They were probably squirming because they couldn't hide their erections well enough. A 1996 University of Georgia study of self-proclaimed and testing verefied homophobes found that most of them had erectile response while viewing homosexual pornography.
Maybe your ministrations were successful and this unending parade of young, fit, naked servicemen was just too much for these poor homophobes and they succumbed to their physiological drives and are now full fledged homosexuals. Then again maybe you just tortured some people who have a physiological response to male virility that they can't explain, don't want, and makes them hate themsleves.
I find it sad that people intentionally inflict psychic distress on other people. Doubly so that they do it for their own amusement. Fucking jerks.
If "they" could create a device that forced people to move over to the right lane when not overtaking and subsequently forced slow drivers to either speed up to the average speed or to get completely off the highways THAT would save lives, and innumerable lifetimes of time, and frustration, and tire and brake wear, etc. ad nauseum.
It is incredibly stupid how many people intentionally block traffic by moving into the left lane (in the US), pulling up next to the semi in the right lane who is moving at 15-20 mph under the posted speed limit, and then stop overtaking and just sit there. I literally see this behavior every day on my way to work.
That and people who have absolutely no idea of anything going on around them while in the leftmost lane and are traveling at 10-15 mph less than the posted speed. They continue talking on their cell phone, their SUV swaying lazily back and forth between the lines like some kind of enormous metallic kelp frond, going ever slower, until, after 5 minutes of trying you finally get an opportunity to safely overtake them in the right lane. Then through some preternatural sense available only to dickheads, they jerk wide awake, swerve over into your lane ever so intentionally, and hammer down the pedal on their behemoth to make sure you can't pass them. Once the threat of someone getting around them is gone they settle back into their phone conversation, put their brain back in neutral, and continue slowing down until someone else tries to pass them. God forbid you actually get around them because then they get all irrational and start trying to bugger your car with theirs. Then you have the age old dilema: speed up and break the law hoping they slack off again (fat chance!), continue to have them tailgate you all the way home/to work, or let them pass you and (after putting up with them slamming on their brakes when they cut in front of you) slowing back down to 10-15mph below the speed limit.
Seriously, sometimes I think mounting a retractable RPG or 50cal on the roof of my MINI is the only way to deal with the some of the SUV wielding imbeciles that roam our freeways in the south.
They may have blown up a building or two and killed alot of people but they really put a damper on future hijacking attempts. Now that people realize they could be the next 747-shaped wrecking ball they will be more motivated to stop the hijackers themselves.
Essentially, the 9/11 attacks have changed the playing field substantially. Previously passengers on a hijacked airplane were thinking they would be ferried to a third world country where long negotiations would eventually lead to their release. Sitting still and following orders was the best way to make it out unscathed. Now they have to consider they will die in a firey crash that kills thousands more of their fellow countrymen. Therefore, inaction is no longer a winning strategy for the hijackees. With the fear of imminent death on their minds you will probably see heroic self sacrifice instead of near catatonic immobility.
So, yeah, some terrorists wounded us. But the price they paid for introducing a relatively sheltered people to the harsh realities of this world is quite high.
Alcoholics have symptoms similar to those you describe except they also come with a large number of dead people from DUIs and overdoses. And yet, alcohol is legal.
My only contention with pot being illegal is that alcohol is legal and causes more damage tham pot ever has or will.
Even better would be an array of pencil-thin (or thinner) emitters that intersect at a specific point. Keep each beam at low power to penetrate healthy cells without damage but at the intersecting point you get very high energy that destroys only the targetted cells.
The problem with using industrialization as the yardstick is that it disregards all other costs and incentives. Industrialized countries already have a drastically higher labor cost than the underdevelpoed nations. Add in the additional, one sided burden of strict CO2 controls and those manufacturers in industrialized nations would move their operations to China or India. This mass exodous of jobs and manufacturing woud cause massive unemployment and unprecedented trade deficits in the industrialized nations.
In short you would see the economies of "underdeveloped" nations skyrocket while their labor foce would experience ever worsening conditions. When the dust settles and all the Kyoto protocols have been met by the industrialized nations they won't be solvent enough to force China and India to jump on board. And why would they? The example of bankrupted and impoverished industrailized nations would testify to the error of those ways.
"You're taking advantage of people who don't know what things really should cost. That's flat out wrong."
