You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.
-Robert Heinlein
I have to admit, I was torn myself, until last year. The response to Katrina pretty much proved that the current administration isn't nearly cunning enough to think their way out of a paper bag, much less orchestrate a massive conspiracy involving thousands of people.
Although, at least in my experience, civil service / government contractors seem to have a higher percentage of union employees than most other groups.
Well, it depends. If they guy with the peanut allergy is driving a gasoline tanker truck when he has an allergic attack, or piloting an airplane, there could be a pretty good amount of collateral damage.
There's always people who hold the idea of control over others as a desirable end. There's just more of them in control right now.... but, eventually, the cycle will peak again, and then things will get better... for awhile.
As I said the first time this article came out, from the study's abstract, I'm going to go with the blood pressure as the underlying cause behind the differences between the groups. The odd thing is, she does not mention it during her conclusion. Possibly because, when looked at it that way, it's an really just two things we already know: i.e. if you get someone's blood pressure up, they are more likely to be confrontational & not think as much about their actions; and playing a fairly realistic video game (particulary a violent one) is going to raise your blood pressure. Of course, obvious studies (or obvious conclusions) don't get funding...
encouraging large-scale criminal enterprises to get involved in intellectual-property theft," Gonzales said, adding that proceeds from the illicit businesses are used, "quite frankly, to fund terrorism activities."
...with reality as I know it. Maybe I'm just a commoner with one of those "worker" jobs, but I thought the terrorists who attacked us got their money from oil, and the terrorists in South America got their money from drugs. I didn't realize the MP3's I didn't pay for were financing blowing up Americans! My God!
B.) Even if that was true...
Boosts criminal penalties for copyright infringement originally created by the No Electronic Theft Act of 1997 from five years to 10 years (and 10 years to 20 years for subsequent offenses). The NET Act targets noncommercial piracy including posting copyrighted photos, videos or news articles on a Web site if the value exceeds $1,000.
... With these two statements about the same piece of legislation, I'm about ready to quit my job, take the wife & dog, and go visit my cousin in Canada. Permanently. Preferrably after picking up some weapons along the way.
1) The US can request extradition, but US residents are protected by the constitution
Not entirely. As far as the (some innocent, some not) people from Afghanistan, Iraq, wherever... well, I feel bad for them, but I also feel bad for all the kids starving in China, or dying of AIDS in Africa, or... well, you get the picture.
But criminal though he may be, and terrorist, probably... Jose Padilla is an American citizen. The fact that it took three years of legal wrangling to force the government to charge him with a crime is everything the constitution was written to prevent.
I feel the need to point out that the DHS, as a whole, wasn't the one failing. The coast guard (run by long-term military members) did its portion (rescusing people stranded in flooded areas) admirably, saving tens of thousands. It was FEMA, through their response, and the Army Corps of Engineers, through not sufficiently strenghting the levees, that failed in their job. Strangely enough....
In September 2003, Michael D. Brown, FEMA's director and DHS Undersecretary, warned that the shift [from a separate cabinet position to a position under DHS] would make a mockery of FEMA's new motto, "A Nation Prepared," and would "fundamentally sever FEMA from its core functions," "shatter agency morale" and "break longstanding, effective and tested relationships with states and first responder stakeholders." The inevitable result of the reorganization of 2003, warned Brown, would be "an ineffective and uncoordinated response" to a terrorist attack or a natural disaster.
While I can certainly believe blood pressure increases and other physiological effects, I'm very skeptical that a short time playing a violent videogame would somehow change your attitude towards marijuana.
Well, for a short time it might. Or, to be more precise, if you were calmly sitting on a couch for a bit, and somebody asked you about some risky behaviour, you'd be more likely to examine the issue than if you'd just be jogging for awhile.
So, as I said in an earlier post... Exercise leads to violence & risky behaviours!
