The question isn't whether we want a society of perfect equality. As you mention, inequality can promote competition, incentives, and other 'good' things.
(And on a nit-picky note, those four points are less 'fundamental flaws' than basic assumptions of generalization. More importantly, the phrasing of those points draw false dichotomies and straw-men; i.e. the argument isn't that obscene CEO bonuses 'lower' employee salary, only that they're excessive, obscene, unearned, and could be better spent elsewhere. Characterizing the argument against such bonuses as 'they lower employee salary' is false and logically flawed, though rhetorically successful on quick reading.)
However, that's not the question.
The question is the degree of inequality. Given that some inequality is a good thing, the argument here is that too much inequality is a bad thing. A little bit gives incentives to work hard and be creative and develop new things. Too much inequality gives absurd rewards for small gains, while others who work hard may get very little. The dividing line seems to become somewhat arbitrary (why is the work this CEO does *so* much more valuable than the work done by one of his employees?). And this arbitrariness, combined with extreme poverty and extreme wealth, can lead to frustration, violence, and various other *really* bad things.
While all of the points you summarized may be true in abstract, I've yet to see that argument made with the realities currently faced.
Did you really just compare 66sqkm in a singular event with 48sqkm over a period of 15 years and suggest that the two are close to equivalent? The article notes that, one, this was discovered by comparing recent satellite images (which suggests a sudden event), and two, that the calving created shockwaves recorded at very distant locations (again, suggesting a single event). Thus, it's 66sqkm in an instant, compared with a little over 3sqkm per year. Doesn't seem equal to me.
The problem with direct democracy is one of time. The more detailed and complicated the world becomes, the more complex the problems and the solutions. It's why people specialize in tiny little areas of knowledge instead of knowing everything about everything... there's simply too much to know.
Politics and governance is no different. Specializing is a good thing, and representative democracy allows people to specialize in governance. We don't even let generalist physicians do surgery, let alone the average layperson. It's too complicated, and too important... so we give the job to a specialist. Same with government. We could let the average person make decisions about long term taxes, economic growth, foreign policy, and the like, but I think it's too complicated.
I'm in California, and we've got more direct democracy than pretty much any other state in the union. And every election we're bombarded with propositions. No one really bothers to read the text of the summaries, let alone the actual text of the proposed legislation. So people vote based on their instincts, the television ads, and what their friends tell them. These aren't well-considered or thought out reasons... just the reasons that people have time for. I try my best to wade through them, but I've got a job and a family, and there often just isn't the time.
If you've got the time to keep up with all the information that *should* go into making these decisions, more power to you. But I think that the vast majority of the population doesn't have the time, interest, or education to do the same.
Imagine what would happen if 10% of the voters went for non-Democrat and non-Republican. Could politicians really believe that that many millions of Americans don't deserve to be represented in Congress or the Presidency?
They'd HAVE to change the system to a more fair electoral system.
Huh???... Yes they could, and no they wouldn't. Millions of Americans already consider themselves not to be represented by the current Congress or Presidency.
If 10% of a district voted for a 3rd party candidate, then, in most states, the candidate with a majority would win (i.e., even if it was less than a majority of the population... 40-35-25... candidate with 45% wins) Once elected, why would that politician have *any* incentive to change the system? He might be willing to co-opt some of the 3rd party candidate's policies, if he thought he could capture some of that 10%, but there'd be absolutely no reason to change the system.
If you want to change the system, you'll have to find another way... even electing a 3rd party candidate wouldn't change the system. It's happened before in the U.S. The result is that the 3rd party either dies off eventually, or kills off another party. Multiple parties aren't stable with the election methods in place in the U.S.
I think Wired is barking up the exact same, wrong, tree, that Diebold and every other manufacturer of voting machines is barking up - namely that they have all the answers.
The solution is very simple...
Erm? Pot... meet kettle.
There is no simple solution to voter fraud. There always has been fraud, and there always will be. It's the nature of ingenuity. Hence the "build an idiot-proof machine, and the universe will build a better idiot". If someone wants to hack an electronic voting system, they will, open-sourced and peer-reviewed or not.
In my view, the goal is simply to minimize the impact of such efforts, and to make it as difficult as possible to do so, as cheaply as possible. Open source *might* be a good way to go... certainly better than the closed electronic systems Diebold and their ilk are currently pushing. However, it's still an electronic system, and electronic systems are prone to making small errors very quickly (or being hacked to introduce small biases, very quickly). I'd personally prefer to return to a simple paper and pen ballot... simply check the box of the person/proposition you're voting for. Put paper in box. Let people count ballots (with observers, if desired). It scales fairly well, is difficult to introduce large errors into, and can't be hacked remotely. If it takes a little longer to get election results, so be it... there's almost two months between election day and inauguration day.
