Historicity aside, the last time I checked, at least within the USA, First Amendment rights still applied to everyone?
I understand that a large number of people seem to think that speech that falls outside of their personally "acceptable" boundaries should be prohibited, and sadly, a number of craven legislators have catered to this intellectually empty point of view.
Sticks and stones, stupid. If you don't like it, maybe you could simply turn off the computer? Vote with your feet. Play another game perhaps?
It's a 'fabric', so it's made entirely of threads that are evidently: a) weak b) transparent c) of no actual value whatsoever d) exists only in an insulated technical world
Sounds like it would better be called 'slashdotene' to me.
from the article: "After all, these switches were reportedly developed as a nuclear warhead safety device, so one could just assume that they were properly wired."
3 posts and 2 are from the "I HATE AMERICA" crowd and have already been rated 5-interesting.
Don't you people ever sleep?
Every country practices espionage. EVERY country. The US, with its technical resources, has been very successful in the past in elint. The Soviets were particularly successful with their humint efforts.
I don't think anyone is saying the North Koreans don't have a 'right' to form their 'hackforce' (it's only leftists and liberals that talk about 'rights' in geopolitics anyway); I think the point is that their calling attention to it is the sort of attention-whoring that suggests that it's less a real exercise than cage-rattling.
The 'real reason' Kyoto wasn't signed by the US is because it was blatantly a yoke on successful countries, while it completely exempted roughly 2 billion people (China and India particularly). Let me see...that sounds suspiciously like Churchill's definition of socialism: the equal distribution of misery.
and the US is rather reactionary when confronted by blatantly socialist policies ESPECIALLY when they are presented like a 'sign it or else' from the world community. I think your idea of emissions controls per capita makes superficial sense, but again, Kyoto didn't suggest this. Kyoto had NO limits for China or India - to speak of it from an equitability point of view, these countries would immediatly increase in value as destinations for the fleeing heavy industries of the developed world. Is that fair to make the Chinese and Indian peoples such targets?
A more reasonable distribution of emissions limits would be by productivity. Having giant masses of unemployed peasants shouldn't be a way for any state to 'game the system' and inflate its emissions limits, should it?
US GDP = roughly $11 trillion China's GDP (if you can believe the figures) = roughly $1 trillion So the US should by this standard have an emissions limit 11 times China's.
If Kyoto were phrased that way, you'd find a lot more acceptance of it in the US, I'm guessing.
OK, I prefer to believe that being rated a TROLL on this is an amusing and subtle comment from the/. moderators, and not just someone's knee jerk reaction thinking I was actually trolling.
To reiterate ELF systems scrapped. DWARF scientists are happy. They next want to eliminate the ORCs and the TROLLs.
Look at the U.S's foreign policy from the outside (try some independent and known-to-be-unbiased news agencies for a change) and you'll see the difference.
LOL, please tell me the (you're massively patronizing, so I'm going to guess it's probably European?) media company that reports the news free from bias.
Ms. Naive, party of 1? You'll be seated with Mr. Disingenuous tonight. I believe you're already acquainted?
I've read through the comments (at +3, I have my limits), and pretty much all I hear is screaming leftist caterwauling.
I know you all mostly have a political axe to grind, but do you understand the rhetorical construction of a STRAWMAN argument? To briefly review, this is where you posit your opponent's argument in a way that is deliberately weak, so that you can tear it apart on your own terms.
WMDs = strawman argument, see?
When Bush first made his public speech about why we were going to war in Iraq, there were a NUMBER of different reasons why we went to war. Google his speech if you want them all.
But paramount among them was the fact that we never were NOT at war. At the end of GW(I), there was a ceasefire signed, based on certain actions to be performed by the Iraqis. These were not performed. Moreover, as long as we're all 'remembering' so clearly that these tubes were not what the US administration claimed they were, perhaps you could stretch a little further and recall the bluster, the bombast, the shenanigans, the outright duplicity with which the Hussein government dealt with all of these requirements, from the sham "Oil for military suppl...erm..FOOD program" to the inspection program to the sanctions regime.
