So it's standard. Windows is too. That don't mean it's the best tool for the job.
This ain't the best picture for the job (it was picked because it was handy, not because it's objectively superior to any of dozens of other pics), and it definitely doesn't mean that you should be explaining to your 11th grade Computer Programmers that this particular image isn't really porn because it's only a headshot and all good computer programmers use it because they've always used it.
Somebody will freak out, and instead of spending an hour or three devoted to learning image processing you'll spend a week or month explaining that, no this is not Porn because it was shot in Playboy, this is not evidence that the Liberals have stormed the Academy and are corrupting our daughters, and really Rev. Patterson I have no fucking clue why you're talking with me about evolution when I teach CompSci...
Oh you thought feminists would be the problem? That's in College. In High School the problem demographic is typically evangelical Christians with either a) no college education, or b) an education from a conservative institution that simply refuses to believe that intellectually honest and intelligent people exist outside the confines of the Evangelical Community; and since they always fucking show up for School Board elections they can get your dumb ass fired quite easily. As a High School teacher you'd expect some push-back from feminist students (or at least some dirty looks, combined with decisions not to take the second half of the course), but it's much more common for a School Board to screw over a teacher whose offended the local Baptist Pastors then the National Organization for Women.
So if you're a High School teacher you'll recommend a bunch of pictures that have nothing to do with porn, and then when some kid shows up with a project based on Lena you deal with it then.
Now you're making shit up. For a visual algorithm test nobody would complain that the person on the image wasn't diverse enough. It's a test of an image, not a representation of the student body.
Hell, your entire basis for argument is a contradiction: if the picture is such a small issue that anyone who claims it offends them should shut the fuck up, then the logical conclusion isn't that the picture should be defended to the death by all right-thinking people, the logical conclusion is that the picture is such a small issue that all right-thinking adults should not care one way or the other about said picture. In order to live with the other people who make up most of the world the picture should be sidelined.
You're probably going to assume I'm implying you're racist, or sexist, or evil -ist. I'm not. I'm calling you immature and childish. As an adult human being you have to deal with everyone, including people whom you think are oversensitive. If you choose to fight them on every issue you will spend all your time fighting. And you'll be fighting people who make perfectly good friends and allies. You are wasting your time, and you are wasting your life; to defend a contradiction. Grow up.
Pilots lose control of planes all the time, just as drivers do. The question is a) how long are you out of control and how hard is it to get control back, and b) how likely is the scenario in the first place?
In this case the answer seems to be a) not very long and not very hard as there are backup generators allowing you to reset the computers, and b) not bloody likely because you have to skip quite a few (as in dozens) routine maintenance cycles on these generators to get to 248 days without a restart.
There's a reason the damn things have been flying for 3.5 years and nobody noticed the problem.
Dude, this is a for-profit company, not a research university. It's not written by people whose entire job is to prove to the world they write the most robustest code ever designed with zero bugs. If it doesn't kill people or delay flights it doesn't cost them money and nobody, except computer geeks, gives a shit.
In this case the Dreamliner's designed to have all the relevant systems turned off for routine maintenance once every two weeks. Which means if they go more then 248 days without being restarted the airline has skipped several dozen (25 or 26 according to another slashdotter) routine maintenance cycles, which is likely a much bigger problem then the pilot needing to a) restart the computers mid-flight, or b) needing to glide to an emergency landing.
Given that there've been something on the order of 400 plane-years of actual flight performance, and nobody noticed this bug until now, the software design seems to be about right. Not perfect, but if the planes are even being given 10% of the maintenance the specs call for this bug is a non-iissue.
OTOH, the problems with various batteries were dumb engineering. Altho those also seem to be solved.
Remember that time back in the 90s when a Marine Corps plane on maneuvers knocked down a Cable Car in the Italian Alps, killing 20 people? That was partly because when they planned the maneuver they used charts that were 6 months old, and the cable car line was less then 6 months old. If they'd had iPads, or any other electronic chart equipment that automatically updated itself, it wouldn't have happened.
Civil aviation changes just as frequently. Which approach each airport wants you to use (to avoid colliding with the rest of the aircraft), which airspace you should fly in only in extreme circumstances (perhaps due to Russian-allied rebels indiscriminate use of BUK missile launchers), etc. all changes quite frequently, and you need the data for every airport the plane could possibly be sent to because there's no way in hell the airlines gonna buy a nine-figure aircraft and only use it at three airports.
Thus the electronic equipment, which may not work due to computer issues some small percent of the time, but when it does work will always be updated properly. Whereas with paper you get 100% uptime, but are guaranteed less then 100% accuracy. After pilots get used to the equipment it also has fewer user-fuck-up issues. The Marines I mentioned, for example, actually had the right charts, in a sealed envelope, in the fucking cockpit, but they hadn't opened the damn thing because they figured it was a waste of time having nothing to do with them.
