It's proving what I said, that women aren't objectified in more ways than men. It's just that modern society is more sensitive to female objectification.
It's not that modern society is more "sensitive" to female objectification. It's that the consequences of objectification are so very different between the genders. When a woman is seen in a sexual context, it overrides and devalues anything else she's done. When a man is seen in a sexual context, it adds to his overall perception.
This is why Miley Cyrus (and before her, Britney, Cristina, a bunch of other interchangeable pop stars, Madonna, etc.) went through their badly-choreographed/shock-value awkwardness on stage and went overnight from "girl it's okay for my kids to crush on" to "evil harlot no longer welcome in my home." Not because the performances were bad, the performers were impaired, or the whole thing was rigged to get as many eyeballs popping and tongues wagging as possible (cha-ching!) but because these women expressed a sexual context that immediately overrode and negated any other talent or facet of their personality.
This is why Bill Clinton, however, is still the "Big Dog" after his sexual context was exposed (pr0n-like, in front pages of midwestern papers everywhere, by a feverish Ken Starr). Seeing Bill Clinton in a sexual context merely added another facet onto his personality and accomplishments *without* overriding or negating them (while the woman he was with ended up doing some cheesecake poses in some eyeball magazines and maybe giving an interview or two in between the pictures).
It's a variation on the old idea that a man's sexuality is something to be celebrated, while a woman's is to be regulated (either through legislation, religion, or societal pressure). It's not something that can be solved or mitigated or changed overnight. It has to be systemically changed, and you do that through pointing it out and calling attention to the double standard until enough people understand that it is, in fact, there. *Then* you can do something about it on a broader scale, by teaching both boys and girls at a (relatively) young age that sexual context makes up part of a person and not all of a person, and so on. Raising that kind of systemic awareness will mitigate some of the institutional bad treatment experienced by women in the above-mentioned industries.
Maybe part of the reason the fuss is being made is because somebody actually gave these people money to travel halfway around the world and give a talk at a professional conference (and waste a lot of people's time) when there could have been something much more relevant, valuable, useful, or technologically amazing than an app that does nothing useful and hogs memory on smartphones while simultaneously making its user look like a giant douche.
Just spitballin' here...
The wounds on the man's head support his claim. And regardless, he doesn't have to prove his innocence, the state must prove his guilt. They didn't.
The state has to prove his guilt. Too bad it was only George Zimmerman who determined that kid's "guilt."
Message received, loud and clear. Kids (especially black kids), if a stranger starts following you, you better just get in the windowless white van. Don't try to fight back, because that would make you "guilty" and "threatening" and the stranger can shoot you. Ladies, just go with the stalker. You wouldn't want to make him feel "threatened," but don't you dare try to stand up for your own self. You don't count as much. Message received.
Your 'sensible' regulation has failed miserably for automobiles.
And yet, oddly, millions of people drive to and from their destinations for hundreds of thousands of miles without harming themselves or others. Seatbelt regulations have reduced the number of automobile fatalities, and the inability of an eight-year-old to operate a motor vehicle has kept hundreds of thousands of eight-year-olds from misusing automobiles with harmful or fatal consequences. Drivers who have AT LEAST had to take a vision test every few years to prove they can still SEE WHERE THEY'RE GOING prevent uncountable accidents and fatalities every year.
Your proposal reeks of a registration plan (how else do you keep track of all that bureaucratic clap-trap?) which would be unacceptable to many/most gun owners. You don't need to register to exercise your 1st Amendment rights, neither should we have to register to exercise our 2nd Amendment rights.
*cough*You have to register to vote.*cough* You have to be a citizen to be guaranteed the rights in the Constitution. For vast quantities of us, this is an automatic thing, by virtue of birth, but without a social or a birth record to prove citizenship, you may have a bit of a time guaranteeing your rights.
And here's where the kneejerk comes in. The idea of--heaven forfend--registering your ability to safely use and operate dangerous equipment is accepted at all levels of society, from CDL licensing to heavy equipment operation, yet suggest it for a gun, and out comes the hissy fit, because someone has told you, over and over again, that if *they* know you have one, *they* will come for it some time in the middle of the night and take it from you...and then disappear you...and then eat all the potato chips in your house...and so on (large hint--that "someone" is highly motivated to ensure that many, many people continue to think that an Inconvenience of Commerce is an Infringement Upon Divinely-Bestowed Rights because it's expressly that commerce which is driving the discussion).
Same goes for insurance - would you like to have mandated 1st Amendment insurance against libel/slander/perjury, etc?
The difference here being your speech and existence as a citizen is a function of existence. Gun insurance is a function of owning a gun. Why would you not want to have a little protection in case your gun were stolen, or used in a fatality or a crime and potentially implicating you?
I would love to see mandatory primary school education in gun safety, including how to safely check that any firearm is actually unloaded, safely store them, and safely handle them. This is taught in the home for other dangerous tools such as knives, saws, etc. Sadly this is not the case in the majority of households with respect to firearms. I was lucky enough to have firearm safety taught to me my my father from a young age and when I was in middle school - I think it was part of 'shop class' or perhaps 'health class'.
Ignoring the education issue makes the problem worse, not better, as we've learned from sex ed. Teaching them gun safety will not turn them into gun nuts just as sex ed doesn't turn girls into sluts. Confront the demon no matter how repulsive it is to your politics to keep your kids and others safe.
I have no worries about my children becoming gun nuts--they have been exposed to guns and felt free to express their disinterest. The reason why gun safety is not mandatory is that gun ownership is not mandatory...unless that's where *you're* wanting to go, which is just as ridiculous a position as the one you seem to want to ascribe to people asking for some regulation--that is, the elimination of all guns. Back when guns were a necessary hip accessory, every kid did have firearms training. But it comes down to two simple facts: 1.) that not everyone needs to have a gun to feel safe, therefore not everyone should be made to have to accommodate those
Great. If a bunch of rubes can be found to pass him their money, yay for him. The Chick-Fil-A effect convinced me that faith is dead in America while Religion's walking corpse marches on. How so many people equated deep moral righteousness with the consumption of a mass-produced chicken sandwich baffled me. And if the CFA effect truly is an effect...then he should have no reason to whine for toleration from the people he bashes.