Whether or not you consider the UN a complete pack of snivelling corrupt toadies, 17 UN resolutions should perhaps slightly suggest even to the fervent Internationalists that perhaps - just perhaps - the 'international community' (or at least the Security Council) agreed that Iraq was not fulfilling their end of the ceasefire. Even France and Germany, those paragons of virtue and justice, supported those resolutions, including the last which warned of 'serious consequences' if it was ignored.
Personally, I've always believed that Iraq was a message aimed at a number of other countries that were and are state sponsors of terrorism. Here we had Saddam Hussein, diplomatically isolated (if not an outright pariah), his military enfeebled by 10 years of sanctions (although not as much as the Oil-for-food enthusiasts would like you to believe). He continued to preach the destruction of the United States, and was beginning to reconfigure himself (not credibly, granted) as a leader of the next Islamist crusade against Israel and the West. Here was a chance to step in, kick the crap out of some dunghill leader that liked to talk very tough, and drag him off under the auspices of the US Army and nobody would lift a finger to help him. This would help our 'big stick' credibility in a part of the world where diplomatic subtleties aren't usually even noticed.
Further, there was the benefit of oil, yes oil. See, our economy runs on oil; to suggest that making it a key element of government and foreign policy decision making is somehow greedy or evil is illustrative of nothing but your own naivete. If someone had majority control of air, or water, would that be serious enough to be the basis of legitimate policy decisions to you? Oil's not far down the list, as much as it hurts the leftist alternative-power seekers* to admit it). * as long as they aren't power windmills in view of my estate on Martha's Vineyard or where I cruise my yacht.
If it were possible to come out of this with a reliable diplomatic ally, it would also allow us to REDUCE our dependence on the Saudi government as our only Muslim political friend in the region, which in turn would allow us to pressure them more freely for greater democracy there internally.
If, after all this, you STILL require proof that Iraq had WMD's, I'd ask you what Saddam used against the Kurds in Halabja. Tinfoil hattery aside (hard to manage on \., I agree) I'd say most of us would agree that it sure seemed like a gas attack.
I'll not claim that the "lefty media" constructed the WMD-as-primary-motivation for political reasons; no, I rather think it was either the Bush Administration, beltway insiders
In Iraq they don't face instant and inevitable annihilation, so they aren't as likely to fall in line.
Thus my belief that the whole "hearts and minds" crap in the parent post is b.s.
H&M was the name for the method of warfighting when total destruction of the enemy was not possible (during the Cold War, ultimately one superpower or the other was a guarantor of every state's existence). We did not win "hearts and minds" in Germany or Japan. We pounded them into the stone age until someone crawled shakily out of the rubble and begged us to stop.
Wars should never be administrative and partial; they should be unlimited and total. If this was the case, a) congress wouldn't be able to get away with meal-mouthing their way around the war powers act - they either authorize war or they don't. b) the public might be a little less bloodthirsty if 'war' always meant rationing, war footing, price controls, etc. c) presidents would be less inclined to commit troops for political matters or matters of convenience d) conversely, our credibility when we'd threaten war would be magnified; it would be abundantly clear that if we go to war we mean it.
Iraq should have been levelled. Yes, it would have meant more pain and suffering for the Iraqi people, but I'd wager that in the long run, they would enter the community of nations as a productive and friendly member far, far sooner than they will as this ulcerating politco-terrorist sore.
Which is considered a resounding victory by the Deep Water Attenuated Radio Frequency scientists, whose next project is to eliminate the Overseas Radio Communication system, and if they're really lucky, the Targetted Repeating O-band Laser Link systems as well.
How is this speculation? Gabe Newell from Valve delivered these details himself. Talk about answering your own question!
This would be the same Mr. Newell that told us that code theft would slightly delay the game so they could make sure no hacking code was inserted or anything...a YEAR ago?