Let's look at this logically. Person A wants to sell something. They set a minimum number they will take and also have the option to set a price that anyone can but for before the auction expires. Person B wants to buy a specific item so he goes to the auction listings. Once there he sees the item Person A listed at a price he is willing to pay.
Neither Person A or person B is under coersion, nor are they pressured externally by physical needs or financial obligations because they are selling and buying non-real goods. Therefore it can be said the entire transaction is without compunction or undue influence. Furthermore, the information available to each party is symetrical. In may ways, this is even more fair than most real transactions.
Now, please explain exactly how Person B is acting unethical by purchasing Person A's item.
The concept of robot does not necessarily imply what you think it does. For example, Asimov himself introduced robots in his books that either adapted flesh and blood to their forms and even those who were indistinguishable from humans. Furthermore, the key ingredient of a robot in Asimov's world was a "positronic brain," further linking the "human/organic" concept and "robot." So if he is the inventor of the word (he isn't but for the sake of argument lets assume he is) wouldn't his concepts and writing have some bearing on the denotation of the word?
Similarly, have you watched Battlestar Galactica recently? Those Cylons don't look like trash cans with blinkenlights any more. They look human!
Don't you find it odd as dabblers in robotics extrapolate and advance their ideas they more closely approach and resemble the Capek's original vision? It sounds to me as if he was simply ahead of the curve.
Firstly, humans (myself included) are not the be-all and end-all on this planet, and if you disagree with that you're an a$$.
Agreed. However, there seem to be many people who place the value of human lives below what is reasonable and rational. If those people also happen to be environemntal activists I would put those people in the above mentioned "nutters" category. I think they also fall into your your category of "a$$" though on the other side of the spectrum.
"Secondly, the overwhelming majority of environmental activists are strong believers in non-violence."
I never said they weren't. For instance, my sister woks for the state government in Oregon and, it could easily be argued, does more positive good for environemntal caues in a week from within the system than outside actvists do in a year.
"but they all stop short of hurting people"
I call bullshit on this. I specifically referred to people who did violent things and lumped in people who did incredibly stupid and destructive things in the "nuter" category. I also added in those who, through their efforts, cause or increase human suffering and death indirectly through their activism as those rack up the largest potential death toll. For instance, consider the misery and deaths atributed to the continued burning of coal when clean nuclear power is available. Activists who protest against nuclear power are partially responsible for this. Their obstructions go back decades and thereby have caused immense suffering. If black lung, emphysema, and death isn't "hurting people" I don't know what is.
I never implied that everyone who is an environmental activist is a "nutter." If I were a more suspicious person I would be thinking "thou dost protest too much." As it is, I will wonder why you state that a tactic you claim never happens (hurting people) is "heavily frowned upon." Why would it even come up if it never, ever happens?
Don't be hard on yourself. Chalk it up to my lack of understanding, as you have cleared up quite a few of my questions with this post and what you said before seems to make alot more sense.
I think one piece of the puzzle I was missing is related to my personal frame of refernece. I have a somewhat pessimistic view of humanity in general, especially when it comes to government. In other words, if people live up (down!) to my expectations I don't think there would be any way for the system you describe to work. Essentially I believe that the kludge of private property rights works because of the incentive of profitable personal interest. Furthermore, the resource abuses you validly point to are a necessary evil that comes along with flawed governments governing flawed individuals. Without the selfish fruits of their labors (or posession of resources) there would be no inducement for people to properly care for those resources.
Then again, many nations and great political thinkers thought the "great experiment" was doomed to relatively quick failure when it was established. They were proven wrong for the most part, and I would like nothing more than to be proven wrong about my pessimistic expectations. I am no great thinker on these things either! Who knows, maybe a system like you describe could be the next evolution of national politics when the US finally goes the way of all the other large nations of the past.
"But I don't see why you have an exclusive right to use something that was just sitting there anyway.
I feel there is something in your argument I am missing. Like some vast underpinning idea is motivating your line of reasoning but it is one that I have never encountered before. Quite frankly, I don't understand you at all. It looks like you are arguing for communal ownership of everything as a positive, even though the pitfalls and proven problems with communal ownership are well documented. You seem to be arguing against rule of law, yet the communal ideas I seem to be reading would require monstrously draconian measures to enforce, which implies a govvernment with a set of inviolate rules appealing to a higher authority.
