be made more difficult to tamper with than it would be to stuff a ballot box. And think of all the time, money, and drama that would be saved if there were no physical copies to recount.
But even if we do abandon computerized voting, I'd like to see the end of manual recounting. Why do people assume they'll be more accurate than the original count? Yes they'll be taking much more care throughout the entire process to ensure that nothing shady happens. However, there's also much more time to tamper with the votes, and all the people on both sides who would want to tamper now know exactly which elections were close enough that a little cheating here or there could make the difference.
If I were going to risk prison for election fraud, I'd at least want to wait until I was certain the margin was small enough that I might actually effect the outcome.
There's a difference between being all made up and being over diagnosed. I believe there are children for whom medicine is more or less a necessity to function normally in society. But there's little doubt in my mind that many children are being medicated who simply need a little discipline. Medicine should be the last resort, not the first thing to try.
Some people even take medication to the extreme and seem to be of the opinion that all children should behave in almost exactly the same manner and any deviation should result in drugging them until they fit the mold. Having a variety of personalities should be considered a positive rather than a negative. Diversity should not be feared in behavior any more than in physical appearance.
Facebook has its uses. Especially for those with a large family living all over the country. It's an efficient way to keep up with what's going on in their lives. Other than the occasional snide comment made in response to someone else's post, that's really all I use it for. Granted being a typical slashdot user, there's nothing interesting enough in my life to post in the first place (even if that doesn't stop most other people.)
Still as much of a pain as it is to block all the annoying features of facebook, it becomes a useful tool in the end.
Of course most Americans simply follow one or two news sources. Those news sources being the ones that most accurately reflect their own opinions because they're more comfortable when they don't have said opinions challenged. So for the most part, those who feel the war is wrong and being run in a horrible manner will receive cherry picked sections confirming that belief. And those who feel that the war is justified, and even releasing this information is only putting American soldiers in danger will find equally cherry picked sections that confirm those beliefs. In the end relatively few people will be exposed to anything thought provoking to them.
So much for the first amendment. I'd have posted it all to slashdot, written letters to editors, harrassed my congresscritters, and gone to jail.
Free country, my ass. You no longer have freedom of speech.
I could be wrong, but somehow I suspect you wouldn't be as supportive of unlimited freedom of speech if the story were about an IRS agent claiming it as he made public all the personal information he had on everyone he'd audited.
Freedom of speech should allow you to express whatever opinions you want. It should not give you a right to reveal information that can do real material damage to others without facing punishment.
Well, now that fb has put in that little box in the corner that says 'it's been a while since you talked to Steve, you should send him a message,' there are a few reminders.
I must have trained myself to ignore all the junk they put on the side even better than I'd thought. I had no idea they did that. However, that does allow for a simple solution. Just remove that feature completely, not that I expect Facebook to seriously consider that.
I kind of agree. In the face of a death, whether or not their social networking accounts stay active seems like a pretty trivial issue to me. When the trauma is still fresh, I can forgive a person who acts a little irrationally. However, once some time has passed, why would anyone even care anymore? Unless you're getting spam from someone who's logging into the dead person's account to help their own Farmville game or whatnot, you shouldn't even be getting anything that would remind you it's still active.
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While I don't find it difficult to believe in the ignorant masses, I do have to wonder how many people answered that he was a muslim just because they hate Obama and wanted to pick the answer they felt would make him look bad. But if you want demonstrably false beliefs, how many people right here on this site believe Sarah Palin said that she could see Russia from her house?
In actuality, that quote that is often attributed to her was from Tina Fey. The quote she was parodying was "They're our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska."
Don't take this as support of Sarah Palin, it's just the first example that popped into my head. But the basic idea is that I don't find it surprising that members of one political party are more likely to believe false information about a leader of the opposite party than would members of that figure's own party. In addition they're more likely to claim they believe it even if they don't.
You would need a more detailed poll that asked questions about figures in both parties to determine which party was more deluded about the other.
Nine days?? I think I would walk home. Even if its 50 miles, that could be covered in nine days.I mean holy shit, wtf is the problem over there?
From the article it doesn't look as if traffic is blocked or anything. It's just continuously highly congested for nine days straight. So it's not like you're stuck their for nine days. It's more like you're stuck there for nine hours every time you need to make the trip. Some actual numbers for how long it does take to get from one end to the other would be nice though.