So I know 7/52 of the cards, two of which are secret to the other player, and I use that info to predict the cards the other player is statistically likely to have, thus informing my strategy on raises/calls/etc., but that's not card counting?
The computer has tells. If you figure out the algorithm you can figure out by it's pattern of calls/raises what it's hand is. In theory if you knew the code well wnough you could reverse engineer the computer's hand, and figure out it's strategy, based entirely on the cards showing and it's behavior; altho in practice virtually nobody could pull that off.
The problem seems to be it has no way to read human tells, and it's designed to pursue a bad strategy (calling) most of the time.
I don't know. Me, a girl who'd like to see me with fewer clothes (and I'd like to see in fewer clothes), and a computer that's kicking both of our asses? Sounds like an ideal strip poker opponent.
You can even throw in a couple of people I don't want to see naked (and/or do not want to see me naked) and it's still a good time.
Ever heard of card counting? Computers are impossible to beat at card counting.
So any game where card counting is part of a useful strategy the computer has a huge advantage. That's why they were able to solve two-player limited Texas Hold 'em, card counting well gives you a slight advantage so the computer can win 52-53% of the time even tho it can't read it's human opponent very well.
The version they're playing now has some problems, but apparently the problems are caused as much by the programmer's poor choices (ie: call on every bet seems to be the definition of suboptimal strategy) as the use of a computer. Presumably future versions will have better strategies, and will be able to adapt their play-style to suit their opponents.
Note that even if the optimizing play-styles to suit the opponent thing turns out to be a total bust, it should increase the winning percentage because the humans will have to spend some time figuring out what the optimizations for this particular tournament actually were, whereas these guys are winning partly because they can figure out the algorithm.
Obfuscant is truly an apt name. You just said the law "requires data to be available online in a form that anyone who wishes to verify or reproduce it can," but it "It makes no requirement of reproducibility."
Section 1 requires all 'scientific and technical information' to be public. Section 2, Subsection 3, B defines the term to include (among other things): "materials, data, and associated protocols necessary to understand, assess, and extend conclusions" You can't assess the conclusion without the raw data.
To be exaggerating to emphasize one's point it is necessary that one have a point. My argument is that you do not have a point in the first place.
You have standard-issue-Amserican-paranoia about both governmental power and corporate power, informed by frequent reading of British SciFi emphasizing the danger of the bureaucratic state. It is totally uninformed by the reality of said state, or the difficulties a corporation would have in getting a competitor's product banned in the US, etc.
If there is ever a time when a scenario anywhere close to what you mention actually happens, the scenario you mention will be the least of our worries. By far. Because for that to happen a) the Judicial branch will have to be totally subject to the Executive, b) that Executive will be totally subject to corporate control, and c) those corporations doing the control will have to be so small-c-conservative that they'd prefer making a small profit on coal to dominating the Solar Market.
You do realize that all the company will tell investors is how much the copper earned on the market, and since futures contracts were invented it's actually possible to sell copper BEFORE you mine it?
Many, many studies are done using data sets the public doesn't have access to. Frequently these studies are much more interesting then the ones based on public data (like Census data) because everybody already has access to the Census.
You're either being intentionally confusing, or you're making your argument up out of whole cloth. With a name like "Obfuscant" I'd lean towards the former.
As far as I can tell, the actual bill requires all data to be reproducible. That means the raw data used by a study has to be available publicly (and probably on the internet) or it's "secret science" and can't be used by the EPA. In fact most sources I've seen actually say that even including difficult to reproduce data bans the EPA from using the study. Several say flat-out that private data of all types is banned. The Amendment that would have fixed this would have given peer-reviewed articles a free pass on the point, and it was voted down by the committee.
So please, tell me how you could use a private database in your study and still get it used by the EPA.
Your reading implies that Congress can do pretty much whatever the fuck it wants if it deems it to be for the General Welfare. That pretty much flied in the face of the idea of limited government, which is the central pillar of our Constitution.
Depends on how limited you want the limits to be. If you want the government to be small enough to drown in a bathtub, then yes, it flies in your personal idea of a limited government.
OTOH, the Founders were explicitly creating a less limited government. They said flat-out it needed to be more powerful the the Articles of Confederation government because it had to be strong enough to keep the Brits out.
If there'd been pollution in their day they almost certainly would have added inter-state pollution to the list of things the Feds had the right to regulate, because part of the point of their Constitution was keeping the states from fighting each-other over trivial shit. And you can bet your ass that if Pennsylvania had been able to have all the benefits of coal power, with none of the pollution, simply by siting the plants upwind from the rest of the state they'd have done that shit; New York would have responded by calling out the militia...