For example, if I take a seed, place it in earth where I live, water it, protect it from predators large and small, maintain a vigilant watch over it for years and years, pruning and fertilizing it to abundant health and perfection in my mind, you should then be able to come use it as you see fit in spite of my protests? Universal ownership implies universal access to all aspects of ownership. If you want to cut down the tree I so lovingly cared for because you are cold and need firewood you could do so without recourse. You seem to be arguing this, though I can't see how you get to that position.
Please don't take this as an indictment of your ideas. Consider it a plea from someone who earnestly wants to understand you and your thoughts.
According to this study, it is true reasoning with a 3 year old will not have the desired effect of generating instant compliance. They probably don't have the framework built yet to properly recall and act on the situation the way you, as a parent, want them to. However, since children are "storing" and then "recalling" the information when needed later, what better sorts of things to have them "store" than logically reasoned arguments and good vocabulary words.
You may see it as inept, however this could be one of the many reasons why children born to college educated parents are more likely to go to college themselves. If they are storing logical/reasoned arguments for behavior management it is possible they will be conditioned use logic and reason for their future behavioral choices. Not to mention the early exposure to multi-syllabic words. Really, is it too much to imagine that children will mimic the behaviors they see in their parents?
Also, as someone who had a high school vocabulary in kindergarten and the parent of children who had similar verbal skills at that age, I would really recommend not talking down to children. They absorb knowledge from their environment without even trying. Therefore, dumbing down the language you use, whether in the individual words or in the concepts you convey, could have the real life effect of dumbing down the child.
That all being said, sometimes the approach of a stern "NO" with a little gluteal whackage is exactly what is needed. I just don't see it as a panacea.
"Why is a person who is aware of and opposed to the large-scale destructive effects and massive alterations we are having on Earth's ecosystems and climate called a "nutter"
A nutter would be someone who is willing to sacrifice the comfort, well being, and even lives of other humans to achieve the environmental goals they espouse. Often the nutter does things like releasing minks from farms resulting in loss of thier lives (minks get killed from exposure, cars, dogs, etc.), emotional distress (minks kill domesticated animals, too!), and financial stress on business owners and insurers alike. Nutters also do things like burning Hummers thereby releasing in one hour chemicals far more toxic than the exhaust they will produce for the next 5 years of driving. Nutters also blow up fishing vessels, sabotage petroleum facilities, and actively encourage others to do the same.
Nutters also systematically oppose advancements in the developing world that industrialized nations already posess. Sounds ok until you consider the things they are opposing like electricity, water treatment, pesticide use, and sanitation. Those advancements could save countless lives, and yet the nutter places more value on their cause than a few million dead babies in Africa each year.
Normal members of society differ from nutters in this: they do not place the value of huiman life below the pursuit of their ideals. They also differ in the fact that most nutters can't see the clear cut for the trees, ie. nutters do things that are more destructive than the things they are offended by.
If chimpanzees were sufficiently tasty, or I was sufficiently hungry, I would have absolutely no problem eating one (or more.) Not much risk, as it stands, for the chimps though. They are rather hard to come by in North America and there are so many other delicious creatures, especially sea creatures, that I can easily get my hands on.
My first post was rather tongue-in-cheek. Hyperbolie aside, and since you press the point in all seriousness, I do not see how the intelligence of a prospective non-human meal is considered an ethical issue in and of itself. That being said, I can see how someone could successfully argue vegetarianism as a personal choice, and I can respect that even though I disagree. However, using perceived intelligence as an ethical factor seems rather contrived. One problem, for example, is there is no absolute measurement for intelligence (even in humans!) and intelligence differs from specimen to specimen even within the same species. Therefore, if intelligence is the standard, then a retarded chimpanzee might be edible while a cerebreally well-endowed cow would not. Do you have a Stanford Binet translated into Chimp and Cow?
Lastly, and maybe most importantly, if a species lacks the intelligence to have "high-level human social constructs like "treaties", lack power structures which would allow one...to speak for more than a few," it also lacks sufficient intelligence for me to treat it ethically any different than I would a fish, chicken, or cow.
"On the other hand, I'm completely against eating octopi and squid because they are extremely intelligent,"
I have never been a fan of one sided restrictions. They are unbalanced and often invite disaster. For example, I am sure those "intellignet" invertebrates would have absolutely no qualms about eating you if given the chance, regardless of your dietary abstinence. If Murphy is on enforcement patrol next time you are near a large body of water you will probably be eaten by a giant squid.