Code theft = the developer's way of saying "the dog ate my homework!"
Re:It's pretty amazing when you think about it.
on
Making Tracks on Mars
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
First, it's astronomy, not astrology. One is a science with reproducible experiments and predictable results; the other is a pagan near-religion whose results are entirely vague, and impossibly subjective.
Second, you're talking about a statistical sample of 2 planets (out of what, thousands of billions?). (And I daresay we've hardly explored #2 - heck, there are great chunks of EARTH we haven't explored.) To wash your hands of it saying 'well, haven't found life yet, we must be alone' is a bit presumptuous.
Second "Things like irreducible complexity in bacterial flagelli or the inability to intentionally design life from scratch while claiming that a roll of the dice made all this seems absurd." NOBODY (except Creationists commonly hiding behind the title of 'intelligent design theory' and busily building strawman arguments) has ever suggested that life is the result of the 'roll of the dice'.
We KNOW that in the presence of radiation, complex hydrocarbon chains such as those found around the universe will form amino acids (found both in liquid water on earth, and in insterstellar dust clouds http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0328/p11s01-stss.htm l).
We KNOW that these acids can spontaneously form proteins and quinones, among lots of other stuff, which in turn form proteins and (it's surmised) possibly the precursors to RNA.
Granted, we're not clear on that last, teeny step. But give scientists some benefit of the doubt - they've resolved the simplest forms of life down to the point where serious research projects are going on now to create life at a molecular level; to the credit of the researchers in the field, there seems to be a hesitation going on while some of the ethical and moral issues are discussed before proceeding.
I don't dispute with you your essential point - it IS pretty amazing when you think about it. I find the system of the universe a glorious and joyful ballet of energy, matter, and life. I don't know why people feel compelled to assume that God isn't competent enough to build it from the beginning to do what He wanted, and that He would have to stick his hand in and 'make' stuff happen.
Or (putting on my tinfoil hat) the government contracting system is just too lucrative to make it worthwhile to step outside of it and bear the development costs, risks, COST OVERRUNS all by themselves.
Granted, I think it will take someone with a pile of money AND vision (Mr Gates, are you listening??) to simply take the risk to build things like a space elevator or a real space program that has solid commercial goals like a moon base, or asteroid collection. Goverment is too bungling, and corporations are too risk-averse and short sighted to do it.:(
We didn't win "hearts and minds" of the Germans, or the Japanese. We (the allies collectively) kicked the crap out of them, killed millions of them (including, inevitably, a lot of people who didn't deserve it), and levelled their countries.
Then, when everything is destroyed and the people are exhausted, then we rebuilt the countries.
This whole idea of "hearts and minds" is Cold War BS implemented because the idea of total war was impossible with an enemy Superpower always willing to backstop the existence of the enemy. Now there is no superpower to insure that Iraq remains.
Sorry to say, but any conflict which we've fought SINCE WW2 has been a halfassed joke. To put it bluntly, we should have used our whole military, sealed off the country, and levelled every major city, annihilate (not simply defeat) every military formation that existed, and smash their infrastructure entirely, making peace only when something crawled out of the rubble begging us to stop.
One might point out that perhaps if a country never waged 'sort of' wars, but only committed to war that was total (wartime economy, draft, etc.) and to the finish (i.e. annihilation of the enemy, utter destruction of his society), then perhaps that country would: a) be less likely to resort to war as a convenience b) be taken far, far more seriously when it DID finally threaten war.
In the first place, I agree - personally I feel that there IS no actual difference between a childless hetero couple, a childless married hetero couple, or a childless gay couple. There should be NO GOVERNMENT requirement for business to extend benefits to a perfectly able spouse/partner/farkbuddy/whatever. Period. When children come into the picture, then government (to restate briefly an idea that I've built over years of thinking about it) has a right to mandate with draconian force that 2 adult individuals pay to care for each child, be it through an employer-offered extension of benefits, COBRA, whatever. This functionally removes any concern that gov't have regarding the concept of marriage; if 17 adults, 3 dogs, and a parakeet want to live together as a 'married' couple, whatever floats your boat. But the moment 2 of those adults are involved in creating a child, they are legally and strenuously compelled to support that child until majority.