Fiscally punishing someone due to their opinion is stupid. It discourages free speech, discourages open communication, and discourages the expression of new ideas. Unfortunately, with free speech and open communication you sometimes end up with idiots like Card spouting off crap. The best thing to do is ignore them.
You are guaranteed the right to spout whatever moronic drivel you want, thanks to the Constitution. You are NOT guaranteed the right to avoid, sidestep, or otherwise be excused of the consequences of spouting said drivel. And you are certainly not guaranteed the right to demand other citizens give you their money for it.
Speech has consequences. One of those consequences for Card is his butthurt over the fact that his moronic drivel might be cutting into his profits. Boo-frickin'-hoo. Tolerance? I'll tolerate the shit out of him. But Tolerance ends at my wallet. After all, he's not obligated to send a blender to every gay couple getting married from now until the movie ends its run in the theaters, is he? If he shows that kind of tolerance, yeah, I might pony up eight bucks to go see the flick. Otherwise, he's just another case of Authors Behaving Badly, and I do not patronize Authors Behaving Badly.
This is worse. At least the latter were proven to be sex offenders in court (flawed as the process may be) according to the summary, no actual proof is needed to end up on the map.
Great point. So how long do you think it will take for the 5 million plus NRA members to make this dataset completely useless once they are aware of it as a group?
Probably just long enough for someone to wave enough money in the NRA's face to sell their mailing list. The more I listen to this conversation, the more I realize that passionate people on both sides are being played, and if you follow the money, it's the ginned-up fear of both sides that has one thing in common--more gun sales. Good God, how the money rolls in....Cha-Ching!
Gun laws don't prevent gun violence as criminals are already breaking the law. However if one of the victims had been allowed to carry his weapon legally there might have been far fewer casualties.
One point I never see being brought up is the difference between an armed criminal and a person with a gun. Put quite frankly, the criminal is already less invested in maintaining a peaceful situation because he is armed and engaging in a criminal act. However, a person with a gun is still invested in maintaining peace in the situation, at least slightly moreso than the criminal, because up to that point, he is still a law-abiding citizen with a gun. Once Person With A Gun pulls that gun with the intent to maim or kill, that person may meet the criminal head-on in investiture, but will still be a step behind because he hasn't yet abandoned the notion of peaceable society with respect to worrying about bystanders, safety, and other factors that come with the operation of a dangerous and deadly weapon in the presence of others. The armed criminal has already abandoned that concern and has no need to control aim or reduce threat to onlookers. So our would-be hero is operating a day late and a dollar short, so to speak, crippled by lack of response and multiple areas of concern, and that's not entirely a bad thing.
I don't know of a single, sane, CC permit-holder ready to rush in and play Rambo in a situation like that, because, presumably, they understand the gravity of the situation. The minute the ability or desire to fire the gun trumps the concern for the safety is when responsible gun owner becomes not-so-responsible.
If only I had mod points - you hit the nail on the head. Lack of firearm safety EDUCATION is the biggest cause of accidental firearm deaths. Most gun illiterate people don't know they're gun illiterate - they think they know all they need to from watching TV (where some of the most egregious firearm-handling mistakes are taught to our youth).
It's disgraceful that the general public is so eager to watch (and let their kids watch) gun violence on TV, but is so unwilling to actually teach gun safety to it's youth.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but if there were some sensible regulation, like, oh, say, mandatory classes taught by a licensed professional, followed by testing administered by a licensed representative, and the issuance of some sort of certificate confirming said classes and testing had been passed satisfactorily, and perhaps some insurance against the likelihood of misuse or accident...then maybe the accidental deaths might be reduced, the gunfail might plummet, and we wouldn't be burying so many small coffins. Just saying is all...
You were shouting in my face so I pushed you, you pushed me so I hit you, you hit me so I shot you. All self defence?
the problem is that this is normal behavior for anti-gun liberals, so they assume everyone acts like this. only irresponsible, immature man-children act like this.
Umm...way to generalize. "anti-gun" people and "liberals" are not the same, there are probably more armed "liberals" than your average Faux news host realizes, and fewer armed "conservatives" because rational people tend to make purchases of tools--even deadly ones--based on more significant needs for those tools than political affiliations. It's also neither "anti-gun" folk or "liberals" posting dumb pictures and videos of themselves being irresponsible, immature man-children with their firearms all over the internets and giving anti-gun people clear reason to fear for their safety.
i carry a gun every day.
i don't shout in people's faces.
if you were shouting in my face, i'd attempt to extricate myself from the situation.
if you pushed me, i'd attempt to extricate myself from the situation.
if you hit me, i'd attempt to extricate myself from the situation.
if you continued assaulting me to the point where i felt i was in danger of serious harm or death, yes, i'd shoot you.
and it'd be 100% self defense.
the vast majority of gun owners that make the decision to carry a firearm (legally) are responsible people and will take every possible measure to avoid escalating situations to violence because they know what it can lead to.
Regretfully, "vast majority" is fluid in its definition, given the police blotter reports of multitudes of accidents, mis-firings, and unnecessarily-escalated gun incidents that happen in the US every week. More regretfully, of those accidents and tragedies, there's another "vast majority" of the victims of those situations who are *not* gun owners, but just happened to be in the vicinity, and therefore in the line of fire.
As tempting as it would be to paint a target on anyone who points this out as an "anti-gun" person and believe that their next move is to show up with a posse to take all yer guns, it's no more true than believing every Christian's next move is to show up on your doorstep and take all yer ungodly things, or the RIAA to show up and take your stereo because you didn't pay them twice for listening to your music with both ears. The vast majority of people engaging in this ongoing conversation want understandable limits and regulations on the dangerous equipment, intended to minimize the accidents, the abuses, and the tragedies.
I can tell you that there are a hell of a lot of titles that are not available as eBooks - especially older ones. Not to mention that you haven't lived until you find a few where the Kindle version costs more than the paper edition. I mean WTF?