The Judgement against OJ for beating those memorabilia collectors up was conditional on there not being new evidence that Prosecutors made the whole thing up.
Given the evidence available in 2007, the Courts ruled global warming was real and CO32 was a pollutant. Since then the evidence has just grown. Temperature's spiking (9 of the hottest 10 years are within the past decade), the ice caps are melting, and the counter-points you're talking about are all fantasy from a Think Tank of wannabe social scientists. From their website, they seem to have a couple actual Education experts, a couple guys with bachelors degrees, and a Philosopher.
And if this was not the case, don't you think every coal plant in the country would be appealing Massachusetts vs. EPA for all they're worth?
As to your ironic statement that I am not contradicting you at any point and this is all due to misreading... actually I have on many points and you could only have missed that due to your own misreading.
As to the parliamentary system reducing the power of the wealthy, that is asinine since the system was literally designed to protect the interests of English Lords. The system concentrates power in fewer hands than what you see in the American system which you assume means the system is less corruptible. Contrary to that point, the more hands the power is distributed amongst the less susceptible to corruption the system becomes.
You do realize that the British system has changed in the past 250 years? Like a lot? The Canadian system, never had Rotten Burroughs, wealth-based voting requirements, or a hereditary upper house; which were the features that allowed the Gentry to dominate English politics prior to the reforms of the 1830s and 1910s. Moreover you're bringing up that straw-man "corruption" again. If it's not illegal it is (by definition) not corruption, and I;m arguing that in the US it is simply not illegal for the wealthy to buy influence with support/ contributions/knowledge of how the system works/etc.
As to your belief that the Congress has no role in the ratification of treaties... do a fucking google search before you dare contradict me on something like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... ""Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution, includes the Treaty Clause, which empowers the President of the United States to propose and chiefly negotiate agreements, which must be confirmed by the Senate, between the United States and other countries, which become treaties between the United States and other countries after the advice and consent of a supermajority of the United States Senate.""
The senate must ratify the treaty. If you bring this issue up one more time, I'm going to call you a fucktard and just skip over any further references to your fucking delusion.
As to morality, YOU were the one that used the term "hellscape", all I did was give it back to you. Complain and you're a hypocrite.
Your reading comprehension skill suck. I specifically said that ratifying treaties was one of several powers Congress had that is no longer particularly relevant, and I'll quote the paragraph here:
Ratification of Treaties is, like Declaring War, one of those powers we gave Congress in 1789 that has become less useful every damn year.
The reason I refuse to believe you aren't arguing morality is you're treating this as a question of theology. You don't present evidence that the system actually works, you present evidence that your logic says the system should work.
As to your Canadian references, it isn't making any sense. We've not outlawed the voting of anyone since black slavery and we reversed that.
I wasn't referring to slavery. I was referring to the period right after, particularly 1877-1965, where much of the South had legal bans on black voting. At the start of the period the South as a whole was 40% black, and several states (South Carolina and Mississippi) were majority black. That could not happen in Canada, and while it's unlikely to happen here the simple fact is it did actually happen. In two states.
As to your continued slander that I am aruging on a moral basis, I am not. This is also a contradictory point you're making because you accused me of being an engineer at one point and now you're saying I'm being some wishywashy moralist.
Which is it? For the record, my positions are not based on morality but on what is optimal.
You're making up the engineer quote. That word was not mentioned on this thread until I described myself as taking an engineer's perspective.
Us Americans are really great at promoting logical theories of how government policy works, but not very good at integrating real world data into that.
Researcher B would have to provide his data to the EPA for that to work, and then when the EPA gets sued by researcher A's company the EPA would be required to show his study to the Court and the plaintiff on strict condition that they reveal no confidential data. If the EPA's BS argument based on a aBS study stands up in Court then all structural protections for the protection of this guy's right to bring his solar panel to market were doomed anyway, because the opponents of said panel had successfully rigged the Courts.
OTOH, let's say somebody does a study that involves a private company's data. Perhaps they're correlating output of a copper mine to negative effects in the neighboring stream. Well the output of a copper mine is a closely guarded trade secret, so half the data either has to be bought from the company or recreated by the EPA and released to the public. Otherwise it's a banned "secret study."
I'm sure they're trying to pull a fast one of some kind but I admit to not seeing the problem with this idea in general. Shouldn't we want them to be basing policy on publicly available data?
Which would work great in a Communist Country.
In the Capitalist US of A it's not unusual for the best source of data to be somebody's trade secrets. Maybe they're in the business of collecting (and selling) data and they offer scientists a peek for a price, or perhaps they're doing something (say burning different grades of coal in a power plant depending on business needs), and the EPA wants to use a study about it (perhaps the study correlates local air quality to the grade of coal burned). Unless the power-plant company is willing to release reams and reams of data on precisely which load of coal it burned which day into the public domain, that study is based on non-public data.
