I'll give you that there are a lot of religious kooks in the Republican party, but how does that explain a democrat like McCain getting their nomination?
Because New York, New Jersey, California and Florida chose him for us, and they have a crap-load of delegates (literally, me thinks) in winner take all states. I grew up in New York and I now live in Colorado and very few New York conservatives would be considered so out here. Even the liberals own guns where I am. As long as these states dictate the candidate, we'll never see a small government conservative out of the Republican party ever again.
I will add that, at my precinct caucus, the entire room (of about 200 people) was in an uproar when the McCain stump speaker got up. There were actual threats of violence being shouted his way, with family members restraining other family members. It was surreal. These people may eventually come around to support McCain in the end (especially if he goes Romney for his running mate), but never underestimate the hatred most Republicans have for the guy. None of my conservative friends will vote for him, that's for sure.
he's not really a conservative, because No True Conservative could have failed
No, Bush is not a conservative because he never was. The Bush wing always represented a different kind of conservatism that was opposed by the Goldwater/Reagan types. Reagan was heavily pressured to take Bush Sr. on as a running mate and that's when Republicans started to embrace big government to the levels we see today. Republicans use to consider McCain and the Bushes to be anything but conservative, they've just stopped paying attention.
If you look into the history of the neo-con movement, the founders were all avowed Troskyites. They just all decided one day that communism wasn't working out for them and they were going to skip over being Democrats and go right to being Republicans. And now we hire former KGB and Stasi generals to staff Homeland Security and government has never been bigger.
Terms like liberal and conservative mean so little when both sides shift their positions to the other side, seemingly at random. Most political positions can be easily broken down along the lines of libertarianism vs. authoritarianism. The Democrats and Republicans are authoritarians because of their desperate desire to control others. But your average person just wants to be left alone. People need to start looking at it in terms of ideology and ditch the manipulative labels.
Actually, my understanding was that the cones receptive to blue colors are on the periphery of our retinas and that the reds and green cones (red and green mixing to max yellow) are more towards the center of the eye. This makes blues more suited to being background colors (probably evolving from our constant exposure to a blue sky) and yellow more suited to being a foreground color.
Texting is not about shooting the shit. It's about receiving a message in a bar about where to meet someone cause you can't hear them on the phone. It's about sending people a brief amount of information, without having to interrupt them. It's about leaving a message, without forcing them to waste time calling into their voice mail.
I barely use my cell phone and only have a pay as you go plan. If given the chance, I would uninvent the damn things (yappers drive me crazy). But even in my luddite ways, I can see the benefit of texting when used sparingly and in the right situations.
In general yes, but I'm not too surprised that Netflix is one of them. They are one of the few companies that haven't pissed me off to the point of looking for alternatives. I've always been happy with their customer service.
How about a single, decent RTS? If I could get something like Rise of Nations or Supreme Commander running under Linux, I'd be a happy man. Especially a native, non-wine edition that actually works. It's the only thing that keeps me coming back to Windows. Well that and a scanner that doesn't look like it'll ever be supported under Linux. I can't believe that with all the competing game companies out there, nobody is reaching out for our swing vote.
Amen brother! And I love that how, despite this constant introduction of new laws, we are told that ignorance of the law is never an excuse. But apparently no one bats an eye at a legislators failure to even read the laws they're voting on. No human being alive is capable of reading, much less memorizing, all the laws we have on the books today. And that makes the notion of a law biding citizen a complete, unverifiable fiction.
Why not demand our Congress to use it and stop this monkey business of "was slipped into the bill"? Sounds like conversation you'd here in the playground, for gods' sake. I was thinking it sounds more like a pill a predator would "slip" into somebodies drink before raping them. Playground games have less at stake.
It's to everyone's benefit that individuals aren't able to escape their tax obligations through their unconventional business schemes. Well it's not to my benefit, nor is it to the benefit of anyone who thinks the government abuse of power has gotten out of hand. For many people, it's not as much about saving money as it is making sure that it doesn't fall into the government's possession. And although I don't want to deal with the risks associated with tax protesting, I respect those that do for their stance. The blood of every innocent person who dies in Bushs' wars is on my hands because of the money I gave to them in my cowardice, so I really don't see how that benefits me.
I think this is the old problem of mistaking incompetence for evil. While I have no doubt that much of the evil we perceive is mere incompetence, if we were dealing with only incompetence, then statistically speaking, our leaders would have to fuck up in our favor once in a while. Wouldn't they?