While it's true that slander/libel are not protected by the 1st Amendment, that's pretty irrelevant to what happened here. According to TFA, the defendant never showed up to offer a defense. The judge, without any other way to go, found a default judgment for the plaintiff. Only at this point was a jury called, and then only to determine damages. If you're a juror, and one attorney tells you, "In my long experience, this sort of pain and suffering (or whatever) is worth $11 million", and no one is there to tell you otherwise, there's a good chance you'll find $11 million in damages. Whether it actually was slander or libel doesn't matter. If there's no defense, the defense loses, regardless of the actual facts. Damned inactivist judges...
It turns out the defendant had her house flooded by Hurricane Katrina and had to leave... the legal notices that the plaintiff was required to send bounced back to the plaintiff and were never received. The defendant didn't show because she wasn't aware of when the trial was. Nor did she have enough money to hire a lawyer. So, odds are, had the case actually been defended, this thing would've either been thrown out or reached a defense verdict.
I'm just suprised that the judge didn't reduce the jury's damages... that said, because the defendant had no money for an attorney, it seems unlikely that this will be appealed (which it should be).
What I'd like to know is the size and power requirements. Something like this could be quite useful in high-rise buildings. Pumping water to the upper levels requires a significant amount of power. If instead we could put a few of these on tops of buildings and use them to bring water down, we might see a net win in terms of supply and energy usage.
Note that, in addition to having a relatively free supply of water, spontaneously generating several thousand gallons of water several hundred feet up in the air creates some additional issues/benefits. First, the weight of that much water at the top of the building might be sufficient to throw off the center of gravity for the building, and cause some rather unexpected problems. However, consider the amount of potential energy to be captured by generating that much water and letting it run downhill for usage.
The earth has had some really hot periods - it hs also had some really cold periods - all BEFORE mankind started to add their marginal extra amount of pollutants into the air.
This is true... there have been hot periods and cold periods in Earth's past. However, what many of these new findings are suggesting is that the current rate of change exceeds what happened previously. It's that things are heating up *really fast* that is being blamed on human intervention. Further, TFA notes that we are reaching the warmest Holocene temperatures... and we're *not slowing down* yet. That's a bit frightening.
And whether any of this is due to human action or not is, to a large extent, irrelevant. If you're sitting around the house with some friends and one of them points out that the drapes in the living room just caught fire, you don't sit there and argue over whether they caught fire because of faulty electrical, errant ashes from the fireplace, or the cat knocking over a candle. You do what you can to put out the #$(*#& fire! If valid science is suggesting serious problems ahead because of global warming, let's stop arguing and do something, anything, to try and stop it.
Uh huh.... and what is your take going to be Lockyer? Oh, just a small percentage you say, but a small percentage of an obscenely large number of dollars is still lots of dollars, right? Will you be buying a new Bentley with your share? Or will it be a party in your Escalade?
First of all, if you're going to attack Lockyer, do it right, okay? He's the attorney general for the State of California, which means he's not working on commission. He's effectively the attorney for all Californians, and he gets paid a salary. If he wins, he gets nothing extra. Moreover, suggesting that he sue all the drivers in California is retarded, as he'd be suing his clients. So, if you're going to attack him, attack him for trying to make political hay out of the environment in an election year by filing an unlikely-to-succeed lawsuit and thereby wasting taxpayer money.
That said, while federally mandated gas mileage standards are the obvious best answer, it is rather apparent that the current administration has no intent of raising those standards to a level that will do anything. That being the case, the next best solution might be to sue the manufacturers. The end goal of any economic externality that the commons ends up paying for (like pollution caused by manufactured vehicles from companies focused more on churning out big SUV's than improving fuel-efficiency), is to force the companies to internalize those costs. When legislation won't do it, lawsuits are really the only other alternative. As Lockyer is the attorney general, all he can do is file lawsuits... and as California is the most populous state (with the most drivers and automobiles) in the union, if he manages to be successful, the rest of the country benefits.
So yes, this suit is unlikely to succeed... and yes, Lockyer's main motivation is probably political... but hey, I'm rooting for him in this anyway.
You're absolutely right... anti-intellectualism is rampant in this country. Like most other bigotries, it is learned at home. However, while it would be nice for parents 'round the country to spontaneously start supporting education of the type we're talking about, I don't see that happening. If you have an idea on how to implant a love for learning into anti-intellectuals, then get off the damn computer and make it happen! (and then get to work on world peace, renewable energy, etc.)
That said, it's up to the schools to correct this. They're the only opportunity we have to get kids away from their parents and introduce them to new ideas and new ways of thinking. When schools take that opportunity and instead reinforce anti-intellectualism by punishing those who think creatively, rewarding those that simply regurgitate information, and glorify people for athletic acheivements more than intellectual ones, I feel that it's fair to blame them for what results.
The problem lies not with the people, as Americans are as smart as anyone else, but with the educational system. In the US, only those that get to college are taught to ask questions and challenge any preconceived notions that they have. Even then, not all colleges to an adequate job of it.