The scientific case for regulating CO2 as a pollutant is completely, utterly, and totally irrelevant.
The Supreme Court ruled that the agency is legally required to regulate CO2 back in 2007, and the Supreme Court is by definition right on all points of law. Buch was able to put off actually regulating the dang things, so the Obama administration didn't have draft regs ready until '10, but legal case for regulating CO2 is decided.
Considering you have yet to present a single argument that a) actually disagrees with my thesis, b) isn't based on a misreading of what I've posted I'm quite skeptical of that.
As to hyper intelligent ants, I've seen no compelling argument for why the parliamentary system is superior. You've also contradicted yourself in a few places saying it is both good and bad that something is run by more people.
Dude, I'm playing the engineer here. This whole "good" "bad" thing you're doing is partly an artifact of your own sick obsession with proving that our system is great,l and partly due to the fact that when an engineer sees a system is better at thing A then thing B, and people say "I want to maximize A" he will say that system is better.
Our system sucks at reducing the influence of the wealthy to something like their proportion of the system. It is specifically designed to suck at that. The Canadian system isn't actually good at keeping the to X% to only X% of the power, but when the competition is us, and the goal is to give some single mother making $20k as much influence as Mitt fucking Romney; pretty much all you have to do is show up.
As to the binding nature of treaties... without ratification you really don't have much. Lets look at Kyoto again and how could that treaty work without congressional ratification? How are you going to limit emissions for example without passing a law internally within the US? And no such law will be binding unless the US congress passes it. So no.
Please try to actually read my posts. I answered this. In detail.
Under US Law the President has certain powers. When he signs a treaty he binds himself to use those powers to enforce the Treaty. Which means that new regulations he can promulgate using his Presidential powers are supposed to happen the second the Treaty is signed, and actual ratification is irrelevant as to whether it is binding in this sense until another President comes along and says "fuck that." Which is why Dubya actually had to say "fuck that" and formally withdraw.
Congress has other powers, which are related to and intertwined with Presidential powers, but are nonetheless irrelevant to treaties. If Congress ratifies the Treaty then the regulations promulgated by the President can't easily be undone by the next guy, but other that that it's totally irrelevant.
What's relevant is the statute Congress passes to comply. In extreme cases (like ACTA), since US statutes already complied, and the treaty was mostly about making Poland as horrible as us, Obama didn't even bother with ratification.
Ratification of Treaties is, like Declaring War, one of those powers we gave Congress in 1789 that has become less useful every damn year.
As to Iran, no there are sanctions etc which prohibit US businesses from engaging in business with the Iranians. You can't lift that without the cooperation of congress.
Why?
Seriously. Every bill on sanctions I've ever read includes a clause allowing the President to lift them if he rules certain things are true.
Even if they insisted on "this penalty is forever" clause, there's this little thing called "Prosecutorial Discretion." When an officer of the Executive Branch, sees someone breaking the law he is allowed to ignore it as long as he can provide some compelling state reason to do so. That's why traffic cops aren't legally required to nail you for going 66 in a 65.And it means that if Obama decided to not arrest people for violating Iran sanctions it would be very difficult for Congress to convince the Courts to force him to do so.
As to dystopian hellscapes, the president is largely in the same position, he just has additional checks on his power. And the US is hardly a distopian hellscape either... so you can jam that bit of hyperbole right back into your shithole.
And if you show up, and you actually know how to make shit with your hands, they don't say "great, does your experience with real world physics give you any insights into how we can make building stuff with our computers easier?" they say "what could somebody who bends metal know about the latest 3d printers that are designed to bend metal?"
Because if you call it workshop upper middle class guys will think it's a place where dirty. low-class, lowlifes work with old techniques like welders and stay away. As a makerspace they know none of that riff-raff will be around to question their choice of Sci-Fi/pop culture toys reproduced in plastic; so they will come. And since it's at a Liberal Arts college, most of the potential market are those annoying upper-middle-class white guys.
If you're arguing that it was only as crappy as it's American competitors, and not significantly crappier (as it's reputation implies) I'll agree with you.
But objectively speaking it was by definition crappy. It was an American car in the 70s. They were all complete crap between the arrival of VW in '69 and the introduction of the Taurus in '86.
Slashdot Mirror
So it's standard. Windows is too. That don't mean it's the best tool for the job.
This ain't the best picture for the job (it was picked because it was handy, not because it's objectively superior to any of dozens of other pics), and it definitely doesn't mean that you should be explaining to your 11th grade Computer Programmers that this particular image isn't really porn because it's only a headshot and all good computer programmers use it because they've always used it.