This is entirely on the publisher. As the only entity with licensing rights to sell the story, vast numbers of older books, in their contracts between author and publisher, included "unspecified electronic rights" clauses, where the publisher owns the rights for the story in electronic form as well as paper forms. 99.9% of those contracts were taken at a time where "electronic" rights were still in the realm of science fiction, and easily traded away by the authors for the advance, the paper, the royalties, and the ability to eat in the "now." And when the publishers were the only game in town, it was the rare author who held onto unnamed electronic rights for a nebulous future and still got the very tangible benefits of the paper rights at that time.
Only in the last few years have the publishers begun exploiting those "unspecified" electronic rights (sometimes appallingly badly, I might add). The pricing of those ebooks is consistent with the publishers' main goals--which are to promote hardcovers first (they get the best ROI for those), then paperbacks (trade > mass-market), then audio, and only after that, ebook (if at all).
The way books are priced and the way publishers make money off them has traditionally been in the realm of goods--they create a physical book and count the costs of creating that physical thing. After which, they mark it up to a distributor, who then marks it up to a retailer, who then buys the thing. After that, the thing is the retailer's to do with as it pleases--which meant that Amazon could sell books at less than the cost to produce--after all, Amazon had bought and paid for every book in its warehouse at the wholesaler price. Publishers traditionally counted on bookstores' payments of 60% of cover price (their wholesale price from the distributor) to fill their coffers and cover their costs to produce, and it did, although at narrow margins, believe it or not, after the salaries, real estate, production, shipping, authors, etc., were all paid. And once the physical book leaves the publisher's hands, it's free to move about the market at any price that will bear it, whether that's 1/10 of a percent of its original value, or 110 times that.
Amazon cut out the middleman and bought at distributor prices so it could undercut retailer markups. Not evil in and of itself, especially since Walmart and Costco have done similar. But with ebooks, the difference is that there's no physical product to buy and stock, so there's no tangible good to change hands. A distributor need only "buy" it once and re-distribute it a zillion times. It's the ultimate in "lean manufacturing" because the retailer doesn't have to pre-commit to stock that may or may not sell. This presents a benefit to the retailer (no up-front cost to stock), but a downside to the customer (no discount to move old product), and an entirely different relationship between publisher, retailer/distributor, and customer. Instead of pre-purchasing stock, the retailer now just acts as a pass-through between producer and consumer, taking a cut for its trouble, but largely unable to do its thing in terms of discounts, incentives, or other ways to traditionally move physical product.
I hate Amazon. I just hate them less than everyone else. Which appears to be the new standard in business success metrics.
This seems to be true for all major retailers these days. Amazon has really stepped up in leveling the playing field for authors by removing the publisher-as-gatekeeper barriers between authors and readers, but in other ways, they can be really odious. Capitalism in general seems to be psychotic that way.:/
^^This. I've avoided Wal-Mart for a decade now, but gifts or items bought for me from there always end up being one step up from disposable. I really can't even fault China anymore, because I've had enough experience to see that China has the ability to crank out pretty high-quality stuff (human rights violations notwithstanding). But you get what you pay for, and when you pay in the basement, you get basement-quality stuff.
You can be sure the publisher/retailer tracks costs with exquisite precision, but they are apprx. none of the business of their customers - or their own competitors.
Having worked in the business, I have to laugh at this statement. Part of the reason publishing is floundering so badly is the archaic and arcane nature of their accounting practices in terms of individual books. Not to mention the nature of their customers (the bookstores) who've been operating on a consignment-and-credit model for *decades* and this "precision" of which you speak is about as precise as using a ten-foot-wide crayon to make calligraphy on the back of a postage stamp.
And to the parent, book prices versus demand do not follow any sane, rational course of economics known to this world. Out of print and rare books are just as likely to be valued at a fraction of their original "sticker price" as they are to inflate to hundreds of times their original. It is precisely the intangibles--the author, the story, current trends in media/pop culture/world news, specific contract negotiations with that author for that book (and they're all different)--that have the most influence on price. The price of pulp and cardstock are the least of the costs that go into book production and, judging by the quality of some of the paperbacks I've recently dealt with, already skimmed down to within an inch of their lives. TL;DR answer--Publishing is Weird.:)
The thing to pay attention to is that Congress is ultimately the one that investigates anyway. With these revelations in the media the security services and programs are damaged, but it is still Congress that has to do the investigations and oversight. It tends to work much better for the United States when the national security secrets are kept secret and Congress can do their work without having major intelligence programs compromised and undermined. Ultimately that is likely to work out better for the American people as well.
Well, there's your problem right there. You said "Congress" and "work" in the same sentence.:P
More seriously, while the "whistleblower" mechanism may be in place, it's clearly not functioning, either by not providing the protection for whistleblowers that it's supposed to, or not pursuing the ethical wrongdoing as it's supposed to. When the legal ways aren't working, then the ILlegal ones end up being the only option. This feels like another chip in the general breakdown of a justice system that has been showing cracks for quite some time. I can only take consolation that whatever NSA people have to be sifting through my data are being actively bored unto death by my Pinterest recipes.
I'm an american and I'm confused. Is the implication that the tweet is racist because it mentions jobs moving to China? From TFA, it didn't even mention McConnell's wife's surname being Asian, so it would be up to the reader of the tweet to parse the implication that an Asian person would move jobs to an Asian country.
Or would it be more commonly inferred that a Secretary of Labor, no matter what his or her heritage, might have more to do with whether or not one's job moved to China. I mean, I always assumed that immigrants coming to America from other countries wanted the jobs to stay where they moved *to* and not where they moved *from.*
This is an example of my honest confusion--something like this gets racist implications, but the reams and reams of articles, tweets, blograge, and talking heads suggesting the same thing (only substitute "Muslim" and "Kenyan") deserve Very Serious Consideration because National Security or something.
Guaranteed minimum income is a socialistic recipe for disaster. Take away all financial incentive to providing value or solving valuable problems and people will just sit on their asses, eat and watch porn all day long.