Thus, the majority of the population that has a high school education at best has never been taught to change their minds. Instead, they are taught to learn material and repeat it. When what they are taught (at church, or on the TV/radio) that the world is 6000 years old, that global warming is a liberal hoax, or that we were divine creations dropped into the Garden of Eden, that's what they repeat. They were never told that they could question what they hear, nor that they should.
You want to fix this problem? Be willing to pay higher property taxes, attend school board meetings, and push for changes to the curriculum that encourage curiosity and questioning... Then maintain the effort for a generation so that the kids who start with the program in kindergarden can progress through the system and go into politics.
And you can blame it on modern schools... the problem is the definition of "modern". Schools have been focused on churning out industrial workers (factory-workers, etc.) for the last century. That's the "modern" model. Now that we're largely post-industrial, we notice the need for people who can reason and think, as opposed to people who only had to read, write, and do basic arithmetic. We need to take a long, hard look at what the current school curricula are designed to teach, and work from the ground up. Moreover, the more recent fixation on testing to academic standards only exacerbates the problem; we're telling schools that so long as kids can regurgitate information, they're okay.
I have no idea if good chairs help generate good posture (I've never gotten an employer to buy me one)... but I do know that a bad chair certainly aids poor posture.
If you can get someone to buy one for you, do it and let us know how it goes. If nothing else, you'll have lots of levers and knobs to adjust on the chair.
The reason the vikings were so active from Norway was that they had mild temperatures up there, *warmer than now*.
Although they do acknowledge the existence of a "mini-ice age", the press release put out by the NAS (National Academy of Sciences) specifically rejects the argument that it was warmer in the middle ages then now:
None of the reconstructions indicates that temperatures were warmer during medieval times than during the past few decades, the committee added.
While it's true that "Cyclical Global warming != greenhouse effect", this does not mean that humanity is in the clear as far as global warming goes. I believe the concern is that there is no sign that the current heating trend is slowing down. The trending in the NAS report abstract is pretty disturbing. When this is compounded by the above argument that it's warmer now than it has been in the past, there is sufficient ground to worry that we have broken out of whatever cyclical pattern may have existed.
Beyond this, I don't think it matters whether the current phase of global warming is caused by humans or by cyclical sunspots (or whatever). Rising temperatures have the ability to really throw a wrench into global systems (like economies). If we have the ability to even *try* to mitigate the trend, I think it is worthwhile to do so. Arguing that we have no reason to act because it's not our fault is, in my view, a cowardly way to pass the buck... so that we can continue to live extravagant lifestyles in the short term at the expense of the future.
This has to be one of the *dumbest* arguments I have ever heard.
First off, the medical and aviation industries are doing quite well, thank you. So process-level regulation is not the impending doom you make it out to be. Moreover, the example you give of piston-driven aircraft still using mechanical injection is ridiculous. My bicycle is still pedal powered... surely you don't believe that federal process-regulation of bicycle construction is the cause. Mechanical injection is reliable, cheap to build, and cheap to repair (compared to electrical systems). Just because something isn't cutting edge doesn't mean that it's worthless.
Second, the reason we have process-based regulation for aircraft and medical devices is because the consequences of a failure are *very* high. If the drug is contaminated, it can kill you or leave you with painful, chronic organ failure. If a composite is improperly made, portions of the fuselage could shear off in high-crosswinds (bird-impact rated windshields aren't, etc.), leaving those aboard in bad shape. By regulating the process, we can catch more of these failures *before* people are killed.
Third, to catch the inevitable retort from those who take libertarian precepts a bit too far, the market will not adequately resolve this. Catching these failures afterwards is *not* good enough. As much as the legal system uses tort damages to capture the value of a human life, it still sucks for those who are killed. Take into account statutory caps on legal damages in many states, and the threat of a lawsuit is less likely to present the necessary force. Now, if you go and build yourself a plane with homemade composites, then you're likely the Darwin Award winning exception. If you kill yourself, there's no one to sue. But in most cases, that's not the case.
Value this time in your life kids, because this is the time in your life when you still have your choices, and it goes by so quickly. When you're a teenager you think you can do anything, and you do. Your twenties are a blur. Your thirties, you raise your family, you make a little money and you think to yourself, "What happened to my twenties?" Your forties, you grow a little pot belly you grow another chin. The music starts to get too loud and one of your old girlfriends from high school becomes a grandmother. Your fifties you have a minor surgery. You'll call it a procedure, but it's a surgery. Your sixties you have a major surgery, the music is still loud but it doesn't matter because you can't hear it anyway. Seventies, you and the wife retire to Fort Lauderdale, you start eating dinner at two, lunch around ten, breakfast the night before. And you spend most of your time wandering around malls looking for the ultimate in soft yogurt and muttering "how come the kids don't call?" By your eighties, you've had a major stroke, and you end up babbling to some Jamaican nurse who your wife can't stand but who you call mama.