My threshold for excluding something tasty and nutritious from my dietary palette (and palate!) is much higher than some clever observed behaviors. On the day I receive a signed treaty from said invertebrates promising to never eat human flesh again I will seriously consider not eating them...quid pro quo, reciprocity and all that. Until then pass the calamari and Tako. I'm top of the food chain and I'm HUNGRY.
"we're being terribly unfair to our kids by turning the stories WE loved as children (as did the generation before us) into fare for adults, just because we don't want to give our toys up to the younger generations."
Let's compare:
My childhood: Pong, pinball, comic books, occasional movies. Their childhood: 24-7 Cable TV, PCs, X-box, Nintendos ad infinitum, tons of kids movies with the best CGI available evar, anime (and they don't have to translate it or risk being kicked out of school for having it.)
I say fuck 'em. They have more than ehough toys to play with. Let them read the comic books till they are old enough for the R rated super hero movies.
And no, you cant play with my vintage 1980's Millenium Falcon either. Get your own.
...not to mention your casual use of the word rape is offensive."
Get over yourself/it. People use kill, murder, war, and decimate regularly without hypersensitive reactions like yours and those words refer to acts that are much more objectionable than mere rape.
...blizzard should either license it to include in their vanilla client, or try to duplicate it.
This is definitely the way of Blizzard. Additional button bars used to be an add on. It's in the client now. Threat data and meters used to be addon only. Now the threat addons use client data for threat mechanics and there is a meter (albiet a sucky one) displayed for every mob. The "-fu" style ingame addon management is now incorporated (again suckily) into the client as well. Those are just a few of the *recent* changes that Blizzard has made to incorporate successful addons into the client. There are many more examples, but oddly not many addons have been completely relaced by the client's evil twin versions.
I think Blizzard not only wants a free ride on the backs of those unpaid devs, but they also want to makes sure those devs are so poor there is no chance they could mount a successful lawsuit against Blizzard for sealing their ideas.
The problem with your idea is that the foxes that have been fucking and eating the chickens in the banking hen house are the same foxes that are pulling the strings in Washington.
You think they are gonna give up all that sweet hen ass and free chicken dinners to boot in exchange for immediate economic pain? Pass what you have been smoking to the rest of us. It will ease my troubled mind.
"If I were a god that "invented" the universe and the humans within it, I certainly would not "require", "want", or "need" any kind of worship whatsoever.
I can't comment about other religious texts but I can say the Bible states God is extirely self sufficient without the worship of mankind or angels.
As for "worship" being silly, I can agree that the current ideas about what "worship" is are damned silly. However, if you take the denotation of "worship" from the Bible it is simply learning the thoughts and motivations of God. If there is a God I can think of no higher calling for humans than to participate in the mentality of the universe creator.
As for the word "god," it really depends on who you are talking to and what you are talking about. If you ask a biblical scholar who God is he will have an answer for you. If you ask Joseph Campbell I am sure he would have something entirely different to say. If you ask a Rabbi, Sufi, or an Imam they will have another answer altogether. To say categorically that all those definitions fall into a semantic black hole and become not only meaningless but also an indictment of the reality of god is a bit presumptious, to say the least.
Oddly, concepts like "If god is omnipotent, can he make a rock so heavy he cannot lift it?" more closely fit the mold of non-cognitivism than the acutal definitons of deities. Even more entertaining is to read the related page on ignosticism and replace God with "string theory." Even given the debate about the falsifiability of string theory, the applicability is stunning.
Too many "shoulds" and you neglect to consider the fact that those intervals are shortened below known safe levels by the city in the first place. Their concern for your safety and well being is already short circuted by their interest in reaching farther into your pocket. What makes you think that some nifty calculation they discarded years ago in the interestes of profit would now matter to them?
Regardless, even if you do go to court and successfully defend yourself you still will pay court costs out of pocket or out of your taxes. The city wins again! And for each person that stands up in court and gets this thrown out there will be 100 that just pay the fine. Another big win for them. And for each protested intersection there are hundreds of others that are not contested. So if they do change that light they can just change others to offset any loss of revenue. Hmmm, city wins again. Seeing a pattern?