I have never understood why people believe the above is true for "poor" people (or really, people who are in the subcategory of "other" than the speaker). Most of us who grew up in classes outside of the most abject of poverty have had plenty of times in our lives where we experienced little to no financial incentive to work...have still wanted to do so. I believe I'm a Special Snowflake, but my desire to have a career and keep doing what I do outside of the financial incentive is not the thing that makes me special.
In the rush to blame the parents (and whoever said kids with "good parents" don't do this crap either lives under a rock or is purposely being oblivious), your first statement makes a whole lotta sense. And actions do have consequences. It's when the consequences--like the public display and the subsequent suicide--FAR OVERREACH the seriousness of the action itself that the system needs correcting.
I'm in no rush to blame the girl, either--she probably leveled a certain amount of trust in her peers *not* to go worldwide with her behavior (just as her peers have a certain amount of trust that their actions would not end up contributing to her death--and if they did, there's something much more wrong here).
The underlying problem with your last statement, however, is that the girl had what amounted to a situation of impaired capacity, which was then exploited by her peers for comedy and humiliation, the exploitation of which drove her to end her life. And out here on the internets, we have all sorts of people weighing in about how actions have consequences, and her parents must be bad parents, or how much responsibility she should take for her situation, but would the situation be the same if she were disabled? Or if she were impaired through prescription drugs she was supposed to be taking? We put value judgements on the status of the victim even when we don't, as if some people's victimizations are somehow merited on some cosmic, karmic scale.
Lawyers deal with the details of laws, but congress deals with something much more critical: policy. Having people who know about economics, science, technology, agriculture, education, foreign relations, etc. is much more important than having people who can regurgitate a little bad Latin.
I don't think anyone currently in congress understands any of those things right now. Except maybe regurgitation (and not of Latin, either!). They certainly don't act like it. In fact, they don't act like they understand some basic Kindergarten stuff.
Direct to consumer isn't always the best solution for a lot of industries. Too much choice creates confusion for the customer and diffusion on the part of the business's efforts. In the publishing industry, traditionally, it's always been the buyers of bookstores and bookstore chains that were the customers of publishers, because the retail buyers knew their markets better (locally and regionally). With a product as widely diverse as literature, it was up to the buyers to pick and choose what would best sell in their markets (romances, sci-fi, self-help, history, etc.) while the publisher concentrated on making widely diverse products available at different scales. If a publisher would have had to focus on things at the retail level, most of the literary market would never have even seen the light of day in favor of more commercial literature to the exclusion of other works just by virtue of the economies of scale. Granted, the bookselling market has done just that to itself with the rise of megabookstores, but it's begun to swing the other way thanks to the internet and Amazon (whose model isn't without its own problems, either).
My TL;DR point is that large manufacturing companies cannot have the granular focus to take full advantage of local markets. Bob's Rural Chevy dealership is going to sell more pick'emup trucks than Dan's Urban Chevytopia. Bob is not going to order many high-end sports cars because he knows most people in town can't come close to affording them, and Dan is hoping people are smart enough not to want a 3-axle workhorse that requires two parking spaces when the cheapest parking rate in the tri-state area runs 800 bucks a month.
And if the manufacturers did end up trying this, most of those D2C storefronts would need an entire infrastructure of administration right down to the real estate, which is probably the last thing anybody would think a car company could handle.
For instance some of the right wing crazies will apply to get Fedral campaign funds and be funded with as many dollars as the major parties.
I'm guessing you'd be JUST as apprehensive for the left wing crazies getting federal campaign funds and be funded with as many dollars as the major parties too, eh?
Not quite as much. Left-wing crazies are notoriously bad at filling out paperwork...;)
It wouldn't be that hard. The FCC already mandates a certain amount of air time for political broadcasting like the debates. They just need to extend it to say X, Y, and Z broadcast time must be set aside for local, state, and national candidates per day between the *very limited* months of August through October, and with no more than V ads per hour of programming. A savvier law would divide that time between fewer ad spots and more actual issue debates, q-and-a bits, and substance programming (thus dragging TV America into the political process by their teeth if necessary). Include the cable and satellite networks because quite a lot of their infrastructure is owned by We the People, so in exchange, they can give up a little time during "Duck Dynasty" or something.
You can't ban involvement, but you sure as hell can limit it to individual citizens (not corporate 'persons'), as nature and the Constitution intended.
Products are just the chuff. The real relationship is the company's PR/marketing and the customer. Any company is a viable entity not based on whether or not it makes a good product, or even a product at all...it's how well their PR department can convince the consumers that they need to send money to this company. Nike used to make good shoes. Now they fall apart, but we still pay for the brand, and not the product. We pay to feel good about the swoosh and the "Just Do It."
Products are just the placeholder for the initial buy-in. After that it's a combination of guilt, resistance to change, "brand loyalty," and the unwillingness to admit you may have made a bad purchase (which rises exponentially to the amount of money you spend.
I don't want to have to watch a 90-minute presentation on why my hammer is so much better when it looks like a screwdriver. I want the hammer to have the head to pound in the nails and the claw to rip them out. I don't want my hammer trying to second-guess me through context whether or not I need it to pound in nails or rip them out, or use the damn thing as a pry bar or a doorstop. I want my hammer to be a hammer, not try to outsmart me at every task. If I want a better tool for my job, I have to first recognize my own inefficiency, then seek out something that helps me increase that efficiency.
If this was engineering over marketing, it was engineers telling people, "You're stupid, my way is better, you're stupid for not already figuring it out, and oh yeah, you're stupid." When somebody tells me I'm stupid, I know they're full of shit and that's the last thing out of their mouths that I listen to. We would all like to think that the most popular way is the best way, but we all know that just ain't so--people will still spend a buck to save a dime and waste ten minutes to save five. The engineers should have listened to the marketers or better yet, the educators. First you need buy-in that the old way isn't the best way, and *then* you introduce the better way.
Also, wasn't "New Coke" a smokescreen designed to allow Coke to switch their classic recipe from cane sugar to high fructose corn syrup? If I'm remembering right, then Win 8 will boost demand for Win7 or something...