First, the system we have tends to a two-party system. The problem is that there are more than two issues. So in voting for any candidate, you are forced to prioritize the issues, and vote for the candidate that represents your viewpoint on the issues most important to you. The downside is that smaller issues, which may still be *very* important, will often fall by the wayside. With multi-party systems, there is enough choice and variation in candidates, that you can find someone who matches your views and priorities fairly closely, and that candidate will still have a decent chance of getting elected. In the U.S., we don't have that, and it's unlikely to change anytime soon.
Second, we have the problem of interest groups. Normally, it's not a problem. The idea behind special interests is that you may have a group of people for whom a particular issue is *very* important. Since the group isn't large enough numerically to influence election outcomes (due to problem #1, above), they lobby the elected official to try and persuade that official of the merits of their cause. The problem is that the only people joining special interest groups are the small special interests. The vast majority of the population got left behind in the program. If you're an elected official, the only people talking to you are the special interest groups... so after awhile you begin to believe them; there's no one out there arguing the other side. It's the joy of what's called "the silent majority".
So, what's to be done? Well, for starters, we need to provide an alternate viewpoint in government. The easiest way to do this is to contact your local representative or senator. They *do* respond. Even if it's only a form letter from a staffer. I know, I used to be one. Don't try email campaigns... they don't get any real respect (too easy to automate). Letters and phone calls do work; what's required is volume. If enough people show an interest, your rep's *will* listen.
Second, we could try to start our own lobbying group. Give a concentrated voice to the technically literate population... someone to say "I represent 10^N voters in your state who all feel very strongly about X". Any takers? Let me know.
First, the system we have tends to a two-party system. The problem is that there are more than two issues. So in voting for any candidate, you are forced to prioritize the issues, and vote for the candidate that represents your viewpoint on the issues most important to you. The downside is that smaller issues, which may still be *very* important, will often fall by the wayside. With multi-party systems, there is enough choice and variation in candidates, that you can find someone who matches your views and priorities fairly closely, and that candidate will still have a decent chance of getting elected. In the U.S., we don't have that, and it's unlikely to change anytime soon.
Second, we have the problem of interest groups. Normally, it's not a problem. The idea behind special interests is that you may have a group of people for whom a particular issue is *very* important. Since the group isn't large enough numerically to influence election outcomes (due to problem #1, above), they lobby the elected official to try and persuade that official of the merits of their cause. The problem is that the only people joining special interest groups are the small special interests. The vast majority of the population got left behind in the program. If you're an elected official, the only people talking to you are the special interest groups... so after awhile you begin to believe them; there's no one out there arguing the other side. It's the joy of what's called "the silent majority".
So, what's to be done? Well, for starters, we need to provide an alternate viewpoint in government. The easiest way to do this is to contact your local representative or senator. They *do* respond. Even if it's only a form letter from a staffer. I know, I used to be one. Don't try email campaigns... they don't get any real respect (too easy to automate). Letters and phone calls do work; what's required is volume. If enough people show an interest, your rep's *will* listen.
Second, we could try to start our own lobbying group. Give a concentrated voice to the technically literate population... someone to say "I represent 10^N voters in your state who all feel very strongly about X". Any takers? Let me know at mailto:voice@exapted.com.
Let me summarize: - Watch out for Australian Gestapo.
- That's a bad analogy.
- No, it's a good analogy. - Here's a link to a German film about police powers. - We already have drivers' licenses; how are national ID's any different? - Here's a humorous comment. - It's not compulsory per se; you don't have to get the ID card. You just can't access government benefits without one... putting a *very* big carrot in front of Australians.
Yeah, that would make them parasites... which try to get resources without being noticed.
Interesting ideas, but I don't know how well the biological maps to the commercial. After all, in biology, you have a population of genetically different individuals. The idea being that, among this population, some will have the functional capacity to avoid/survive whatever impending disaster/predation/disease/parasitism comes up. That's all well and good. What doesn't work so well for commerce is the corrolary that the population *will* suffer death/disease/etc in large quantities over time. In biology, so long as some survive, the population continues. In commerce we're not looking for the overall survival of servers as a population. Each company is looking to protect all of its servers. Each company, therefore, would need a diverse population... but diversity between companies would be less important. Still, I don't think that a corp would be willing to sustain the kind of losses that biological systems do.
I suppose that the concept could be abstracted somewhat: you'd have to have a top-level population of anti-virus/spyware/whatever that contains your genetic diversity. In an attack, one of the defenses would hold. But isn't that what good SA's do already?
If you were to make it hardware based... well, then in addition to the costs others have pointed out, you're basically just fragmenting the population so that an attack would only work against a small segment of machines. So long as you were not the odd one out holding the dead machine, you're fine. But like I said, I don't know that commerce is willing to take that on.