My advice wouldn't be so much to stay out of tech as it would be to stay away from big corporations. Tech work itself is fulfilling and often a lot of fun. It's the "TPS reports" and other corporate hoops that make it unlikely you'll spend much time on actual tech work. The more layers of management you have, the more time you spend helping them justify their positions and meet their nebulous goals. Some people thrive in that easy do-nothing-real environment, but if you actually like programming, you'll hate it as a corporate job. The only people that like these jobs are the ones that are just happy to no longer be working the night shift at Wendys.
You hit the nail on the head and I think it explains this study. Before DVRs, I use to dive for the remote to mute the TV before I even had to hear a single second of the commercial. I couldn't stand hearing the same jingles over and over again. I hated commercials with a passion and even boycotted products that went overboard (still haven't been to a Taco Bell after hearing "drop the chulupa" 80 million times). But I now, find myself occasionally watching them if they're interesting. And I'm no longer in a rush to fast forward. I'm more receptive to them because I haven't heard them a million times. Older adults have had enough commercials to last several lifetimes while younger kids aren't so shell shocked. This study makes perfect sense to me.
I mean, if George Bush had won Iraq, and USA GDP was growing by 10% a year, real US wages were doubling, everyone was building like crazy, new skyscrapers were popping up everywhere, then, who would really be complaining? The 15%.
About the same percent that always recognize that true, long-term economic prosperity is always proportional to political freedom. Most of our economic booms these days come with a steep price down the line. We call them credit bubbles.
Uprooting the constitution and crashing the economy over 3000 deaths seven years ago is very irrational. Especially when you consider how many more died to secure those liberties in the first place.
We just saw in China that a single earthquake can kill five times that many people, just as quickly. Perhaps we should stop spending money on war and instead spend those trillions on earthquake preparation across the United States. In fact, we should be spending five times as much on it, since the result proved five times as worse. Or course, rational people are capable of realizing that shit happens, so they move on with their lives, rather than focus their entire existence on preventing repeat occurrences of rare events. If you're really that afraid, see a psychologist and work through it.
can speak out against the government without getting killed is proof enough that we don't live in an Orwellian dystopia No, perhaps not an Orwellian one. But I think our leaders have learned well from Orwell, Hitler and Stalin. If you push too far, you'll be out of power a few years later. There's a reason why Hitler envied our propaganda machine, and that was back before we were really good at it.
If you let the people feel like they have a choice by presenting two identical candidates and say they represent the polar opposites in your society, well, then people don't know who to rebel against. They just see things get worse and worse, and vote in vain against the "other" guy. You can steal all their money and destroy the constitution, but as long as they can bitch about it, they'll think they're free. And don't worry, you can count on the 4th estate to ultimately keep that free speech in check. We will be permitted the freedoms that don't pose a real threat to the establishment and anything more will be (already has been) taken away. Only clueless thugs try to take it any further.
I think the dystopia we live in now is real, it just can't be related to more obvious, past examples, because if it was, the jig would be up. Merrian-Webster defines dystopia as a place "where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives." I'd say that about sums up modern America perfectly.
I live in the USA and I'm from Britain. It's MUCH safer in Britain than the USA Interesting to note. From the stories we read here, it's as if people are getting mugged left and right, and every night out drinking ends up in fist fights (maybe that's just London). It kind of reminds me of my Indian friend who came to America and was surprised not to see shoot-outs in the streets, cause that's all he knew of us from TV. Just another case of bad news sells papers, I guess. Although, I can't imagine what you mean by MUCH safer. This is a pretty safe country, unless you're living in a total shithole.
politicians are not typically looking to see whether a policy achieves its purported end, but rather that it will be tolerated by the people Right on. Or to put it another way:
"Find out just what the people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." Frederick Douglas, Civil Rights Activist, 1857
Yeah, Sins of a Solar Empire was the first game I bought in years, precisely because of this. Same with Amazon MP3s (the only MP3s I've bought). As for the DRM-laden crap, I remember when I use to feel a small measure of guilt over downloading it. Now it almost feels like a civic virtue. The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers. America is the biggest control-freak of a nation these days, so it's always fun to watch futile efforts like this back firing on the company. Now, if I can only get the time to play the games I legally own, I'll be set.
It's sad, but these days more people need to vote AGAINST someone, than for someone. You don't want McCain to become president? Vote for the person running against him that can actually win. You don't like any of the three? Find the one you can deal with for the next four years and vote for that one. This is precisely why this country has fallen so far behind in recent decades. Instead of voting for what people want, they vote for what they don't want in the hopes that their candidate (based on the lies they're telling) won't be as bad as the other guy. It's a downward spiral comparable to "chasing your loses" in gambling. If you're not voting for whom you believe in then you're subverting the democratic process itself and, quite frankly, you become very easy to manipulate (politically speaking). Candidates no longer have to prove their worth, they simple have to agree with you on not liking their opponent.