On the other hand, while I understand that the realm of pair-bonding has undergone several shifts in "what's acceptable", I'm not happy with it. I can see obviously that interfaith marriage is fine (formerly shunned), interracial marriage is no big deal (formerly shunned), but I can't accept gay marriage on an emotional level.
Maybe it's hypocrisy, but to me it's a matter of degree. The trendy pop culture now seems to be saying "let's edge propriety a little further along this spectrum", while I see the changes to this point, and say "ok but no further". You say "look, you even agree that what was formerly rejected really, there was nothing wrong with it". I agree, but I look past your position and say "if we let it slide futher, where do we have ANY justification to stop? Is it ok to marry 3 other people? How about your sister? Your mom? Your dog? A chimp? I don't see that, if we let it slip futher, you have any reason to suggest that there is any stopping it later, either." (Interesting side note, even Barney Frank is afflicted by this; on one of the Sunday morning talk shows, he was expounding on the rationale for gay marriage, and he was asked if he saw any problem then with 3- and 4-way marriages, and he (without a trace of irony) replied that it was bad because it warped the basic family structure. Go figure!)
Finally, I have to point out that this whole controversy is directly a result of the constant cheapening of marriage by HETERO's for the last 50 years. In that sense, we're merely being forced to reap what our parents and grandparents sowed. They treated marriage as a meaningless convenience, so hetero's now are on fairly weak ground suggesting that marriage is now suddenly sacred and inviolable.
Most buyers make the same decision I did as a business owner:
I need 4 new PC's for my staff. New hires.
Do they need a 2.5 GHz system with a sweet vid card and 512 meg RAM?
No.
But, if I go to computer Rennaissance and buy 4 systems, are they going to be: 1) standardized, so I know what sort of drive space/ram/etc that they all have, not something different for each one. 2) are they going to have the full warranty and service coverage? 3) how were they treated in former lives? Did someone pop them on and off every time they left their desk meaning I should expect component failures sooner, rather than later?
Yes, they could do their jobs very happily with 1 GHz, 256 meg RAM systems. But the simple fact is that it's far easier (and cheaper, considering the value of my time/attention) to buy something off-the-shelf from Dell than to dick around trying to save $200 per machine.
The sad fact is that neither business or government oversight ensures a higher liklihood of it being done right. Govt: it'll take 10x as long, 10x the cost, and a terrific chance that it will suck due to lowest-bidder syndrome. Business: it'll take 2x as long, 3x the cost, and a terrific chance that it will suck due to the inexorable greed of someone in the chain.
...but I find it ironic that he uses examples where the "evil government" (tm) represses journalist yet fails to mention a very recent incident revealing bias in jounalism regarding Mr. Rather and certain memoes that not even the slavering left will concede are real anymore.
It's not always about the repression of journalists. What about the control the fourth estate bears over our public discourse?
Slashdot Mirror
Even though Kerry hasn't done squat on the issues in his two decades in the Senate... ...aside from voting in favor of the DMCA. He did do *something*.
...and 300 slashdot posters read that article and only see how badly we've "bungled" the war.
And the BUSH ADMINISTRATION is divorced from reality?
Why do you guys even bother to read the articles, if all really want is validation that "Republicans are stupid"?
Historicity aside, the last time I checked, at least within the USA, First Amendment rights still applied to everyone?
I understand that a large number of people seem to think that speech that falls outside of their personally "acceptable" boundaries should be prohibited, and sadly, a number of craven legislators have catered to this intellectually empty point of view.
Sticks and stones, stupid. If you don't like it, maybe you could simply turn off the computer? Vote with your feet. Play another game perhaps?