Somebody will freak out, and instead of spending an hour or three devoted to learning image processing you'll spend a week or month explaining that, no this is not Porn because it was shot in Playboy, this is not evidence that the Liberals have stormed the Academy and are corrupting our daughters, and really Rev. Patterson I have no fucking clue why you're talking with me about evolution when I teach CompSci...
Oh you thought feminists would be the problem? That's in College. In High School the problem demographic is typically evangelical Christians with either a) no college education, or b) an education from a conservative institution that simply refuses to believe that intellectually honest and intelligent people exist outside the confines of the Evangelical Community; and since they always fucking show up for School Board elections they can get your dumb ass fired quite easily. As a High School teacher you'd expect some push-back from feminist students (or at least some dirty looks, combined with decisions not to take the second half of the course), but it's much more common for a School Board to screw over a teacher whose offended the local Baptist Pastors then the National Organization for Women.
So if you're a High School teacher you'll recommend a bunch of pictures that have nothing to do with porn, and then when some kid shows up with a project based on Lena you deal with it then.
Now you're making shit up. For a visual algorithm test nobody would complain that the person on the image wasn't diverse enough. It's a test of an image, not a representation of the student body.
Hell, your entire basis for argument is a contradiction: if the picture is such a small issue that anyone who claims it offends them should shut the fuck up, then the logical conclusion isn't that the picture should be defended to the death by all right-thinking people, the logical conclusion is that the picture is such a small issue that all right-thinking adults should not care one way or the other about said picture. In order to live with the other people who make up most of the world the picture should be sidelined.
You're probably going to assume I'm implying you're racist, or sexist, or evil -ist. I'm not. I'm calling you immature and childish. As an adult human being you have to deal with everyone, including people whom you think are oversensitive. If you choose to fight them on every issue you will spend all your time fighting. And you'll be fighting people who make perfectly good friends and allies. You are wasting your time, and you are wasting your life; to defend a contradiction. Grow up.
Pilots lose control of planes all the time, just as drivers do. The question is a) how long are you out of control and how hard is it to get control back, and b) how likely is the scenario in the first place?
In this case the answer seems to be a) not very long and not very hard as there are backup generators allowing you to reset the computers, and b) not bloody likely because you have to skip quite a few (as in dozens) routine maintenance cycles on these generators to get to 248 days without a restart.
There's a reason the damn things have been flying for 3.5 years and nobody noticed the problem.
Dude, this is a for-profit company, not a research university. It's not written by people whose entire job is to prove to the world they write the most robustest code ever designed with zero bugs. If it doesn't kill people or delay flights it doesn't cost them money and nobody, except computer geeks, gives a shit.
In this case the Dreamliner's designed to have all the relevant systems turned off for routine maintenance once every two weeks. Which means if they go more then 248 days without being restarted the airline has skipped several dozen (25 or 26 according to another slashdotter) routine maintenance cycles, which is likely a much bigger problem then the pilot needing to a) restart the computers mid-flight, or b) needing to glide to an emergency landing.
Given that there've been something on the order of 400 plane-years of actual flight performance, and nobody noticed this bug until now, the software design seems to be about right. Not perfect, but if the planes are even being given 10% of the maintenance the specs call for this bug is a non-iissue.
OTOH, the problems with various batteries were dumb engineering. Altho those also seem to be solved.
Remember that time back in the 90s when a Marine Corps plane on maneuvers knocked down a Cable Car in the Italian Alps, killing 20 people? That was partly because when they planned the maneuver they used charts that were 6 months old, and the cable car line was less then 6 months old. If they'd had iPads, or any other electronic chart equipment that automatically updated itself, it wouldn't have happened.
Civil aviation changes just as frequently. Which approach each airport wants you to use (to avoid colliding with the rest of the aircraft), which airspace you should fly in only in extreme circumstances (perhaps due to Russian-allied rebels indiscriminate use of BUK missile launchers), etc. all changes quite frequently, and you need the data for every airport the plane could possibly be sent to because there's no way in hell the airlines gonna buy a nine-figure aircraft and only use it at three airports.
Thus the electronic equipment, which may not work due to computer issues some small percent of the time, but when it does work will always be updated properly. Whereas with paper you get 100% uptime, but are guaranteed less then 100% accuracy. After pilots get used to the equipment it also has fewer user-fuck-up issues. The Marines I mentioned, for example, actually had the right charts, in a sealed envelope, in the fucking cockpit, but they hadn't opened the damn thing because they figured it was a waste of time having nothing to do with them.