The truth is though, that there are very few real differences between the Republicans and Democrats. Most people don't even realize what their side stands for half the time. Republicans are for small government, right? But (wartime spending aside even) Bush has increased spending more than FDR. Democrats are the anti-war party, right? Yeah, except for WW1, WW1, Korea, Vietnam, Kosovo, etc. Who's stronger on the constitution? Damned if I know, they're both attack it from different directions. People tend to demonize the "other" party without realizing that their parties views were the other parties views a couple years earlier. Or that it'll likely flip again in a few years time.
The idea behind voting for a long shot is not so much about getting them elected as it is identifying yourself with a block of voters that future candidates will want to go after. You become a crucial swing voter and get all the attention. It's only throwing your vote away to vote for someone who's likely to win with or without your support. You become a small drop in a large ocean. Supply and demand. Your vote is worth less because there's less demand for it. At the very least, the mainstream candidates start to pay lip service to the issues you care about because they're always tied and they always need swing votes.
Lastly, elections are all about principle. You can't pragmatically win the lottery. I hate to break it to those who think their vote is "sacred", but in reality, your one vote doesn't make a difference. So there's no real risk in being principled. And if we can't be principled when there is no risk, how will you fare when there is.
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I'll give you that there are a lot of religious kooks in the Republican party, but how does that explain a democrat like McCain getting their nomination?
Because New York, New Jersey, California and Florida chose him for us, and they have a crap-load of delegates (literally, me thinks) in winner take all states. I grew up in New York and I now live in Colorado and very few New York conservatives would be considered so out here. Even the liberals own guns where I am. As long as these states dictate the candidate, we'll never see a small government conservative out of the Republican party ever again.
I will add that, at my precinct caucus, the entire room (of about 200 people) was in an uproar when the McCain stump speaker got up. There were actual threats of violence being shouted his way, with family members restraining other family members. It was surreal. These people may eventually come around to support McCain in the end (especially if he goes Romney for his running mate), but never underestimate the hatred most Republicans have for the guy. None of my conservative friends will vote for him, that's for sure.
Yep, Democrats want to be your mommy and Republicans want to be your daddy. I think it's time for the old age home for both of them.
he's not really a conservative, because No True Conservative could have failed
No, Bush is not a conservative because he never was. The Bush wing always represented a different kind of conservatism that was opposed by the Goldwater/Reagan types. Reagan was heavily pressured to take Bush Sr. on as a running mate and that's when Republicans started to embrace big government to the levels we see today. Republicans use to consider McCain and the Bushes to be anything but conservative, they've just stopped paying attention.
If you look into the history of the neo-con movement, the founders were all avowed Troskyites. They just all decided one day that communism wasn't working out for them and they were going to skip over being Democrats and go right to being Republicans. And now we hire former KGB and Stasi generals to staff Homeland Security and government has never been bigger.
Terms like liberal and conservative mean so little when both sides shift their positions to the other side, seemingly at random. Most political positions can be easily broken down along the lines of libertarianism vs. authoritarianism. The Democrats and Republicans are authoritarians because of their desperate desire to control others. But your average person just wants to be left alone. People need to start looking at it in terms of ideology and ditch the manipulative labels.
Actually, my understanding was that the cones receptive to blue colors are on the periphery of our retinas and that the reds and green cones (red and green mixing to max yellow) are more towards the center of the eye. This makes blues more suited to being background colors (probably evolving from our constant exposure to a blue sky) and yellow more suited to being a foreground color.
Texting is not about shooting the shit. It's about receiving a message in a bar about where to meet someone cause you can't hear them on the phone. It's about sending people a brief amount of information, without having to interrupt them. It's about leaving a message, without forcing them to waste time calling into their voice mail.
I barely use my cell phone and only have a pay as you go plan. If given the chance, I would uninvent the damn things (yappers drive me crazy). But even in my luddite ways, I can see the benefit of texting when used sparingly and in the right situations.
In general yes, but I'm not too surprised that Netflix is one of them. They are one of the few companies that haven't pissed me off to the point of looking for alternatives. I've always been happy with their customer service.
How about a single, decent RTS? If I could get something like Rise of Nations or Supreme Commander running under Linux, I'd be a happy man. Especially a native, non-wine edition that actually works. It's the only thing that keeps me coming back to Windows. Well that and a scanner that doesn't look like it'll ever be supported under Linux. I can't believe that with all the competing game companies out there, nobody is reaching out for our swing vote.
Amen brother! And I love that how, despite this constant introduction of new laws, we are told that ignorance of the law is never an excuse. But apparently no one bats an eye at a legislators failure to even read the laws they're voting on. No human being alive is capable of reading, much less memorizing, all the laws we have on the books today. And that makes the notion of a law biding citizen a complete, unverifiable fiction.