Sorry for ranting, I just see a logical fallacy in going to the city court to remedy a situation when the city is the one fucking you. In addition I feel like the governments at city, state, and federal levels all feel entitled to whatever money they want from us. If they can't get it in the form of legallly passed taxes and expenditures they either deficit spend (costing us the $ plus the interest for 30 yeats!) or find ways to defraud us through manipulating the laws on the books. The whole thing leaves a horrible taste in my mouth and is eroding what little trust I had left in humanity and our sub-human elected officials.
Slashdot Mirror
They were probably squirming because they couldn't hide their erections well enough. A 1996 University of Georgia study of self-proclaimed and testing verefied homophobes found that most of them had erectile response while viewing homosexual pornography.
Maybe your ministrations were successful and this unending parade of young, fit, naked servicemen was just too much for these poor homophobes and they succumbed to their physiological drives and are now full fledged homosexuals. Then again maybe you just tortured some people who have a physiological response to male virility that they can't explain, don't want, and makes them hate themsleves.
I find it sad that people intentionally inflict psychic distress on other people. Doubly so that they do it for their own amusement. Fucking jerks.
If "they" could create a device that forced people to move over to the right lane when not overtaking and subsequently forced slow drivers to either speed up to the average speed or to get completely off the highways THAT would save lives, and innumerable lifetimes of time, and frustration, and tire and brake wear, etc. ad nauseum.
It is incredibly stupid how many people intentionally block traffic by moving into the left lane (in the US), pulling up next to the semi in the right lane who is moving at 15-20 mph under the posted speed limit, and then stop overtaking and just sit there. I literally see this behavior every day on my way to work.
That and people who have absolutely no idea of anything going on around them while in the leftmost lane and are traveling at 10-15 mph less than the posted speed. They continue talking on their cell phone, their SUV swaying lazily back and forth between the lines like some kind of enormous metallic kelp frond, going ever slower, until, after 5 minutes of trying you finally get an opportunity to safely overtake them in the right lane. Then through some preternatural sense available only to dickheads, they jerk wide awake, swerve over into your lane ever so intentionally, and hammer down the pedal on their behemoth to make sure you can't pass them. Once the threat of someone getting around them is gone they settle back into their phone conversation, put their brain back in neutral, and continue slowing down until someone else tries to pass them. God forbid you actually get around them because then they get all irrational and start trying to bugger your car with theirs. Then you have the age old dilema: speed up and break the law hoping they slack off again (fat chance!), continue to have them tailgate you all the way home/to work, or let them pass you and (after putting up with them slamming on their brakes when they cut in front of you) slowing back down to 10-15mph below the speed limit.
Seriously, sometimes I think mounting a retractable RPG or 50cal on the roof of my MINI is the only way to deal with the some of the SUV wielding imbeciles that roam our freeways in the south.
"Formula was applied recursively and the end result was completely divorced from reality."
"Working as intended", I am sure, would be the honest answer for the vast majority of people who are still spending the money they made off this.
They may have blown up a building or two and killed alot of people but they really put a damper on future hijacking attempts. Now that people realize they could be the next 747-shaped wrecking ball they will be more motivated to stop the hijackers themselves.
Essentially, the 9/11 attacks have changed the playing field substantially. Previously passengers on a hijacked airplane were thinking they would be ferried to a third world country where long negotiations would eventually lead to their release. Sitting still and following orders was the best way to make it out unscathed. Now they have to consider they will die in a firey crash that kills thousands more of their fellow countrymen. Therefore, inaction is no longer a winning strategy for the hijackees. With the fear of imminent death on their minds you will probably see heroic self sacrifice instead of near catatonic immobility.
So, yeah, some terrorists wounded us. But the price they paid for introducing a relatively sheltered people to the harsh realities of this world is quite high.
Alcoholics have symptoms similar to those you describe except they also come with a large number of dead people from DUIs and overdoses. And yet, alcohol is legal.
My only contention with pot being illegal is that alcohol is legal and causes more damage tham pot ever has or will.
Even better would be an array of pencil-thin (or thinner) emitters that intersect at a specific point. Keep each beam at low power to penetrate healthy cells without damage but at the intersecting point you get very high energy that destroys only the targetted cells.