I'm not sure graphene's the right name.
It's a 'fabric', so it's made entirely of threads that are evidently:
a) weak
b) transparent
c) of no actual value whatsoever
d) exists only in an insulated technical world
Sounds like it would better be called 'slashdotene' to me.
from the article:
"After all, these switches were reportedly developed as a nuclear warhead safety device, so one could just assume that they were properly wired."
Nice to know those safety devices are foolproof.
3 posts and 2 are from the "I HATE AMERICA" crowd and have already been rated 5-interesting.
Don't you people ever sleep?
Every country practices espionage. EVERY country. The US, with its technical resources, has been very successful in the past in elint. The Soviets were particularly successful with their humint efforts.
I don't think anyone is saying the North Koreans don't have a 'right' to form their 'hackforce' (it's only leftists and liberals that talk about 'rights' in geopolitics anyway); I think the point is that their calling attention to it is the sort of attention-whoring that suggests that it's less a real exercise than cage-rattling.
There was a disturbance in the force, like a million /.er voices all cried out in unison: "Yes!"
The 'real reason' Kyoto wasn't signed by the US is because it was blatantly a yoke on successful countries, while it completely exempted roughly 2 billion people (China and India particularly). Let me see...that sounds suspiciously like Churchill's definition of socialism: the equal distribution of misery.
and the US is rather reactionary when confronted by blatantly socialist policies ESPECIALLY when they are presented like a 'sign it or else' from the world community.
I think your idea of emissions controls per capita makes superficial sense, but again, Kyoto didn't suggest this. Kyoto had NO limits for China or India - to speak of it from an equitability point of view, these countries would immediatly increase in value as destinations for the fleeing heavy industries of the developed world. Is that fair to make the Chinese and Indian peoples such targets?
A more reasonable distribution of emissions limits would be by productivity. Having giant masses of unemployed peasants shouldn't be a way for any state to 'game the system' and inflate its emissions limits, should it?
US GDP = roughly $11 trillion
China's GDP (if you can believe the figures) = roughly $1 trillion
So the US should by this standard have an emissions limit 11 times China's.
If Kyoto were phrased that way, you'd find a lot more acceptance of it in the US, I'm guessing.
^^^ someone obviously didn't PLAY Doom3.
-- insert between every line:
"Sarge puts away weapon.
Sarge takes out flashlight.
Sarge puts away flashlight.
Sarge takes out weapon again."
OK, I prefer to believe that being rated a TROLL on this is an amusing and subtle comment from the /. moderators, and not just someone's knee jerk reaction thinking I was actually trolling.
To reiterate
ELF systems scrapped.
DWARF scientists are happy.
They next want to eliminate the ORCs and the TROLLs.
You folks *did8 'get it', didn't you?
Look at the U.S's foreign policy from the outside (try some independent and known-to-be-unbiased news agencies for a change) and you'll see the difference.
LOL, please tell me the (you're massively patronizing, so I'm going to guess it's probably European?) media company that reports the news free from bias.
Ms. Naive, party of 1? You'll be seated with Mr. Disingenuous tonight. I believe you're already acquainted?
/. to \. because it slants so hard to the left.
I've read through the comments (at +3, I have my limits), and pretty much all I hear is screaming leftist caterwauling.
I know you all mostly have a political axe to grind, but do you understand the rhetorical construction of a STRAWMAN argument? To briefly review, this is where you posit your opponent's argument in a way that is deliberately weak, so that you can tear it apart on your own terms.
WMDs = strawman argument, see?
When Bush first made his public speech about why we were going to war in Iraq, there were a NUMBER of different reasons why we went to war. Google his speech if you want them all.
But paramount among them was the fact that we never were NOT at war. At the end of GW(I), there was a ceasefire signed, based on certain actions to be performed by the Iraqis. These were not performed. Moreover, as long as we're all 'remembering' so clearly that these tubes were not what the US administration claimed they were, perhaps you could stretch a little further and recall the bluster, the bombast, the shenanigans, the outright duplicity with which the Hussein government dealt with all of these requirements, from the sham "Oil for military suppl...erm..FOOD program" to the inspection program to the sanctions regime.