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It's proving what I said, that women aren't objectified in more ways than men. It's just that modern society is more sensitive to female objectification.
It's not that modern society is more "sensitive" to female objectification. It's that the consequences of objectification are so very different between the genders. When a woman is seen in a sexual context, it overrides and devalues anything else she's done. When a man is seen in a sexual context, it adds to his overall perception.
This is why Miley Cyrus (and before her, Britney, Cristina, a bunch of other interchangeable pop stars, Madonna, etc.) went through their badly-choreographed/shock-value awkwardness on stage and went overnight from "girl it's okay for my kids to crush on" to "evil harlot no longer welcome in my home." Not because the performances were bad, the performers were impaired, or the whole thing was rigged to get as many eyeballs popping and tongues wagging as possible (cha-ching!) but because these women expressed a sexual context that immediately overrode and negated any other talent or facet of their personality.
This is why Bill Clinton, however, is still the "Big Dog" after his sexual context was exposed (pr0n-like, in front pages of midwestern papers everywhere, by a feverish Ken Starr). Seeing Bill Clinton in a sexual context merely added another facet onto his personality and accomplishments *without* overriding or negating them (while the woman he was with ended up doing some cheesecake poses in some eyeball magazines and maybe giving an interview or two in between the pictures).
It's a variation on the old idea that a man's sexuality is something to be celebrated, while a woman's is to be regulated (either through legislation, religion, or societal pressure). It's not something that can be solved or mitigated or changed overnight. It has to be systemically changed, and you do that through pointing it out and calling attention to the double standard until enough people understand that it is, in fact, there. *Then* you can do something about it on a broader scale, by teaching both boys and girls at a (relatively) young age that sexual context makes up part of a person and not all of a person, and so on. Raising that kind of systemic awareness will mitigate some of the institutional bad treatment experienced by women in the above-mentioned industries.
Maybe part of the reason the fuss is being made is because somebody actually gave these people money to travel halfway around the world and give a talk at a professional conference (and waste a lot of people's time) when there could have been something much more relevant, valuable, useful, or technologically amazing than an app that does nothing useful and hogs memory on smartphones while simultaneously making its user look like a giant douche. Just spitballin' here...
The wounds on the man's head support his claim. And regardless, he doesn't have to prove his innocence, the state must prove his guilt. They didn't.
The state has to prove his guilt. Too bad it was only George Zimmerman who determined that kid's "guilt."
Message received, loud and clear. Kids (especially black kids), if a stranger starts following you, you better just get in the windowless white van. Don't try to fight back, because that would make you "guilty" and "threatening" and the stranger can shoot you. Ladies, just go with the stalker. You wouldn't want to make him feel "threatened," but don't you dare try to stand up for your own self. You don't count as much. Message received.
Your 'sensible' regulation has failed miserably for automobiles.
And yet, oddly, millions of people drive to and from their destinations for hundreds of thousands of miles without harming themselves or others. Seatbelt regulations have reduced the number of automobile fatalities, and the inability of an eight-year-old to operate a motor vehicle has kept hundreds of thousands of eight-year-olds from misusing automobiles with harmful or fatal consequences. Drivers who have AT LEAST had to take a vision test every few years to prove they can still SEE WHERE THEY'RE GOING prevent uncountable accidents and fatalities every year.
Your proposal reeks of a registration plan (how else do you keep track of all that bureaucratic clap-trap?) which would be unacceptable to many/most gun owners. You don't need to register to exercise your 1st Amendment rights, neither should we have to register to exercise our 2nd Amendment rights.
*cough*You have to register to vote.*cough* You have to be a citizen to be guaranteed the rights in the Constitution. For vast quantities of us, this is an automatic thing, by virtue of birth, but without a social or a birth record to prove citizenship, you may have a bit of a time guaranteeing your rights.
And here's where the kneejerk comes in. The idea of--heaven forfend--registering your ability to safely use and operate dangerous equipment is accepted at all levels of society, from CDL licensing to heavy equipment operation, yet suggest it for a gun, and out comes the hissy fit, because someone has told you, over and over again, that if *they* know you have one, *they* will come for it some time in the middle of the night and take it from you...and then disappear you...and then eat all the potato chips in your house...and so on (large hint--that "someone" is highly motivated to ensure that many, many people continue to think that an Inconvenience of Commerce is an Infringement Upon Divinely-Bestowed Rights because it's expressly that commerce which is driving the discussion).
Same goes for insurance - would you like to have mandated 1st Amendment insurance against libel/slander/perjury, etc?
The difference here being your speech and existence as a citizen is a function of existence. Gun insurance is a function of owning a gun. Why would you not want to have a little protection in case your gun were stolen, or used in a fatality or a crime and potentially implicating you?
I would love to see mandatory primary school education in gun safety, including how to safely check that any firearm is actually unloaded, safely store them, and safely handle them. This is taught in the home for other dangerous tools such as knives, saws, etc. Sadly this is not the case in the majority of households with respect to firearms. I was lucky enough to have firearm safety taught to me my my father from a young age and when I was in middle school - I think it was part of 'shop class' or perhaps 'health class'.
Ignoring the education issue makes the problem worse, not better, as we've learned from sex ed. Teaching them gun safety will not turn them into gun nuts just as sex ed doesn't turn girls into sluts. Confront the demon no matter how repulsive it is to your politics to keep your kids and others safe.
I have no worries about my children becoming gun nuts--they have been exposed to guns and felt free to express their disinterest. The reason why gun safety is not mandatory is that gun ownership is not mandatory...unless that's where *you're* wanting to go, which is just as ridiculous a position as the one you seem to want to ascribe to people asking for some regulation--that is, the elimination of all guns. Back when guns were a necessary hip accessory, every kid did have firearms training. But it comes down to two simple facts: 1.) that not everyone needs to have a gun to feel safe, therefore not everyone should be made to have to accommodate those
Great. If a bunch of rubes can be found to pass him their money, yay for him. The Chick-Fil-A effect convinced me that faith is dead in America while Religion's walking corpse marches on. How so many people equated deep moral righteousness with the consumption of a mass-produced chicken sandwich baffled me. And if the CFA effect truly is an effect...then he should have no reason to whine for toleration from the people he bashes.