In the end, it's all a matter of the Red Queen. Whatever anti-virus system we come up with, virus writers will find a way around it. There's no way to find a "winning" solution; all you can do is try to keep up.
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The question isn't whether we want a society of perfect equality. As you mention, inequality can promote competition, incentives, and other 'good' things.
(And on a nit-picky note, those four points are less 'fundamental flaws' than basic assumptions of generalization. More importantly, the phrasing of those points draw false dichotomies and straw-men; i.e. the argument isn't that obscene CEO bonuses 'lower' employee salary, only that they're excessive, obscene, unearned, and could be better spent elsewhere. Characterizing the argument against such bonuses as 'they lower employee salary' is false and logically flawed, though rhetorically successful on quick reading.)
However, that's not the question.
The question is the degree of inequality. Given that some inequality is a good thing, the argument here is that too much inequality is a bad thing. A little bit gives incentives to work hard and be creative and develop new things. Too much inequality gives absurd rewards for small gains, while others who work hard may get very little. The dividing line seems to become somewhat arbitrary (why is the work this CEO does *so* much more valuable than the work done by one of his employees?). And this arbitrariness, combined with extreme poverty and extreme wealth, can lead to frustration, violence, and various other *really* bad things.
While all of the points you summarized may be true in abstract, I've yet to see that argument made with the realities currently faced.
Did you really just compare 66sqkm in a singular event with 48sqkm over a period of 15 years and suggest that the two are close to equivalent? The article notes that, one, this was discovered by comparing recent satellite images (which suggests a sudden event), and two, that the calving created shockwaves recorded at very distant locations (again, suggesting a single event). Thus, it's 66sqkm in an instant, compared with a little over 3sqkm per year. Doesn't seem equal to me.
The problem with direct democracy is one of time. The more detailed and complicated the world becomes, the more complex the problems and the solutions. It's why people specialize in tiny little areas of knowledge instead of knowing everything about everything... there's simply too much to know.
Politics and governance is no different. Specializing is a good thing, and representative democracy allows people to specialize in governance. We don't even let generalist physicians do surgery, let alone the average layperson. It's too complicated, and too important... so we give the job to a specialist. Same with government. We could let the average person make decisions about long term taxes, economic growth, foreign policy, and the like, but I think it's too complicated.
I'm in California, and we've got more direct democracy than pretty much any other state in the union. And every election we're bombarded with propositions. No one really bothers to read the text of the summaries, let alone the actual text of the proposed legislation. So people vote based on their instincts, the television ads, and what their friends tell them. These aren't well-considered or thought out reasons... just the reasons that people have time for. I try my best to wade through them, but I've got a job and a family, and there often just isn't the time.
If you've got the time to keep up with all the information that *should* go into making these decisions, more power to you. But I think that the vast majority of the population doesn't have the time, interest, or education to do the same.
Huh???... Yes they could, and no they wouldn't. Millions of Americans already consider themselves not to be represented by the current Congress or Presidency.
If 10% of a district voted for a 3rd party candidate, then, in most states, the candidate with a majority would win (i.e., even if it was less than a majority of the population... 40-35-25... candidate with 45% wins) Once elected, why would that politician have *any* incentive to change the system? He might be willing to co-opt some of the 3rd party candidate's policies, if he thought he could capture some of that 10%, but there'd be absolutely no reason to change the system.
If you want to change the system, you'll have to find another way... even electing a 3rd party candidate wouldn't change the system. It's happened before in the U.S. The result is that the 3rd party either dies off eventually, or kills off another party. Multiple parties aren't stable with the election methods in place in the U.S.
This is, quite possibly, the *funniest* thing I have seen in a long, long time.
Erm? Pot... meet kettle.
There is no simple solution to voter fraud. There always has been fraud, and there always will be. It's the nature of ingenuity. Hence the "build an idiot-proof machine, and the universe will build a better idiot". If someone wants to hack an electronic voting system, they will, open-sourced and peer-reviewed or not.
In my view, the goal is simply to minimize the impact of such efforts, and to make it as difficult as possible to do so, as cheaply as possible. Open source *might* be a good way to go... certainly better than the closed electronic systems Diebold and their ilk are currently pushing. However, it's still an electronic system, and electronic systems are prone to making small errors very quickly (or being hacked to introduce small biases, very quickly). I'd personally prefer to return to a simple paper and pen ballot... simply check the box of the person/proposition you're voting for. Put paper in box. Let people count ballots (with observers, if desired). It scales fairly well, is difficult to introduce large errors into, and can't be hacked remotely. If it takes a little longer to get election results, so be it... there's almost two months between election day and inauguration day.