Whether or not you consider the UN a complete pack of snivelling corrupt toadies, 17 UN resolutions should perhaps slightly suggest even to the fervent Internationalists that perhaps - just perhaps - the 'international community' (or at least the Security Council) agreed that Iraq was not fulfilling their end of the ceasefire. Even France and Germany, those paragons of virtue and justice, supported those resolutions, including the last which warned of 'serious consequences' if it was ignored.
Personally, I've always believed that Iraq was a message aimed at a number of other countries that were and are state sponsors of terrorism. Here we had Saddam Hussein, diplomatically isolated (if not an outright pariah), his military enfeebled by 10 years of sanctions (although not as much as the Oil-for-food enthusiasts would like you to believe). He continued to preach the destruction of the United States, and was beginning to reconfigure himself (not credibly, granted) as a leader of the next Islamist crusade against Israel and the West. Here was a chance to step in, kick the crap out of some dunghill leader that liked to talk very tough, and drag him off under the auspices of the US Army and nobody would lift a finger to help him. This would help our 'big stick' credibility in a part of the world where diplomatic subtleties aren't usually even noticed.
Further, there was the benefit of oil, yes oil. See, our economy runs on oil; to suggest that making it a key element of government and foreign policy decision making is somehow greedy or evil is illustrative of nothing but your own naivete. If someone had majority control of air, or water, would that be serious enough to be the basis of legitimate policy decisions to you? Oil's not far down the list, as much as it hurts the leftist alternative-power seekers* to admit it).
* as long as they aren't power windmills in view of my estate on Martha's Vineyard or where I cruise my yacht.
If it were possible to come out of this with a reliable diplomatic ally, it would also allow us to REDUCE our dependence on the Saudi government as our only Muslim political friend in the region, which in turn would allow us to pressure them more freely for greater democracy there internally.
If, after all this, you STILL require proof that Iraq had WMD's, I'd ask you what Saddam used against the Kurds in Halabja. Tinfoil hattery aside (hard to manage on \., I agree) I'd say most of us would agree that it sure seemed like a gas attack.
I'll not claim that the "lefty media" constructed the WMD-as-primary-motivation for political reasons; no, I rather think it was either the Bush Administration, beltway insiders
In Iraq they don't face instant and inevitable annihilation, so they aren't as likely to fall in line.
Thus my belief that the whole "hearts and minds" crap in the parent post is b.s.
H&M was the name for the method of warfighting when total destruction of the enemy was not possible (during the Cold War, ultimately one superpower or the other was a guarantor of every state's existence). We did not win "hearts and minds" in Germany or Japan. We pounded them into the stone age until someone crawled shakily out of the rubble and begged us to stop.
Wars should never be administrative and partial; they should be unlimited and total. If this was the case,
a) congress wouldn't be able to get away with meal-mouthing their way around the war powers act - they either authorize war or they don't.
b) the public might be a little less bloodthirsty if 'war' always meant rationing, war footing, price controls, etc.
c) presidents would be less inclined to commit troops for political matters or matters of convenience
d) conversely, our credibility when we'd threaten war would be magnified; it would be abundantly clear that if we go to war we mean it.
Iraq should have been levelled. Yes, it would have meant more pain and suffering for the Iraqi people, but I'd wager that in the long run, they would enter the community of nations as a productive and friendly member far, far sooner than they will as this ulcerating politco-terrorist sore.
Jesus, I hate it when people go all silly and pollute a serious topic with goofiness. OF COURSE THERE IS NO SOUND IN SPACE, hence, no farting noise.
Which is considered a resounding victory by the Deep Water Attenuated Radio Frequency scientists, whose next project is to eliminate the Overseas Radio Communication system, and if they're really lucky, the Targetted Repeating O-band Laser Link systems as well.