The problem with using industrialization as the yardstick is that it disregards all other costs and incentives. Industrialized countries already have a drastically higher labor cost than the underdevelpoed nations. Add in the additional, one sided burden of strict CO2 controls and those manufacturers in industrialized nations would move their operations to China or India. This mass exodous of jobs and manufacturing woud cause massive unemployment and unprecedented trade deficits in the industrialized nations.
In short you would see the economies of "underdeveloped" nations skyrocket while their labor foce would experience ever worsening conditions. When the dust settles and all the Kyoto protocols have been met by the industrialized nations they won't be solvent enough to force China and India to jump on board. And why would they? The example of bankrupted and impoverished industrailized nations would testify to the error of those ways.
I thought I had read the same thing once and I found the article.
From USA Today article http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2009-03-29-nuclear-power-energy-return_N.htm/.
Only one company, Japan Steel Works, builds the 600-ton steel forgings used to make reactor vessels. It can make only five or six a year.
"You're taking advantage of people who don't know what things really should cost. That's flat out wrong."
Let's look at this logically. Person A wants to sell something. They set a minimum number they will take and also have the option to set a price that anyone can but for before the auction expires. Person B wants to buy a specific item so he goes to the auction listings. Once there he sees the item Person A listed at a price he is willing to pay.
Neither Person A or person B is under coersion, nor are they pressured externally by physical needs or financial obligations because they are selling and buying non-real goods. Therefore it can be said the entire transaction is without compunction or undue influence. Furthermore, the information available to each party is symetrical. In may ways, this is even more fair than most real transactions.
Now, please explain exactly how Person B is acting unethical by purchasing Person A's item.
The concept of robot does not necessarily imply what you think it does. For example, Asimov himself introduced robots in his books that either adapted flesh and blood to their forms and even those who were indistinguishable from humans. Furthermore, the key ingredient of a robot in Asimov's world was a "positronic brain," further linking the "human/organic" concept and "robot." So if he is the inventor of the word (he isn't but for the sake of argument lets assume he is) wouldn't his concepts and writing have some bearing on the denotation of the word?
Similarly, have you watched Battlestar Galactica recently? Those Cylons don't look like trash cans with blinkenlights any more. They look human!
Don't you find it odd as dabblers in robotics extrapolate and advance their ideas they more closely approach and resemble the Capek's original vision? It sounds to me as if he was simply ahead of the curve.
Of course you see nothing facing in toward the black hole, but what if you turned around? :)
Firstly, humans (myself included) are not the be-all and end-all on this planet, and if you disagree with that you're an a$$.
Agreed. However, there seem to be many people who place the value of human lives below what is reasonable and rational. If those people also happen to be environemntal activists I would put those people in the above mentioned "nutters" category. I think they also fall into your your category of "a$$" though on the other side of the spectrum.
"Secondly, the overwhelming majority of environmental activists are strong believers in non-violence."
I never said they weren't. For instance, my sister woks for the state government in Oregon and, it could easily be argued, does more positive good for environemntal caues in a week from within the system than outside actvists do in a year.
"but they all stop short of hurting people"
I call bullshit on this. I specifically referred to people who did violent things and lumped in people who did incredibly stupid and destructive things in the "nuter" category. I also added in those who, through their efforts, cause or increase human suffering and death indirectly through their activism as those rack up the largest potential death toll. For instance, consider the misery and deaths atributed to the continued burning of coal when clean nuclear power is available. Activists who protest against nuclear power are partially responsible for this. Their obstructions go back decades and thereby have caused immense suffering. If black lung, emphysema, and death isn't "hurting people" I don't know what is.
I never implied that everyone who is an environmental activist is a "nutter." If I were a more suspicious person I would be thinking "thou dost protest too much." As it is, I will wonder why you state that a tactic you claim never happens (hurting people) is "heavily frowned upon." Why would it even come up if it never, ever happens?
"I've been arguing (incoherently, I guess)"
Don't be hard on yourself. Chalk it up to my lack of understanding, as you have cleared up quite a few of my questions with this post and what you said before seems to make alot more sense.
I think one piece of the puzzle I was missing is related to my personal frame of refernece. I have a somewhat pessimistic view of humanity in general, especially when it comes to government. In other words, if people live up (down!) to my expectations I don't think there would be any way for the system you describe to work. Essentially I believe that the kludge of private property rights works because of the incentive of profitable personal interest. Furthermore, the resource abuses you validly point to are a necessary evil that comes along with flawed governments governing flawed individuals. Without the selfish fruits of their labors (or posession of resources) there would be no inducement for people to properly care for those resources.