While it's true that slander/libel are not protected by the 1st Amendment, that's pretty irrelevant to what happened here. According to TFA, the defendant never showed up to offer a defense. The judge, without any other way to go, found a default judgment for the plaintiff. Only at this point was a jury called, and then only to determine damages. If you're a juror, and one attorney tells you, "In my long experience, this sort of pain and suffering (or whatever) is worth $11 million", and no one is there to tell you otherwise, there's a good chance you'll find $11 million in damages. Whether it actually was slander or libel doesn't matter. If there's no defense, the defense loses, regardless of the actual facts. Damned inactivist judges...
It turns out the defendant had her house flooded by Hurricane Katrina and had to leave... the legal notices that the plaintiff was required to send bounced back to the plaintiff and were never received. The defendant didn't show because she wasn't aware of when the trial was. Nor did she have enough money to hire a lawyer. So, odds are, had the case actually been defended, this thing would've either been thrown out or reached a defense verdict.
I'm just suprised that the judge didn't reduce the jury's damages... that said, because the defendant had no money for an attorney, it seems unlikely that this will be appealed (which it should be).
Note that, in addition to having a relatively free supply of water, spontaneously generating several thousand gallons of water several hundred feet up in the air creates some additional issues/benefits. First, the weight of that much water at the top of the building might be sufficient to throw off the center of gravity for the building, and cause some rather unexpected problems. However, consider the amount of potential energy to be captured by generating that much water and letting it run downhill for usage.
I thought Vaporware was the desired result here, no?
When the issue is a California proposition, the best article we could find to link to was from the "Northwest Florida Daily News"??? Huh?
Here are some more local sources that might be useful in the debate... and yes, the critical sites do raise the same point... from within California.
(Neutral)
Secretary of State's Analysis
(Critical)
Local Blogger
Official "No" Site
(Favorable)
Official "Yes" Site
This is true... there have been hot periods and cold periods in Earth's past. However, what many of these new findings are suggesting is that the current rate of change exceeds what happened previously. It's that things are heating up *really fast* that is being blamed on human intervention. Further, TFA notes that we are reaching the warmest Holocene temperatures... and we're *not slowing down* yet. That's a bit frightening.
And whether any of this is due to human action or not is, to a large extent, irrelevant. If you're sitting around the house with some friends and one of them points out that the drapes in the living room just caught fire, you don't sit there and argue over whether they caught fire because of faulty electrical, errant ashes from the fireplace, or the cat knocking over a candle. You do what you can to put out the #$(*#& fire! If valid science is suggesting serious problems ahead because of global warming, let's stop arguing and do something, anything, to try and stop it.
First of all, if you're going to attack Lockyer, do it right, okay? He's the attorney general for the State of California, which means he's not working on commission. He's effectively the attorney for all Californians, and he gets paid a salary. If he wins, he gets nothing extra. Moreover, suggesting that he sue all the drivers in California is retarded, as he'd be suing his clients. So, if you're going to attack him, attack him for trying to make political hay out of the environment in an election year by filing an unlikely-to-succeed lawsuit and thereby wasting taxpayer money.
That said, while federally mandated gas mileage standards are the obvious best answer, it is rather apparent that the current administration has no intent of raising those standards to a level that will do anything. That being the case, the next best solution might be to sue the manufacturers. The end goal of any economic externality that the commons ends up paying for (like pollution caused by manufactured vehicles from companies focused more on churning out big SUV's than improving fuel-efficiency), is to force the companies to internalize those costs. When legislation won't do it, lawsuits are really the only other alternative. As Lockyer is the attorney general, all he can do is file lawsuits... and as California is the most populous state (with the most drivers and automobiles) in the union, if he manages to be successful, the rest of the country benefits.
So yes, this suit is unlikely to succeed... and yes, Lockyer's main motivation is probably political... but hey, I'm rooting for him in this anyway.
You're absolutely right... anti-intellectualism is rampant in this country. Like most other bigotries, it is learned at home. However, while it would be nice for parents 'round the country to spontaneously start supporting education of the type we're talking about, I don't see that happening. If you have an idea on how to implant a love for learning into anti-intellectuals, then get off the damn computer and make it happen! (and then get to work on world peace, renewable energy, etc.)
That said, it's up to the schools to correct this. They're the only opportunity we have to get kids away from their parents and introduce them to new ideas and new ways of thinking. When schools take that opportunity and instead reinforce anti-intellectualism by punishing those who think creatively, rewarding those that simply regurgitate information, and glorify people for athletic acheivements more than intellectual ones, I feel that it's fair to blame them for what results.
The problem lies not with the people, as Americans are as smart as anyone else, but with the educational system. In the US, only those that get to college are taught to ask questions and challenge any preconceived notions that they have. Even then, not all colleges to an adequate job of it.
Thus, the majority of the population that has a high school education at best has never been taught to change their minds. Instead, they are taught to learn material and repeat it. When what they are taught (at church, or on the TV/radio) that the world is 6000 years old, that global warming is a liberal hoax, or that we were divine creations dropped into the Garden of Eden, that's what they repeat. They were never told that they could question what they hear, nor that they should.