How is this speculation? Gabe Newell from Valve delivered these details himself.
Talk about answering your own question!
This would be the same Mr. Newell that told us that code theft would slightly delay the game so they could make sure no hacking code was inserted or anything...a YEAR ago?
Code theft = the developer's way of saying "the dog ate my homework!"
First, it's astronomy, not astrology. One is a science with reproducible experiments and predictable results; the other is a pagan near-religion whose results are entirely vague, and impossibly subjective.
m l).
Second, you're talking about a statistical sample of 2 planets (out of what, thousands of billions?). (And I daresay we've hardly explored #2 - heck, there are great chunks of EARTH we haven't explored.) To wash your hands of it saying 'well, haven't found life yet, we must be alone' is a bit presumptuous.
Second "Things like irreducible complexity in bacterial flagelli or the inability to intentionally design life from scratch while claiming that a roll of the dice made all this seems absurd." NOBODY (except Creationists commonly hiding behind the title of 'intelligent design theory' and busily building strawman arguments) has ever suggested that life is the result of the 'roll of the dice'.
We KNOW that in the presence of radiation, complex hydrocarbon chains such as those found around the universe will form amino acids (found both in liquid water on earth, and in insterstellar dust clouds http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0328/p11s01-stss.ht
We KNOW that these acids can spontaneously form proteins and quinones, among lots of other stuff, which in turn form proteins and (it's surmised) possibly the precursors to RNA.
Granted, we're not clear on that last, teeny step. But give scientists some benefit of the doubt - they've resolved the simplest forms of life down to the point where serious research projects are going on now to create life at a molecular level; to the credit of the researchers in the field, there seems to be a hesitation going on while some of the ethical and moral issues are discussed before proceeding.
I don't dispute with you your essential point - it IS pretty amazing when you think about it. I find the system of the universe a glorious and joyful ballet of energy, matter, and life. I don't know why people feel compelled to assume that God isn't competent enough to build it from the beginning to do what He wanted, and that He would have to stick his hand in and 'make' stuff happen.
Any chance that they can use this process to search for Beagle?
You know the Surveyor guys are like "oh, sure, NOW you can look around and tell us what's interesting to investigate!"
Or (putting on my tinfoil hat) the government contracting system is just too lucrative to make it worthwhile to step outside of it and bear the development costs, risks, COST OVERRUNS all by themselves.
:(
Granted, I think it will take someone with a pile of money AND vision (Mr Gates, are you listening??) to simply take the risk to build things like a space elevator or a real space program that has solid commercial goals like a moon base, or asteroid collection. Goverment is too bungling, and corporations are too risk-averse and short sighted to do it.
IMO entirely wrong.
We didn't win "hearts and minds" of the Germans, or the Japanese. We (the allies collectively) kicked the crap out of them, killed millions of them (including, inevitably, a lot of people who didn't deserve it), and levelled their countries.
Then, when everything is destroyed and the people are exhausted, then we rebuilt the countries.
This whole idea of "hearts and minds" is Cold War BS implemented because the idea of total war was impossible with an enemy Superpower always willing to backstop the existence of the enemy. Now there is no superpower to insure that Iraq remains.
Sorry to say, but any conflict which we've fought SINCE WW2 has been a halfassed joke. To put it bluntly, we should have used our whole military, sealed off the country, and levelled every major city, annihilate (not simply defeat) every military formation that existed, and smash their infrastructure entirely, making peace only when something crawled out of the rubble begging us to stop.
One might point out that perhaps if a country never waged 'sort of' wars, but only committed to war that was total (wartime economy, draft, etc.) and to the finish (i.e. annihilation of the enemy, utter destruction of his society), then perhaps that country would:
a) be less likely to resort to war as a convenience
b) be taken far, far more seriously when it DID finally threaten war.
Hm?
I'm of two minds on the subject.