It's actually really simple, and makes sense. The way they worded the abstract was a bit weird... but it was the thing about blood pressure that should stand out. I'd be pretty willing to bet that if you had a hundred people, and had half of them sit on a couch for twenty minutes, and the other half get on a treadmill for twenty minutes, you'd probably get the same result as comparing cartoon vs. realistic simulated violence.
So... umm... Exercise leads to violence and risky behavior?
Your post has the tone of disagreeing with me, but none of your points contradicts mine. In fact, your points support my view. You just seem angry that the world is the way it is.
Offtopic, but that was the truest/funniest thing I've read on Slashdot in at least a month. The fact that it could apply to so much here makes me want to turn that into my sig.
If the author is not a native speaker (of english, or otherwise), that's fine... but if they're not fluent in the language they're writing in, it's even more important that they get a decent editor.
And that's including things like the coast guard and FEMA in Homeland Security.
Yup. Doing accounting for the Coast Guard is pretty much impossible - too many different missions (customs, search & rescue, drug interdiction) being done by the same boats. And as far as FEMA... well, some people might question their usefulness right now, anyway...;)
But, seriously... it's pretty much retarded. The politics of the drug war aside, the fact that billions gets spent (between the Coast Guard, the DEA, FBI resources, and even the Navy), and the interdiction rate is only about one out of four, according to DEA estimates... well, it's kind of frightening. Given enough time, somebody with a grudge against the US is going to get a hold of a biological or nuclear weapon. (The fact that we add to the number of people with grudges every day certainly doesn't help.) There's no reason to believe the chance of us catching somebody with a small nuke before they can pull into a major port is better... and there's a lot of reasons to believe it's worse.
It doesn't surprise me that the P&P industry is in decline. I just think that, unlike player attention span, time constraints and storytelling ability, price is one of the factors that can be changed, and might make a difference if it was.
See, if you'd just put that, I probably wouldn't be so annoyed right now. It's great that you enjoy small games - I've tried it a few times, one GM and two or three players, and, personally, it sucks. I really enjoy playing with a larger group - when I go home to visit my parents on the holidays, I try to get up with my group from college, and we've played a number of one-shots, or two sessions if we were both around for a week.
As far as time, I think you just missed my point - it's no good for one or two people to have the time if you have a group of seven. That's why video games & wargames are much easier on my schedule - only need two people to play, really.
is how the current administration has certainly taken the 'the best defense is a good offense' idea and run with it. Compare the DOD spending from last year with a decade ago, and then compare the spending on the border patrol, airline security, and the Coast Guard. Do you notice which one went up?
1.) Video Games. New computer every two or three years. Say 400 dollars a year. New console every three years. Another hundred. 'Bargain' games, 20 each, say one a month. 200 bucks a year. New releases, say, three times a year. 150. Makes about 850 a year. True, I also surf the web, pretend to get some work done, and pay some bills / do banking online. But I'm probably underestimating what I spend on the new computer, anyway, and I'm not including internet & the like. Still, not a cheap hobby, but not really a crusher.
2.) Wargames. Well, when I was just playing Confrontation, it wasn't too bad. I mean, small numbers of models, and they're not too badly priced to begin with. But then we moved, 'cause of the job, and the only stores near us are big on the Games Workshop stuff. I don't really want to think about how much I'm spent on this in the last year, but it's probably close, or exceeding, the cost of the first hobby.
3.) RPG's. My costs for the last year? Umm... well, nothing, really. I may have bought some new dice, at some point... And I might not spend anything this year, either. (see the aforementioned 'moving'.) The problem isn't the cost of the stuff - even when I was only playing one session a month, I didn't have a problem putting 30 or 40 bucks down on a new book every other month, or even every month, if there was anything worth getting. But RPG's are a lot more committment-intensive than either of my other hobbies - But since I got out of college, and I've moved away from all my high school & college friends, it's a lot harder to find a group of five to seven people willing to meet up, every week, or even every other week.