Fiscally punishing someone due to their opinion is stupid. It discourages free speech, discourages open communication, and discourages the expression of new ideas. Unfortunately, with free speech and open communication you sometimes end up with idiots like Card spouting off crap. The best thing to do is ignore them.
You are guaranteed the right to spout whatever moronic drivel you want, thanks to the Constitution. You are NOT guaranteed the right to avoid, sidestep, or otherwise be excused of the consequences of spouting said drivel. And you are certainly not guaranteed the right to demand other citizens give you their money for it.
Speech has consequences. One of those consequences for Card is his butthurt over the fact that his moronic drivel might be cutting into his profits. Boo-frickin'-hoo. Tolerance? I'll tolerate the shit out of him. But Tolerance ends at my wallet. After all, he's not obligated to send a blender to every gay couple getting married from now until the movie ends its run in the theaters, is he? If he shows that kind of tolerance, yeah, I might pony up eight bucks to go see the flick. Otherwise, he's just another case of Authors Behaving Badly, and I do not patronize Authors Behaving Badly.
This is worse. At least the latter were proven to be sex offenders in court (flawed as the process may be) according to the summary, no actual proof is needed to end up on the map.
Great point. So how long do you think it will take for the 5 million plus NRA members to make this dataset completely useless once they are aware of it as a group?
Probably just long enough for someone to wave enough money in the NRA's face to sell their mailing list. The more I listen to this conversation, the more I realize that passionate people on both sides are being played, and if you follow the money, it's the ginned-up fear of both sides that has one thing in common--more gun sales. Good God, how the money rolls in....Cha-Ching!
Gun laws don't prevent gun violence as criminals are already breaking the law. However if one of the victims had been allowed to carry his weapon legally there might have been far fewer casualties.
One point I never see being brought up is the difference between an armed criminal and a person with a gun. Put quite frankly, the criminal is already less invested in maintaining a peaceful situation because he is armed and engaging in a criminal act. However, a person with a gun is still invested in maintaining peace in the situation, at least slightly moreso than the criminal, because up to that point, he is still a law-abiding citizen with a gun. Once Person With A Gun pulls that gun with the intent to maim or kill, that person may meet the criminal head-on in investiture, but will still be a step behind because he hasn't yet abandoned the notion of peaceable society with respect to worrying about bystanders, safety, and other factors that come with the operation of a dangerous and deadly weapon in the presence of others. The armed criminal has already abandoned that concern and has no need to control aim or reduce threat to onlookers. So our would-be hero is operating a day late and a dollar short, so to speak, crippled by lack of response and multiple areas of concern, and that's not entirely a bad thing.
I don't know of a single, sane, CC permit-holder ready to rush in and play Rambo in a situation like that, because, presumably, they understand the gravity of the situation. The minute the ability or desire to fire the gun trumps the concern for the safety is when responsible gun owner becomes not-so-responsible.
If only I had mod points - you hit the nail on the head. Lack of firearm safety EDUCATION is the biggest cause of accidental firearm deaths. Most gun illiterate people don't know they're gun illiterate - they think they know all they need to from watching TV (where some of the most egregious firearm-handling mistakes are taught to our youth).
It's disgraceful that the general public is so eager to watch (and let their kids watch) gun violence on TV, but is so unwilling to actually teach gun safety to it's youth.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but if there were some sensible regulation, like, oh, say, mandatory classes taught by a licensed professional, followed by testing administered by a licensed representative, and the issuance of some sort of certificate confirming said classes and testing had been passed satisfactorily, and perhaps some insurance against the likelihood of misuse or accident...then maybe the accidental deaths might be reduced, the gunfail might plummet, and we wouldn't be burying so many small coffins. Just saying is all...
You were shouting in my face so I pushed you, you pushed me so I hit you, you hit me so I shot you. All self defence?
the problem is that this is normal behavior for anti-gun liberals, so they assume everyone acts like this. only irresponsible, immature man-children act like this.
Umm...way to generalize. "anti-gun" people and "liberals" are not the same, there are probably more armed "liberals" than your average Faux news host realizes, and fewer armed "conservatives" because rational people tend to make purchases of tools--even deadly ones--based on more significant needs for those tools than political affiliations. It's also neither "anti-gun" folk or "liberals" posting dumb pictures and videos of themselves being irresponsible, immature man-children with their firearms all over the internets and giving anti-gun people clear reason to fear for their safety.
i carry a gun every day. i don't shout in people's faces. if you were shouting in my face, i'd attempt to extricate myself from the situation. if you pushed me, i'd attempt to extricate myself from the situation. if you hit me, i'd attempt to extricate myself from the situation. if you continued assaulting me to the point where i felt i was in danger of serious harm or death, yes, i'd shoot you. and it'd be 100% self defense.
the vast majority of gun owners that make the decision to carry a firearm (legally) are responsible people and will take every possible measure to avoid escalating situations to violence because they know what it can lead to.
Regretfully, "vast majority" is fluid in its definition, given the police blotter reports of multitudes of accidents, mis-firings, and unnecessarily-escalated gun incidents that happen in the US every week. More regretfully, of those accidents and tragedies, there's another "vast majority" of the victims of those situations who are *not* gun owners, but just happened to be in the vicinity, and therefore in the line of fire.
As tempting as it would be to paint a target on anyone who points this out as an "anti-gun" person and believe that their next move is to show up with a posse to take all yer guns, it's no more true than believing every Christian's next move is to show up on your doorstep and take all yer ungodly things, or the RIAA to show up and take your stereo because you didn't pay them twice for listening to your music with both ears. The vast majority of people engaging in this ongoing conversation want understandable limits and regulations on the dangerous equipment, intended to minimize the accidents, the abuses, and the tragedies.
I can tell you that there are a hell of a lot of titles that are not available as eBooks - especially older ones. Not to mention that you haven't lived until you find a few where the Kindle version costs more than the paper edition. I mean WTF?