In the first place, I agree - personally I feel that there IS no actual difference between a childless hetero couple, a childless married hetero couple, or a childless gay couple. There should be NO GOVERNMENT requirement for business to extend benefits to a perfectly able spouse/partner/farkbuddy/whatever. Period. When children come into the picture, then government (to restate briefly an idea that I've built over years of thinking about it) has a right to mandate with draconian force that 2 adult individuals pay to care for each child, be it through an employer-offered extension of benefits, COBRA, whatever. This functionally removes any concern that gov't have regarding the concept of marriage; if 17 adults, 3 dogs, and a parakeet want to live together as a 'married' couple, whatever floats your boat. But the moment 2 of those adults are involved in creating a child, they are legally and strenuously compelled to support that child until majority.
On the other hand, while I understand that the realm of pair-bonding has undergone several shifts in "what's acceptable", I'm not happy with it.
I can see obviously that interfaith marriage is fine (formerly shunned), interracial marriage is no big deal (formerly shunned), but I can't accept gay marriage on an emotional level.
Maybe it's hypocrisy, but to me it's a matter of degree. The trendy pop culture now seems to be saying "let's edge propriety a little further along this spectrum", while I see the changes to this point, and say "ok but no further". You say "look, you even agree that what was formerly rejected really, there was nothing wrong with it". I agree, but I look past your position and say "if we let it slide futher, where do we have ANY justification to stop? Is it ok to marry 3 other people? How about your sister? Your mom? Your dog? A chimp? I don't see that, if we let it slip futher, you have any reason to suggest that there is any stopping it later, either."
(Interesting side note, even Barney Frank is afflicted by this; on one of the Sunday morning talk shows, he was expounding on the rationale for gay marriage, and he was asked if he saw any problem then with 3- and 4-way marriages, and he (without a trace of irony) replied that it was bad because it warped the basic family structure. Go figure!)
Finally, I have to point out that this whole controversy is directly a result of the constant cheapening of marriage by HETERO's for the last 50 years. In that sense, we're merely being forced to reap what our parents and grandparents sowed. They treated marriage as a meaningless convenience, so hetero's now are on fairly weak ground suggesting that marriage is now suddenly sacred and inviolable.
Most buyers make the same decision I did as a business owner:
I need 4 new PC's for my staff. New hires.
Do they need a 2.5 GHz system with a sweet vid card and 512 meg RAM?
No.
But, if I go to computer Rennaissance and buy 4 systems, are they going to be:
1) standardized, so I know what sort of drive space/ram/etc that they all have, not something different for each one.
2) are they going to have the full warranty and service coverage?
3) how were they treated in former lives? Did someone pop them on and off every time they left their desk meaning I should expect component failures sooner, rather than later?
Yes, they could do their jobs very happily with 1 GHz, 256 meg RAM systems.
But the simple fact is that it's far easier (and cheaper, considering the value of my time/attention) to buy something off-the-shelf from Dell than to dick around trying to save $200 per machine.
The sad fact is that neither business or government oversight ensures a higher liklihood of it being done right.
Govt: it'll take 10x as long, 10x the cost, and a terrific chance that it will suck due to lowest-bidder syndrome.
Business: it'll take 2x as long, 3x the cost, and a terrific chance that it will suck due to the inexorable greed of someone in the chain.
...but I find it ironic that he uses examples where the "evil government" (tm) represses journalist yet fails to mention a very recent incident revealing bias in jounalism regarding Mr. Rather and certain memoes that not even the slavering left will concede are real anymore.
It's not always about the repression of journalists. What about the control the fourth estate bears over our public discourse?
Did John Kerry actually write his answers in ink, or did he use pencil for later waffling?
Actually, CBS found his answers in secret memoes written around 1972 on an amazingly advanced Selectric Typewriter.
No, seriously, he probably just submitted his list of questions to the UN, so they could tell him how to answer.
(Hey, it's as 'insightful' as the previous response.)