It'd be difficult to alter the vote by a couple of million with electronic ballots as well. Each voting machine would need to be tampered with individually, as one would assume they would just display the overall vote for someone to manually add together.
Even assuming one person votes every 30 seconds at the machine for 16 hours straight, that's less than 2,000 votes. Now considering you don't want a number that's too obviously tampered with, that doesn't get you much benefit from the effort you put into modding the machine.
But why would a paper trail make it any more accurate? Which is easier to do without getting caught? Remove some of the papers generated and/or add false ones? Or modify the hardware in a voting machine designed with some decent security and do so in a way that can't be detected during a mandatory inspection for every election?
Too many people just assume the paper trail will be more trustworthy. I don't think it'd be much of a challenge to make a system where the paper trail is by far the easier part to tamper with.
Ultimately I'm a proponent of computerized voting. As long as we have both anonymous voting, I can't think of any method that isn't subject to corruption. In fact, a well designed voting machine could easily be made more difficult to tamper with than it would be to stuff a ballot box. And think of all the time, money, and drama that would be saved if there were no physical copies to recount.
But even if we do abandon computerized voting, I'd like to see the end of manual recounting. Why do people assume they'll be more accurate than the original count? Yes they'll be taking much more care throughout the entire process to ensure that nothing shady happens. However, there's also much more time to tamper with the votes, and all the people on both sides who would want to tamper now know exactly which elections were close enough that a little cheating here or there could make the difference.
If I were going to risk prison for election fraud, I'd at least want to wait until I was certain the margin was small enough that I might actually effect the outcome.
There's a difference between being all made up and being over diagnosed. I believe there are children for whom medicine is more or less a necessity to function normally in society. But there's little doubt in my mind that many children are being medicated who simply need a little discipline. Medicine should be the last resort, not the first thing to try.
Some people even take medication to the extreme and seem to be of the opinion that all children should behave in almost exactly the same manner and any deviation should result in drugging them until they fit the mold. Having a variety of personalities should be considered a positive rather than a negative. Diversity should not be feared in behavior any more than in physical appearance.
Facebook has its uses. Especially for those with a large family living all over the country. It's an efficient way to keep up with what's going on in their lives. Other than the occasional snide comment made in response to someone else's post, that's really all I use it for. Granted being a typical slashdot user, there's nothing interesting enough in my life to post in the first place (even if that doesn't stop most other people.)
Still as much of a pain as it is to block all the annoying features of facebook, it becomes a useful tool in the end.
Of course most Americans simply follow one or two news sources. Those news sources being the ones that most accurately reflect their own opinions because they're more comfortable when they don't have said opinions challenged. So for the most part, those who feel the war is wrong and being run in a horrible manner will receive cherry picked sections confirming that belief. And those who feel that the war is justified, and even releasing this information is only putting American soldiers in danger will find equally cherry picked sections that confirm those beliefs. In the end relatively few people will be exposed to anything thought provoking to them.
So much for the first amendment. I'd have posted it all to slashdot, written letters to editors, harrassed my congresscritters, and gone to jail.
Free country, my ass. You no longer have freedom of speech.
I could be wrong, but somehow I suspect you wouldn't be as supportive of unlimited freedom of speech if the story were about an IRS agent claiming it as he made public all the personal information he had on everyone he'd audited. Freedom of speech should allow you to express whatever opinions you want. It should not give you a right to reveal information that can do real material damage to others without facing punishment.
Well, now that fb has put in that little box in the corner that says 'it's been a while since you talked to Steve, you should send him a message,' there are a few reminders.
I must have trained myself to ignore all the junk they put on the side even better than I'd thought. I had no idea they did that. However, that does allow for a simple solution. Just remove that feature completely, not that I expect Facebook to seriously consider that.
I kind of agree. In the face of a death, whether or not their social networking accounts stay active seems like a pretty trivial issue to me. When the trauma is still fresh, I can forgive a person who acts a little irrationally. However, once some time has passed, why would anyone even care anymore? Unless you're getting spam from someone who's logging into the dead person's account to help their own Farmville game or whatnot, you shouldn't even be getting anything that would remind you it's still active.