You want to fix this problem? Be willing to pay higher property taxes, attend school board meetings, and push for changes to the curriculum that encourage curiosity and questioning... Then maintain the effort for a generation so that the kids who start with the program in kindergarden can progress through the system and go into politics.
And you can blame it on modern schools... the problem is the definition of "modern". Schools have been focused on churning out industrial workers (factory-workers, etc.) for the last century. That's the "modern" model. Now that we're largely post-industrial, we notice the need for people who can reason and think, as opposed to people who only had to read, write, and do basic arithmetic. We need to take a long, hard look at what the current school curricula are designed to teach, and work from the ground up. Moreover, the more recent fixation on testing to academic standards only exacerbates the problem; we're telling schools that so long as kids can regurgitate information, they're okay.
Google's out to hijack my machine! ; )
Cue the anecdotes!
I have no idea if good chairs help generate good posture (I've never gotten an employer to buy me one)... but I do know that a bad chair certainly aids poor posture.
If you can get someone to buy one for you, do it and let us know how it goes. If nothing else, you'll have lots of levers and knobs to adjust on the chair.
The parent wrote:
Although they do acknowledge the existence of a "mini-ice age", the press release put out by the NAS (National Academy of Sciences) specifically rejects the argument that it was warmer in the middle ages then now:
While it's true that "Cyclical Global warming != greenhouse effect", this does not mean that humanity is in the clear as far as global warming goes. I believe the concern is that there is no sign that the current heating trend is slowing down. The trending in the NAS report abstract is pretty disturbing. When this is compounded by the above argument that it's warmer now than it has been in the past, there is sufficient ground to worry that we have broken out of whatever cyclical pattern may have existed.
Beyond this, I don't think it matters whether the current phase of global warming is caused by humans or by cyclical sunspots (or whatever). Rising temperatures have the ability to really throw a wrench into global systems (like economies). If we have the ability to even *try* to mitigate the trend, I think it is worthwhile to do so. Arguing that we have no reason to act because it's not our fault is, in my view, a cowardly way to pass the buck... so that we can continue to live extravagant lifestyles in the short term at the expense of the future.
This has to be one of the *dumbest* arguments I have ever heard.
First off, the medical and aviation industries are doing quite well, thank you. So process-level regulation is not the impending doom you make it out to be. Moreover, the example you give of piston-driven aircraft still using mechanical injection is ridiculous. My bicycle is still pedal powered... surely you don't believe that federal process-regulation of bicycle construction is the cause. Mechanical injection is reliable, cheap to build, and cheap to repair (compared to electrical systems). Just because something isn't cutting edge doesn't mean that it's worthless.
Second, the reason we have process-based regulation for aircraft and medical devices is because the consequences of a failure are *very* high. If the drug is contaminated, it can kill you or leave you with painful, chronic organ failure. If a composite is improperly made, portions of the fuselage could shear off in high-crosswinds (bird-impact rated windshields aren't, etc.), leaving those aboard in bad shape. By regulating the process, we can catch more of these failures *before* people are killed.
Third, to catch the inevitable retort from those who take libertarian precepts a bit too far, the market will not adequately resolve this. Catching these failures afterwards is *not* good enough. As much as the legal system uses tort damages to capture the value of a human life, it still sucks for those who are killed. Take into account statutory caps on legal damages in many states, and the threat of a lawsuit is less likely to present the necessary force. Now, if you go and build yourself a plane with homemade composites, then you're likely the Darwin Award winning exception. If you kill yourself, there's no one to sue. But in most cases, that's not the case.
Value this time in your life kids, because this is the time in your life when you still have your choices, and it goes by so quickly.
When you're a teenager you think you can do anything, and you do.
Your twenties are a blur.
Your thirties, you raise your family, you make a little money and you think to yourself, "What happened to my twenties?"
Your forties, you grow a little pot belly you grow another chin. The music starts to get too loud and one of your old girlfriends from high school becomes a grandmother.
Your fifties you have a minor surgery. You'll call it a procedure, but it's a surgery.
Your sixties you have a major surgery, the music is still loud but it doesn't matter because you can't hear it anyway.
Seventies, you and the wife retire to Fort Lauderdale, you start eating dinner at two, lunch around ten, breakfast the night before. And you spend most of your time wandering around malls looking for the ultimate in soft yogurt and muttering "how come the kids don't call?"
By your eighties, you've had a major stroke, and you end up babbling to some Jamaican nurse who your wife can't stand but who you call mama.
Any questions?
Maybe some intelligence would be a good start?