Then again, many nations and great political thinkers thought the "great experiment" was doomed to relatively quick failure when it was established. They were proven wrong for the most part, and I would like nothing more than to be proven wrong about my pessimistic expectations. I am no great thinker on these things either! Who knows, maybe a system like you describe could be the next evolution of national politics when the US finally goes the way of all the other large nations of the past.
"But I don't see why you have an exclusive right to use something that was just sitting there anyway.
I feel there is something in your argument I am missing. Like some vast underpinning idea is motivating your line of reasoning but it is one that I have never encountered before. Quite frankly, I don't understand you at all. It looks like you are arguing for communal ownership of everything as a positive, even though the pitfalls and proven problems with communal ownership are well documented. You seem to be arguing against rule of law, yet the communal ideas I seem to be reading would require monstrously draconian measures to enforce, which implies a govvernment with a set of inviolate rules appealing to a higher authority.
For example, if I take a seed, place it in earth where I live, water it, protect it from predators large and small, maintain a vigilant watch over it for years and years, pruning and fertilizing it to abundant health and perfection in my mind, you should then be able to come use it as you see fit in spite of my protests? Universal ownership implies universal access to all aspects of ownership. If you want to cut down the tree I so lovingly cared for because you are cold and need firewood you could do so without recourse. You seem to be arguing this, though I can't see how you get to that position.
Please don't take this as an indictment of your ideas. Consider it a plea from someone who earnestly wants to understand you and your thoughts.
According to this study, it is true reasoning with a 3 year old will not have the desired effect of generating instant compliance. They probably don't have the framework built yet to properly recall and act on the situation the way you, as a parent, want them to. However, since children are "storing" and then "recalling" the information when needed later, what better sorts of things to have them "store" than logically reasoned arguments and good vocabulary words.
You may see it as inept, however this could be one of the many reasons why children born to college educated parents are more likely to go to college themselves. If they are storing logical/reasoned arguments for behavior management it is possible they will be conditioned use logic and reason for their future behavioral choices. Not to mention the early exposure to multi-syllabic words. Really, is it too much to imagine that children will mimic the behaviors they see in their parents?
Also, as someone who had a high school vocabulary in kindergarten and the parent of children who had similar verbal skills at that age, I would really recommend not talking down to children. They absorb knowledge from their environment without even trying. Therefore, dumbing down the language you use, whether in the individual words or in the concepts you convey, could have the real life effect of dumbing down the child.
That all being said, sometimes the approach of a stern "NO" with a little gluteal whackage is exactly what is needed. I just don't see it as a panacea.
"Why is a person who is aware of and opposed to the large-scale destructive effects and massive alterations we are having on Earth's ecosystems and climate called a "nutter"
A nutter would be someone who is willing to sacrifice the comfort, well being, and even lives of other humans to achieve the environmental goals they espouse. Often the nutter does things like releasing minks from farms resulting in loss of thier lives (minks get killed from exposure, cars, dogs, etc.), emotional distress (minks kill domesticated animals, too!), and financial stress on business owners and insurers alike. Nutters also do things like burning Hummers thereby releasing in one hour chemicals far more toxic than the exhaust they will produce for the next 5 years of driving. Nutters also blow up fishing vessels, sabotage petroleum facilities, and actively encourage others to do the same.
Nutters also systematically oppose advancements in the developing world that industrialized nations already posess. Sounds ok until you consider the things they are opposing like electricity, water treatment, pesticide use, and sanitation. Those advancements could save countless lives, and yet the nutter places more value on their cause than a few million dead babies in Africa each year.
Normal members of society differ from nutters in this: they do not place the value of huiman life below the pursuit of their ideals. They also differ in the fact that most nutters can't see the clear cut for the trees, ie. nutters do things that are more destructive than the things they are offended by.
If chimpanzees were sufficiently tasty, or I was sufficiently hungry, I would have absolutely no problem eating one (or more.) Not much risk, as it stands, for the chimps though. They are rather hard to come by in North America and there are so many other delicious creatures, especially sea creatures, that I can easily get my hands on.