Great, so being paid for my time shouldn't count as income.
My advice wouldn't be so much to stay out of tech as it would be to stay away from big corporations. Tech work itself is fulfilling and often a lot of fun. It's the "TPS reports" and other corporate hoops that make it unlikely you'll spend much time on actual tech work. The more layers of management you have, the more time you spend helping them justify their positions and meet their nebulous goals. Some people thrive in that easy do-nothing-real environment, but if you actually like programming, you'll hate it as a corporate job. The only people that like these jobs are the ones that are just happy to no longer be working the night shift at Wendys.
You hit the nail on the head and I think it explains this study. Before DVRs, I use to dive for the remote to mute the TV before I even had to hear a single second of the commercial. I couldn't stand hearing the same jingles over and over again. I hated commercials with a passion and even boycotted products that went overboard (still haven't been to a Taco Bell after hearing "drop the chulupa" 80 million times). But I now, find myself occasionally watching them if they're interesting. And I'm no longer in a rush to fast forward. I'm more receptive to them because I haven't heard them a million times. Older adults have had enough commercials to last several lifetimes while younger kids aren't so shell shocked. This study makes perfect sense to me.
I've never seen it not screw up at least once per show, so I stopped using it altogether. Interesting to know it works for someone though.
About the same percent that always recognize that true, long-term economic prosperity is always proportional to political freedom. Most of our economic booms these days come with a steep price down the line. We call them credit bubbles.
Uprooting the constitution and crashing the economy over 3000 deaths seven years ago is very irrational. Especially when you consider how many more died to secure those liberties in the first place.
We just saw in China that a single earthquake can kill five times that many people, just as quickly. Perhaps we should stop spending money on war and instead spend those trillions on earthquake preparation across the United States. In fact, we should be spending five times as much on it, since the result proved five times as worse. Or course, rational people are capable of realizing that shit happens, so they move on with their lives, rather than focus their entire existence on preventing repeat occurrences of rare events. If you're really that afraid, see a psychologist and work through it.
If you let the people feel like they have a choice by presenting two identical candidates and say they represent the polar opposites in your society, well, then people don't know who to rebel against. They just see things get worse and worse, and vote in vain against the "other" guy. You can steal all their money and destroy the constitution, but as long as they can bitch about it, they'll think they're free. And don't worry, you can count on the 4th estate to ultimately keep that free speech in check. We will be permitted the freedoms that don't pose a real threat to the establishment and anything more will be (already has been) taken away. Only clueless thugs try to take it any further.
I think the dystopia we live in now is real, it just can't be related to more obvious, past examples, because if it was, the jig would be up. Merrian-Webster defines dystopia as a place "where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives." I'd say that about sums up modern America perfectly.
"Find out just what the people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
Frederick Douglas, Civil Rights Activist, 1857
Yeah, Sins of a Solar Empire was the first game I bought in years, precisely because of this. Same with Amazon MP3s (the only MP3s I've bought). As for the DRM-laden crap, I remember when I use to feel a small measure of guilt over downloading it. Now it almost feels like a civic virtue. The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers. America is the biggest control-freak of a nation these days, so it's always fun to watch futile efforts like this back firing on the company. Now, if I can only get the time to play the games I legally own, I'll be set.
Thank you very much for the neat new trick.
As the saying goes, Democrats want to be your mommy and Republicans want to be your daddy.
Personally, I think it's time we sit them down and talk about retirement homes and taking away their keys.
The truth is though, that there are very few real differences between the Republicans and Democrats. Most people don't even realize what their side stands for half the time. Republicans are for small government, right? But (wartime spending aside even) Bush has increased spending more than FDR. Democrats are the anti-war party, right? Yeah, except for WW1, WW1, Korea, Vietnam, Kosovo, etc. Who's stronger on the constitution? Damned if I know, they're both attack it from different directions. People tend to demonize the "other" party without realizing that their parties views were the other parties views a couple years earlier. Or that it'll likely flip again in a few years time.
The idea behind voting for a long shot is not so much about getting them elected as it is identifying yourself with a block of voters that future candidates will want to go after. You become a crucial swing voter and get all the attention. It's only throwing your vote away to vote for someone who's likely to win with or without your support. You become a small drop in a large ocean. Supply and demand. Your vote is worth less because there's less demand for it. At the very least, the mainstream candidates start to pay lip service to the issues you care about because they're always tied and they always need swing votes.
Lastly, elections are all about principle. You can't pragmatically win the lottery. I hate to break it to those who think their vote is "sacred", but in reality, your one vote doesn't make a difference. So there's no real risk in being principled. And if we can't be principled when there is no risk, how will you fare when there is.