This is entirely on the publisher. As the only entity with licensing rights to sell the story, vast numbers of older books, in their contracts between author and publisher, included "unspecified electronic rights" clauses, where the publisher owns the rights for the story in electronic form as well as paper forms. 99.9% of those contracts were taken at a time where "electronic" rights were still in the realm of science fiction, and easily traded away by the authors for the advance, the paper, the royalties, and the ability to eat in the "now." And when the publishers were the only game in town, it was the rare author who held onto unnamed electronic rights for a nebulous future and still got the very tangible benefits of the paper rights at that time.
Only in the last few years have the publishers begun exploiting those "unspecified" electronic rights (sometimes appallingly badly, I might add). The pricing of those ebooks is consistent with the publishers' main goals--which are to promote hardcovers first (they get the best ROI for those), then paperbacks (trade > mass-market), then audio, and only after that, ebook (if at all).
The way books are priced and the way publishers make money off them has traditionally been in the realm of goods--they create a physical book and count the costs of creating that physical thing. After which, they mark it up to a distributor, who then marks it up to a retailer, who then buys the thing. After that, the thing is the retailer's to do with as it pleases--which meant that Amazon could sell books at less than the cost to produce--after all, Amazon had bought and paid for every book in its warehouse at the wholesaler price. Publishers traditionally counted on bookstores' payments of 60% of cover price (their wholesale price from the distributor) to fill their coffers and cover their costs to produce, and it did, although at narrow margins, believe it or not, after the salaries, real estate, production, shipping, authors, etc., were all paid. And once the physical book leaves the publisher's hands, it's free to move about the market at any price that will bear it, whether that's 1/10 of a percent of its original value, or 110 times that.
Amazon cut out the middleman and bought at distributor prices so it could undercut retailer markups. Not evil in and of itself, especially since Walmart and Costco have done similar. But with ebooks, the difference is that there's no physical product to buy and stock, so there's no tangible good to change hands. A distributor need only "buy" it once and re-distribute it a zillion times. It's the ultimate in "lean manufacturing" because the retailer doesn't have to pre-commit to stock that may or may not sell. This presents a benefit to the retailer (no up-front cost to stock), but a downside to the customer (no discount to move old product), and an entirely different relationship between publisher, retailer/distributor, and customer. Instead of pre-purchasing stock, the retailer now just acts as a pass-through between producer and consumer, taking a cut for its trouble, but largely unable to do its thing in terms of discounts, incentives, or other ways to traditionally move physical product.
I hate Amazon. I just hate them less than everyone else. Which appears to be the new standard in business success metrics.
This seems to be true for all major retailers these days. Amazon has really stepped up in leveling the playing field for authors by removing the publisher-as-gatekeeper barriers between authors and readers, but in other ways, they can be really odious. Capitalism in general seems to be psychotic that way. :/
^^This. I've avoided Wal-Mart for a decade now, but gifts or items bought for me from there always end up being one step up from disposable. I really can't even fault China anymore, because I've had enough experience to see that China has the ability to crank out pretty high-quality stuff (human rights violations notwithstanding). But you get what you pay for, and when you pay in the basement, you get basement-quality stuff.
You can be sure the publisher/retailer tracks costs with exquisite precision, but they are apprx. none of the business of their customers - or their own competitors.
Having worked in the business, I have to laugh at this statement. Part of the reason publishing is floundering so badly is the archaic and arcane nature of their accounting practices in terms of individual books. Not to mention the nature of their customers (the bookstores) who've been operating on a consignment-and-credit model for *decades* and this "precision" of which you speak is about as precise as using a ten-foot-wide crayon to make calligraphy on the back of a postage stamp.
And to the parent, book prices versus demand do not follow any sane, rational course of economics known to this world. Out of print and rare books are just as likely to be valued at a fraction of their original "sticker price" as they are to inflate to hundreds of times their original. It is precisely the intangibles--the author, the story, current trends in media/pop culture/world news, specific contract negotiations with that author for that book (and they're all different)--that have the most influence on price. The price of pulp and cardstock are the least of the costs that go into book production and, judging by the quality of some of the paperbacks I've recently dealt with, already skimmed down to within an inch of their lives. TL;DR answer--Publishing is Weird. :)
Man walks around wearin' a hat like that, you know he ain't afraid of nothin'. Not even gubmint conspiracies.
The thing to pay attention to is that Congress is ultimately the one that investigates anyway. With these revelations in the media the security services and programs are damaged, but it is still Congress that has to do the investigations and oversight. It tends to work much better for the United States when the national security secrets are kept secret and Congress can do their work without having major intelligence programs compromised and undermined. Ultimately that is likely to work out better for the American people as well.
Well, there's your problem right there. You said "Congress" and "work" in the same sentence. :P
More seriously, while the "whistleblower" mechanism may be in place, it's clearly not functioning, either by not providing the protection for whistleblowers that it's supposed to, or not pursuing the ethical wrongdoing as it's supposed to. When the legal ways aren't working, then the ILlegal ones end up being the only option. This feels like another chip in the general breakdown of a justice system that has been showing cracks for quite some time. I can only take consolation that whatever NSA people have to be sifting through my data are being actively bored unto death by my Pinterest recipes.
I'm an american and I'm confused. Is the implication that the tweet is racist because it mentions jobs moving to China? From TFA, it didn't even mention McConnell's wife's surname being Asian, so it would be up to the reader of the tweet to parse the implication that an Asian person would move jobs to an Asian country.
Or would it be more commonly inferred that a Secretary of Labor, no matter what his or her heritage, might have more to do with whether or not one's job moved to China. I mean, I always assumed that immigrants coming to America from other countries wanted the jobs to stay where they moved *to* and not where they moved *from.*
This is an example of my honest confusion--something like this gets racist implications, but the reams and reams of articles, tweets, blograge, and talking heads suggesting the same thing (only substitute "Muslim" and "Kenyan") deserve Very Serious Consideration because National Security or something.
Guaranteed minimum income is a socialistic recipe for disaster. Take away all financial incentive to providing value or solving valuable problems and people will just sit on their asses, eat and watch porn all day long.