The problem as I see it is twofold:
First, the system we have tends to a two-party system. The problem is that there are more than two issues. So in voting for any candidate, you are forced to prioritize the issues, and vote for the candidate that represents your viewpoint on the issues most important to you. The downside is that smaller issues, which may still be *very* important, will often fall by the wayside. With multi-party systems, there is enough choice and variation in candidates, that you can find someone who matches your views and priorities fairly closely, and that candidate will still have a decent chance of getting elected. In the U.S., we don't have that, and it's unlikely to change anytime soon.
Second, we have the problem of interest groups. Normally, it's not a problem. The idea behind special interests is that you may have a group of people for whom a particular issue is *very* important. Since the group isn't large enough numerically to influence election outcomes (due to problem #1, above), they lobby the elected official to try and persuade that official of the merits of their cause. The problem is that the only people joining special interest groups are the small special interests. The vast majority of the population got left behind in the program. If you're an elected official, the only people talking to you are the special interest groups... so after awhile you begin to believe them; there's no one out there arguing the other side. It's the joy of what's called "the silent majority".
So, what's to be done? Well, for starters, we need to provide an alternate viewpoint in government. The easiest way to do this is to contact your local representative or senator. They *do* respond. Even if it's only a form letter from a staffer. I know, I used to be one. Don't try email campaigns... they don't get any real respect (too easy to automate). Letters and phone calls do work; what's required is volume. If enough people show an interest, your rep's *will* listen.
Second, we could try to start our own lobbying group. Give a concentrated voice to the technically literate population... someone to say "I represent 10^N voters in your state who all feel very strongly about X". Any takers? Let me know.
Methinks those that aren't taking the story seriously took the story a bit too seriously, no?
The problem as I see it is twofold:
First, the system we have tends to a two-party system. The problem is that there are more than two issues. So in voting for any candidate, you are forced to prioritize the issues, and vote for the candidate that represents your viewpoint on the issues most important to you. The downside is that smaller issues, which may still be *very* important, will often fall by the wayside. With multi-party systems, there is enough choice and variation in candidates, that you can find someone who matches your views and priorities fairly closely, and that candidate will still have a decent chance of getting elected. In the U.S., we don't have that, and it's unlikely to change anytime soon.
Second, we have the problem of interest groups. Normally, it's not a problem. The idea behind special interests is that you may have a group of people for whom a particular issue is *very* important. Since the group isn't large enough numerically to influence election outcomes (due to problem #1, above), they lobby the elected official to try and persuade that official of the merits of their cause. The problem is that the only people joining special interest groups are the small special interests. The vast majority of the population got left behind in the program. If you're an elected official, the only people talking to you are the special interest groups... so after awhile you begin to believe them; there's no one out there arguing the other side. It's the joy of what's called "the silent majority".
So, what's to be done? Well, for starters, we need to provide an alternate viewpoint in government. The easiest way to do this is to contact your local representative or senator. They *do* respond. Even if it's only a form letter from a staffer. I know, I used to be one. Don't try email campaigns... they don't get any real respect (too easy to automate). Letters and phone calls do work; what's required is volume. If enough people show an interest, your rep's *will* listen.
Second, we could try to start our own lobbying group. Give a concentrated voice to the technically literate population... someone to say "I represent 10^N voters in your state who all feel very strongly about X". Any takers? Let me know at mailto:voice@exapted.com.
Let me summarize:
- Watch out for Australian Gestapo.
- That's a bad analogy.
- No, it's a good analogy.
- Here's a link to a German film about police powers.
- We already have drivers' licenses; how are national ID's any different?
- Here's a humorous comment.
- It's not compulsory per se; you don't have to get the ID card. You just can't access government benefits without one... putting a *very* big carrot in front of Australians.
Yeah, that would make them parasites... which try to get resources without being noticed.
Interesting ideas, but I don't know how well the biological maps to the commercial. After all, in biology, you have a population of genetically different individuals. The idea being that, among this population, some will have the functional capacity to avoid/survive whatever impending disaster/predation/disease/parasitism comes up. That's all well and good. What doesn't work so well for commerce is the corrolary that the population *will* suffer death/disease/etc in large quantities over time. In biology, so long as some survive, the population continues. In commerce we're not looking for the overall survival of servers as a population. Each company is looking to protect all of its servers. Each company, therefore, would need a diverse population... but diversity between companies would be less important. Still, I don't think that a corp would be willing to sustain the kind of losses that biological systems do.
I suppose that the concept could be abstracted somewhat: you'd have to have a top-level population of anti-virus/spyware/whatever that contains your genetic diversity. In an attack, one of the defenses would hold. But isn't that what good SA's do already?
If you were to make it hardware based... well, then in addition to the costs others have pointed out, you're basically just fragmenting the population so that an attack would only work against a small segment of machines. So long as you were not the odd one out holding the dead machine, you're fine. But like I said, I don't know that commerce is willing to take that on.
In the end, it's all a matter of the Red Queen. Whatever anti-virus system we come up with, virus writers will find a way around it. There's no way to find a "winning" solution; all you can do is try to keep up.