(Stops to think for a minute)
Okay, actually, I think I'm going to end up disagreeing with myself. The problem with RPG's is that the people who have the ability to play them regularly (people who have a lot of free time, or flexible schedules, and a group of friends that have the same) are generally not the kind of people who have the money to support an entire industry. Now, there's exceptions, to be sure - but I'm willing to bet that a whole lot of people who played D&D in high school, or college, stop, or greatly cut back, afterwords due to the time constraints.
As for risk mitigation, you are putting up your own strawman; I said nothing about needing to mitigate risks.
(head tilt) Okay, maybe I just made the assumption that, when you started talking about potential causes for cancer being a 'public health issue' you were concerned with... umm... risk mitigation. Because that's a major compontent of public health. My point was that money spent on preventing a rare and possibly non-exsistent health threat is money you can't spend on more common things.
As for the airbag thing... It's kinda a pet peeve of mine. Not airbags themselves, but the fact that they're mandatory.
This 'any risk at all must be mitigated, regardless of the cost' mentality is what leads to things like, for instance, air bags. The important figure to note here is the approximately 400,000 dollars per 'quality-adjusted life year', for an accident in vehicles with dual airbags. So, essentially, for every 25 year old that gets to live to 80, rather than dying of a car accident on their 25th birthday, the public as a whole is spending approximately 22 million dollars.
So what, some people will say... well, how many years of life could have been saved by, say, better public transportation, pollution clean-up, better food safety, more smoking/food/whatever education... financed by said 22 million dollars?
Slashdot Mirror
-Robert Heinlein
I have to admit, I was torn myself, until last year. The response to Katrina pretty much proved that the current administration isn't nearly cunning enough to think their way out of a paper bag, much less orchestrate a massive conspiracy involving thousands of people.
Although, at least in my experience, civil service / government contractors seem to have a higher percentage of union employees than most other groups.
Well, it depends. If they guy with the peanut allergy is driving a gasoline tanker truck when he has an allergic attack, or piloting an airplane, there could be a pretty good amount of collateral damage.
It's just not as funny that way.
There's always people who hold the idea of control over others as a desirable end. There's just more of them in control right now.... but, eventually, the cycle will peak again, and then things will get better... for awhile.
At least not until we get that whole telepathy thing down.
Wait, no, I'm wrong.
A.) I can't reconcile Gonzales statement...
...with reality as I know it. Maybe I'm just a commoner with one of those "worker" jobs, but I thought the terrorists who attacked us got their money from oil, and the terrorists in South America got their money from drugs. I didn't realize the MP3's I didn't pay for were financing blowing up Americans! My God!B.) Even if that was true...
... With these two statements about the same piece of legislation, I'm about ready to quit my job, take the wife & dog, and go visit my cousin in Canada. Permanently. Preferrably after picking up some weapons along the way.the content of your message and your sig are making my head hurt. I didn't think it was possible to be worse than this pairing.
and your sig have caused me some serious cognitive dissonance.
Not entirely. As far as the (some innocent, some not) people from Afghanistan, Iraq, wherever... well, I feel bad for them, but I also feel bad for all the kids starving in China, or dying of AIDS in Africa, or... well, you get the picture.
But criminal though he may be, and terrorist, probably... Jose Padilla is an American citizen. The fact that it took three years of legal wrangling to force the government to charge him with a crime is everything the constitution was written to prevent.
that nobody survives an encounter with one, it's hard to judge whether one grue is stronger than another.
It's hardly universal. It doesn't dissolve enamel paint, for instance. You need a hydrocarbon liquid for that...
(Quote from Wikipedia)
It was a decent analysis... but has the guy ever heard of formatting? I honestly found that one giant paragraph to hurt my eyes...
Well, for a short time it might. Or, to be more precise, if you were calmly sitting on a couch for a bit, and somebody asked you about some risky behaviour, you'd be more likely to examine the issue than if you'd just be jogging for awhile.
So, as I said in an earlier post... Exercise leads to violence & risky behaviours!
So... umm... Exercise leads to violence and risky behavior?