I have never understood why people believe the above is true for "poor" people (or really, people who are in the subcategory of "other" than the speaker). Most of us who grew up in classes outside of the most abject of poverty have had plenty of times in our lives where we experienced little to no financial incentive to work...have still wanted to do so. I believe I'm a Special Snowflake, but my desire to have a career and keep doing what I do outside of the financial incentive is not the thing that makes me special.
In the rush to blame the parents (and whoever said kids with "good parents" don't do this crap either lives under a rock or is purposely being oblivious), your first statement makes a whole lotta sense. And actions do have consequences. It's when the consequences--like the public display and the subsequent suicide--FAR OVERREACH the seriousness of the action itself that the system needs correcting. I'm in no rush to blame the girl, either--she probably leveled a certain amount of trust in her peers *not* to go worldwide with her behavior (just as her peers have a certain amount of trust that their actions would not end up contributing to her death--and if they did, there's something much more wrong here). The underlying problem with your last statement, however, is that the girl had what amounted to a situation of impaired capacity, which was then exploited by her peers for comedy and humiliation, the exploitation of which drove her to end her life. And out here on the internets, we have all sorts of people weighing in about how actions have consequences, and her parents must be bad parents, or how much responsibility she should take for her situation, but would the situation be the same if she were disabled? Or if she were impaired through prescription drugs she was supposed to be taking? We put value judgements on the status of the victim even when we don't, as if some people's victimizations are somehow merited on some cosmic, karmic scale.
Lawyers deal with the details of laws, but congress deals with something much more critical: policy. Having people who know about economics, science, technology, agriculture, education, foreign relations, etc. is much more important than having people who can regurgitate a little bad Latin.
I don't think anyone currently in congress understands any of those things right now. Except maybe regurgitation (and not of Latin, either!). They certainly don't act like it. In fact, they don't act like they understand some basic Kindergarten stuff.
Direct to consumer isn't always the best solution for a lot of industries. Too much choice creates confusion for the customer and diffusion on the part of the business's efforts. In the publishing industry, traditionally, it's always been the buyers of bookstores and bookstore chains that were the customers of publishers, because the retail buyers knew their markets better (locally and regionally). With a product as widely diverse as literature, it was up to the buyers to pick and choose what would best sell in their markets (romances, sci-fi, self-help, history, etc.) while the publisher concentrated on making widely diverse products available at different scales. If a publisher would have had to focus on things at the retail level, most of the literary market would never have even seen the light of day in favor of more commercial literature to the exclusion of other works just by virtue of the economies of scale. Granted, the bookselling market has done just that to itself with the rise of megabookstores, but it's begun to swing the other way thanks to the internet and Amazon (whose model isn't without its own problems, either).
My TL;DR point is that large manufacturing companies cannot have the granular focus to take full advantage of local markets. Bob's Rural Chevy dealership is going to sell more pick'emup trucks than Dan's Urban Chevytopia. Bob is not going to order many high-end sports cars because he knows most people in town can't come close to affording them, and Dan is hoping people are smart enough not to want a 3-axle workhorse that requires two parking spaces when the cheapest parking rate in the tri-state area runs 800 bucks a month.
And if the manufacturers did end up trying this, most of those D2C storefronts would need an entire infrastructure of administration right down to the real estate, which is probably the last thing anybody would think a car company could handle.
I'm guessing you'd be JUST as apprehensive for the left wing crazies getting federal campaign funds and be funded with as many dollars as the major parties too, eh?
Not quite as much. Left-wing crazies are notoriously bad at filling out paperwork... ;)
It wouldn't be that hard. The FCC already mandates a certain amount of air time for political broadcasting like the debates. They just need to extend it to say X, Y, and Z broadcast time must be set aside for local, state, and national candidates per day between the *very limited* months of August through October, and with no more than V ads per hour of programming. A savvier law would divide that time between fewer ad spots and more actual issue debates, q-and-a bits, and substance programming (thus dragging TV America into the political process by their teeth if necessary). Include the cable and satellite networks because quite a lot of their infrastructure is owned by We the People, so in exchange, they can give up a little time during "Duck Dynasty" or something.
You can't ban involvement, but you sure as hell can limit it to individual citizens (not corporate 'persons'), as nature and the Constitution intended.
What, they still have those "why should you" meetings? I thought they were all "how much do you want" meetings nowadays...
Products are just the chuff. The real relationship is the company's PR/marketing and the customer. Any company is a viable entity not based on whether or not it makes a good product, or even a product at all...it's how well their PR department can convince the consumers that they need to send money to this company. Nike used to make good shoes. Now they fall apart, but we still pay for the brand, and not the product. We pay to feel good about the swoosh and the "Just Do It."
Products are just the placeholder for the initial buy-in. After that it's a combination of guilt, resistance to change, "brand loyalty," and the unwillingness to admit you may have made a bad purchase (which rises exponentially to the amount of money you spend.
I don't want to have to watch a 90-minute presentation on why my hammer is so much better when it looks like a screwdriver. I want the hammer to have the head to pound in the nails and the claw to rip them out. I don't want my hammer trying to second-guess me through context whether or not I need it to pound in nails or rip them out, or use the damn thing as a pry bar or a doorstop. I want my hammer to be a hammer, not try to outsmart me at every task. If I want a better tool for my job, I have to first recognize my own inefficiency, then seek out something that helps me increase that efficiency.
If this was engineering over marketing, it was engineers telling people, "You're stupid, my way is better, you're stupid for not already figuring it out, and oh yeah, you're stupid." When somebody tells me I'm stupid, I know they're full of shit and that's the last thing out of their mouths that I listen to. We would all like to think that the most popular way is the best way, but we all know that just ain't so--people will still spend a buck to save a dime and waste ten minutes to save five. The engineers should have listened to the marketers or better yet, the educators. First you need buy-in that the old way isn't the best way, and *then* you introduce the better way.
Also, wasn't "New Coke" a smokescreen designed to allow Coke to switch their classic recipe from cane sugar to high fructose corn syrup? If I'm remembering right, then Win 8 will boost demand for Win7 or something...