So I know 7/52 of the cards, two of which are secret to the other player, and I use that info to predict the cards the other player is statistically likely to have, thus informing my strategy on raises/calls/etc., but that's not card counting?
Why not?
The computer has tells. If you figure out the algorithm you can figure out by it's pattern of calls/raises what it's hand is. In theory if you knew the code well wnough you could reverse engineer the computer's hand, and figure out it's strategy, based entirely on the cards showing and it's behavior; altho in practice virtually nobody could pull that off.
The problem seems to be it has no way to read human tells, and it's designed to pursue a bad strategy (calling) most of the time.
I don't know. Me, a girl who'd like to see me with fewer clothes (and I'd like to see in fewer clothes), and a computer that's kicking both of our asses? Sounds like an ideal strip poker opponent.
You can even throw in a couple of people I don't want to see naked (and/or do not want to see me naked) and it's still a good time.
Ever heard of card counting? Computers are impossible to beat at card counting.
So any game where card counting is part of a useful strategy the computer has a huge advantage. That's why they were able to solve two-player limited Texas Hold 'em, card counting well gives you a slight advantage so the computer can win 52-53% of the time even tho it can't read it's human opponent very well.
The version they're playing now has some problems, but apparently the problems are caused as much by the programmer's poor choices (ie: call on every bet seems to be the definition of suboptimal strategy) as the use of a computer. Presumably future versions will have better strategies, and will be able to adapt their play-style to suit their opponents.
Note that even if the optimizing play-styles to suit the opponent thing turns out to be a total bust, it should increase the winning percentage because the humans will have to spend some time figuring out what the optimizations for this particular tournament actually were, whereas these guys are winning partly because they can figure out the algorithm.
Obfuscant is truly an apt name. You just said the law "requires data to be available online in a form that anyone who wishes to verify or reproduce it can," but it "It makes no requirement of reproducibility."
Section 1 requires all 'scientific and technical information' to be public. Section 2, Subsection 3, B defines the term to include (among other things):
"materials, data, and associated protocols necessary to understand, assess, and extend conclusions"
You can't assess the conclusion without the raw data.
To be exaggerating to emphasize one's point it is necessary that one have a point. My argument is that you do not have a point in the first place.
You have standard-issue-Amserican-paranoia about both governmental power and corporate power, informed by frequent reading of British SciFi emphasizing the danger of the bureaucratic state. It is totally uninformed by the reality of said state, or the difficulties a corporation would have in getting a competitor's product banned in the US, etc.
If there is ever a time when a scenario anywhere close to what you mention actually happens, the scenario you mention will be the least of our worries. By far. Because for that to happen a) the Judicial branch will have to be totally subject to the Executive, b) that Executive will be totally subject to corporate control, and c) those corporations doing the control will have to be so small-c-conservative that they'd prefer making a small profit on coal to dominating the Solar Market.
You do realize that all the company will tell investors is how much the copper earned on the market, and since futures contracts were invented it's actually possible to sell copper BEFORE you mine it?
Many, many studies are done using data sets the public doesn't have access to. Frequently these studies are much more interesting then the ones based on public data (like Census data) because everybody already has access to the Census.
So you'd prefer to make public policy based on no data?
Or order corporations to open all their books to any scientist who asks?
I'd actually like the second option, but there's no way in hell the Courts would ever allow it.
You're either being intentionally confusing, or you're making your argument up out of whole cloth. With a name like "Obfuscant" I'd lean towards the former.
As far as I can tell, the actual bill requires all data to be reproducible. That means the raw data used by a study has to be available publicly (and probably on the internet) or it's "secret science" and can't be used by the EPA. In fact most sources I've seen actually say that even including difficult to reproduce data bans the EPA from using the study. Several say flat-out that private data of all types is banned. The Amendment that would have fixed this would have given peer-reviewed articles a free pass on the point, and it was voted down by the committee.
So please, tell me how you could use a private database in your study and still get it used by the EPA.
Which is irrelevant because they get sued, and the data comes out in Court. This is how Checks and Balances work.
Your argument is like saying "OMG! The Prosecutor can seek charges whenever he wants! Clearly he will abuse this power to arrest millions for years!"
Your reading implies that Congress can do pretty much whatever the fuck it wants if it deems it to be for the General Welfare. That pretty much flied in the face of the idea of limited government, which is the central pillar of our Constitution.
Depends on how limited you want the limits to be. If you want the government to be small enough to drown in a bathtub, then yes, it flies in your personal idea of a limited government.
OTOH, the Founders were explicitly creating a less limited government. They said flat-out it needed to be more powerful the the Articles of Confederation government because it had to be strong enough to keep the Brits out.