Offtopic, but that was the truest/funniest thing I've read on Slashdot in at least a month. The fact that it could apply to so much here makes me want to turn that into my sig.
If the author is not a native speaker (of english, or otherwise), that's fine... but if they're not fluent in the language they're writing in, it's even more important that they get a decent editor.
But, seriously... it's pretty much retarded. The politics of the drug war aside, the fact that billions gets spent (between the Coast Guard, the DEA, FBI resources, and even the Navy), and the interdiction rate is only about one out of four, according to DEA estimates... well, it's kind of frightening. Given enough time, somebody with a grudge against the US is going to get a hold of a biological or nuclear weapon. (The fact that we add to the number of people with grudges every day certainly doesn't help.) There's no reason to believe the chance of us catching somebody with a small nuke before they can pull into a major port is better... and there's a lot of reasons to believe it's worse.
See, if you'd just put that, I probably wouldn't be so annoyed right now. It's great that you enjoy small games - I've tried it a few times, one GM and two or three players, and, personally, it sucks. I really enjoy playing with a larger group - when I go home to visit my parents on the holidays, I try to get up with my group from college, and we've played a number of one-shots, or two sessions if we were both around for a week.
As far as time, I think you just missed my point - it's no good for one or two people to have the time if you have a group of seven. That's why video games & wargames are much easier on my schedule - only need two people to play, really.
is how the current administration has certainly taken the 'the best defense is a good offense' idea and run with it. Compare the DOD spending from last year with a decade ago, and then compare the spending on the border patrol, airline security, and the Coast Guard. Do you notice which one went up?
1.) Video Games. New computer every two or three years. Say 400 dollars a year. New console every three years. Another hundred. 'Bargain' games, 20 each, say one a month. 200 bucks a year. New releases, say, three times a year. 150. Makes about 850 a year. True, I also surf the web, pretend to get some work done, and pay some bills / do banking online. But I'm probably underestimating what I spend on the new computer, anyway, and I'm not including internet & the like. Still, not a cheap hobby, but not really a crusher.
2.) Wargames. Well, when I was just playing Confrontation, it wasn't too bad. I mean, small numbers of models, and they're not too badly priced to begin with. But then we moved, 'cause of the job, and the only stores near us are big on the Games Workshop stuff. I don't really want to think about how much I'm spent on this in the last year, but it's probably close, or exceeding, the cost of the first hobby.
3.) RPG's. My costs for the last year? Umm... well, nothing, really. I may have bought some new dice, at some point... And I might not spend anything this year, either. (see the aforementioned 'moving'.) The problem isn't the cost of the stuff - even when I was only playing one session a month, I didn't have a problem putting 30 or 40 bucks down on a new book every other month, or even every month, if there was anything worth getting. But RPG's are a lot more committment-intensive than either of my other hobbies - But since I got out of college, and I've moved away from all my high school & college friends, it's a lot harder to find a group of five to seven people willing to meet up, every week, or even every other week.
(Stops to think for a minute)
Okay, actually, I think I'm going to end up disagreeing with myself. The problem with RPG's is that the people who have the ability to play them regularly (people who have a lot of free time, or flexible schedules, and a group of friends that have the same) are generally not the kind of people who have the money to support an entire industry. Now, there's exceptions, to be sure - but I'm willing to bet that a whole lot of people who played D&D in high school, or college, stop, or greatly cut back, afterwords due to the time constraints.
(head tilt) Okay, maybe I just made the assumption that, when you started talking about potential causes for cancer being a 'public health issue' you were concerned with... umm... risk mitigation. Because that's a major compontent of public health. My point was that money spent on preventing a rare and possibly non-exsistent health threat is money you can't spend on more common things.
As for the airbag thing... It's kinda a pet peeve of mine. Not airbags themselves, but the fact that they're mandatory.
So what, some people will say... well, how many years of life could have been saved by, say, better public transportation, pollution clean-up, better food safety, more smoking/food/whatever education... financed by said 22 million dollars?