If there'd been pollution in their day they almost certainly would have added inter-state pollution to the list of things the Feds had the right to regulate, because part of the point of their Constitution was keeping the states from fighting each-other over trivial shit. And you can bet your ass that if Pennsylvania had been able to have all the benefits of coal power, with none of the pollution, simply by siting the plants upwind from the rest of the state they'd have done that shit; New York would have responded by calling out the militia...
All Court Judgements are conditional.
The Judgement against OJ for beating those memorabilia collectors up was conditional on there not being new evidence that Prosecutors made the whole thing up.
Given the evidence available in 2007, the Courts ruled global warming was real and CO32 was a pollutant. Since then the evidence has just grown. Temperature's spiking (9 of the hottest 10 years are within the past decade), the ice caps are melting, and the counter-points you're talking about are all fantasy from a Think Tank of wannabe social scientists. From their website, they seem to have a couple actual Education experts, a couple guys with bachelors degrees, and a Philosopher.
And if this was not the case, don't you think every coal plant in the country would be appealing Massachusetts vs. EPA for all they're worth?
As to your ironic statement that I am not contradicting you at any point and this is all due to misreading... actually I have on many points and you could only have missed that due to your own misreading.
As to the parliamentary system reducing the power of the wealthy, that is asinine since the system was literally designed to protect the interests of English Lords. The system concentrates power in fewer hands than what you see in the American system which you assume means the system is less corruptible. Contrary to that point, the more hands the power is distributed amongst the less susceptible to corruption the system becomes.
You do realize that the British system has changed in the past 250 years? Like a lot? The Canadian system, never had Rotten Burroughs, wealth-based voting requirements, or a hereditary upper house; which were the features that allowed the Gentry to dominate English politics prior to the reforms of the 1830s and 1910s. Moreover you're bringing up that straw-man "corruption" again. If it's not illegal it is (by definition) not corruption, and I;m arguing that in the US it is simply not illegal for the wealthy to buy influence with support/ contributions/knowledge of how the system works/etc.
As to your belief that the Congress has no role in the ratification of treaties... do a fucking google search before you dare contradict me on something like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
""Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution, includes the Treaty Clause, which empowers the President of the United States to propose and chiefly negotiate agreements, which must be confirmed by the Senate, between the United States and other countries, which become treaties between the United States and other countries after the advice and consent of a supermajority of the United States Senate.""
The senate must ratify the treaty. If you bring this issue up one more time, I'm going to call you a fucktard and just skip over any further references to your fucking delusion.
As to morality, YOU were the one that used the term "hellscape", all I did was give it back to you. Complain and you're a hypocrite.
Your reading comprehension skill suck. I specifically said that ratifying treaties was one of several powers Congress had that is no longer particularly relevant, and I'll quote the paragraph here:
Ratification of Treaties is, like Declaring War, one of those powers we gave Congress in 1789 that has become less useful every damn year.
The reason I refuse to believe you aren't arguing morality is you're treating this as a question of theology. You don't present evidence that the system actually works, you present evidence that your logic says the system should work.
As to your Canadian references, it isn't making any sense. We've not outlawed the voting of anyone since black slavery and we reversed that.
I wasn't referring to slavery. I was referring to the period right after, particularly 1877-1965, where much of the South had legal bans on black voting. At the start of the period the South as a whole was 40% black, and several states (South Carolina and Mississippi) were majority black. That could not happen in Canada, and while it's unlikely to happen here the simple fact is it did actually happen. In two states.
As to your continued slander that I am aruging on a moral basis, I am not. This is also a contradictory point you're making because you accused me of being an engineer at one point and now you're saying I'm being some wishywashy moralist.
Which is it? For the record, my positions are not based on morality but on what is optimal.
You're making up the engineer quote. That word was not mentioned on this thread until I described myself as taking an engineer's perspective.
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Us Americans are really great at promoting logical theories of how government policy works, but not very good at integrating real world data into that.
Researcher B would have to provide his data to the EPA for that to work, and then when the EPA gets sued by researcher A's company the EPA would be required to show his study to the Court and the plaintiff on strict condition that they reveal no confidential data. If the EPA's BS argument based on a aBS study stands up in Court then all structural protections for the protection of this guy's right to bring his solar panel to market were doomed anyway, because the opponents of said panel had successfully rigged the Courts.
OTOH, let's say somebody does a study that involves a private company's data. Perhaps they're correlating output of a copper mine to negative effects in the neighboring stream. Well the output of a copper mine is a closely guarded trade secret, so half the data either has to be bought from the company or recreated by the EPA and released to the public. Otherwise it's a banned "secret study."
I'm sure they're trying to pull a fast one of some kind but I admit to not seeing the problem with this idea in general. Shouldn't we want them to be basing policy on publicly available data?
Which would work great in a Communist Country.
In the Capitalist US of A it's not unusual for the best source of data to be somebody's trade secrets. Maybe they're in the business of collecting (and selling) data and they offer scientists a peek for a price, or perhaps they're doing something (say burning different grades of coal in a power plant depending on business needs), and the EPA wants to use a study about it (perhaps the study correlates local air quality to the grade of coal burned). Unless the power-plant company is willing to release reams and reams of data on precisely which load of coal it burned which day into the public domain, that study is based on non-public data.
The scientific case for regulating CO2 as a pollutant is completely, utterly, and totally irrelevant.
The Supreme Court ruled that the agency is legally required to regulate CO2 back in 2007, and the Supreme Court is by definition right on all points of law. Buch was able to put off actually regulating the dang things, so the Obama administration didn't have draft regs ready until '10, but legal case for regulating CO2 is decided.
As to trolling, I'm not trolling you.
Considering you have yet to present a single argument that a) actually disagrees with my thesis, b) isn't based on a misreading of what I've posted I'm quite skeptical of that.
As to hyper intelligent ants, I've seen no compelling argument for why the parliamentary system is superior. You've also contradicted yourself in a few places saying it is both good and bad that something is run by more people.
Dude, I'm playing the engineer here. This whole "good" "bad" thing you're doing is partly an artifact of your own sick obsession with proving that our system is great,l and partly due to the fact that when an engineer sees a system is better at thing A then thing B, and people say "I want to maximize A" he will say that system is better.
Our system sucks at reducing the influence of the wealthy to something like their proportion of the system. It is specifically designed to suck at that. The Canadian system isn't actually good at keeping the to X% to only X% of the power, but when the competition is us, and the goal is to give some single mother making $20k as much influence as Mitt fucking Romney; pretty much all you have to do is show up.
As to the binding nature of treaties... without ratification you really don't have much. Lets look at Kyoto again and how could that treaty work without congressional ratification? How are you going to limit emissions for example without passing a law internally within the US? And no such law will be binding unless the US congress passes it. So no.
Please try to actually read my posts. I answered this. In detail.
Under US Law the President has certain powers. When he signs a treaty he binds himself to use those powers to enforce the Treaty. Which means that new regulations he can promulgate using his Presidential powers are supposed to happen the second the Treaty is signed, and actual ratification is irrelevant as to whether it is binding in this sense until another President comes along and says "fuck that." Which is why Dubya actually had to say "fuck that" and formally withdraw.
Congress has other powers, which are related to and intertwined with Presidential powers, but are nonetheless irrelevant to treaties. If Congress ratifies the Treaty then the regulations promulgated by the President can't easily be undone by the next guy, but other that that it's totally irrelevant.
What's relevant is the statute Congress passes to comply. In extreme cases (like ACTA), since US statutes already complied, and the treaty was mostly about making Poland as horrible as us, Obama didn't even bother with ratification.
Ratification of Treaties is, like Declaring War, one of those powers we gave Congress in 1789 that has become less useful every damn year.
As to Iran, no there are sanctions etc which prohibit US businesses from engaging in business with the Iranians. You can't lift that without the cooperation of congress.
Why?
Seriously. Every bill on sanctions I've ever read includes a clause allowing the President to lift them if he rules certain things are true.
Even if they insisted on "this penalty is forever" clause, there's this little thing called "Prosecutorial Discretion." When an officer of the Executive Branch, sees someone breaking the law he is allowed to ignore it as long as he can provide some compelling state reason to do so. That's why traffic cops aren't legally required to nail you for going 66 in a 65.And it means that if Obama decided to not arrest people for violating Iran sanctions it would be very difficult for Congress to convince the Courts to force him to do so.
As to dystopian hellscapes, the president is largely in the same position, he just has additional checks on his power. And the US is hardly a distopian hellscape either... so you can jam that bit of hyperbole right back into your shithole.
Dud
And if you show up, and you actually know how to make shit with your hands, they don't say "great, does your experience with real world physics give you any insights into how we can make building stuff with our computers easier?" they say "what could somebody who bends metal know about the latest 3d printers that are designed to bend metal?"
Because if you call it workshop upper middle class guys will think it's a place where dirty. low-class, lowlifes work with old techniques like welders and stay away. As a makerspace they know none of that riff-raff will be around to question their choice of Sci-Fi/pop culture toys reproduced in plastic; so they will come. And since it's at a Liberal Arts college, most of the potential market are those annoying upper-middle-class white guys.
If you're arguing that it was only as crappy as it's American competitors, and not significantly crappier (as it's reputation implies) I'll agree with you.
But objectively speaking it was by definition crappy. It was an American car in the 70s. They were all complete crap between the arrival of VW in '69 and the introduction of the Taurus in '86.