My first post was rather tongue-in-cheek. Hyperbolie aside, and since you press the point in all seriousness, I do not see how the intelligence of a prospective non-human meal is considered an ethical issue in and of itself. That being said, I can see how someone could successfully argue vegetarianism as a personal choice, and I can respect that even though I disagree. However, using perceived intelligence as an ethical factor seems rather contrived. One problem, for example, is there is no absolute measurement for intelligence (even in humans!) and intelligence differs from specimen to specimen even within the same species. Therefore, if intelligence is the standard, then a retarded chimpanzee might be edible while a cerebreally well-endowed cow would not. Do you have a Stanford Binet translated into Chimp and Cow?
Lastly, and maybe most importantly, if a species lacks the intelligence to have "high-level human social constructs like "treaties", lack power structures which would allow one...to speak for more than a few," it also lacks sufficient intelligence for me to treat it ethically any different than I would a fish, chicken, or cow.
"On the other hand, I'm completely against eating octopi and squid because they are extremely intelligent,"
I have never been a fan of one sided restrictions. They are unbalanced and often invite disaster. For example, I am sure those "intellignet" invertebrates would have absolutely no qualms about eating you if given the chance, regardless of your dietary abstinence. If Murphy is on enforcement patrol next time you are near a large body of water you will probably be eaten by a giant squid.
My threshold for excluding something tasty and nutritious from my dietary palette (and palate!) is much higher than some clever observed behaviors. On the day I receive a signed treaty from said invertebrates promising to never eat human flesh again I will seriously consider not eating them...quid pro quo, reciprocity and all that. Until then pass the calamari and Tako. I'm top of the food chain and I'm HUNGRY.
"we're being terribly unfair to our kids by turning the stories WE loved as children (as did the generation before us) into fare for adults, just because we don't want to give our toys up to the younger generations."
Let's compare:
My childhood: Pong, pinball, comic books, occasional movies.
Their childhood: 24-7 Cable TV, PCs, X-box, Nintendos ad infinitum, tons of kids movies with the best CGI available evar, anime (and they don't have to translate it or risk being kicked out of school for having it.)
I say fuck 'em. They have more than ehough toys to play with. Let them read the comic books till they are old enough for the R rated super hero movies.
And no, you cant play with my vintage 1980's Millenium Falcon either. Get your own.
...not to mention your casual use of the word rape is offensive."
Get over yourself/it. People use kill, murder, war, and decimate regularly without hypersensitive reactions like yours and those words refer to acts that are much more objectionable than mere rape.
...blizzard should either license it to include in their vanilla client, or try to duplicate it.
This is definitely the way of Blizzard. Additional button bars used to be an add on. It's in the client now. Threat data and meters used to be addon only. Now the threat addons use client data for threat mechanics and there is a meter (albiet a sucky one) displayed for every mob. The "-fu" style ingame addon management is now incorporated (again suckily) into the client as well. Those are just a few of the *recent* changes that Blizzard has made to incorporate successful addons into the client. There are many more examples, but oddly not many addons have been completely relaced by the client's evil twin versions.
I think Blizzard not only wants a free ride on the backs of those unpaid devs, but they also want to makes sure those devs are so poor there is no chance they could mount a successful lawsuit against Blizzard for sealing their ideas.
The problem with your idea is that the foxes that have been fucking and eating the chickens in the banking hen house are the same foxes that are pulling the strings in Washington.
You think they are gonna give up all that sweet hen ass and free chicken dinners to boot in exchange for immediate economic pain? Pass what you have been smoking to the rest of us. It will ease my troubled mind.
"If I were a god that "invented" the universe and the humans within it, I certainly would not "require", "want", or "need" any kind of worship whatsoever.
I can't comment about other religious texts but I can say the Bible states God is extirely self sufficient without the worship of mankind or angels.
As for "worship" being silly, I can agree that the current ideas about what "worship" is are damned silly. However, if you take the denotation of "worship" from the Bible it is simply learning the thoughts and motivations of God. If there is a God I can think of no higher calling for humans than to participate in the mentality of the universe creator.
As for the word "god," it really depends on who you are talking to and what you are talking about. If you ask a biblical scholar who God is he will have an answer for you. If you ask Joseph Campbell I am sure he would have something entirely different to say. If you ask a Rabbi, Sufi, or an Imam they will have another answer altogether. To say categorically that all those definitions fall into a semantic black hole and become not only meaningless but also an indictment of the reality of god is a bit presumptious, to say the least.
Oddly, concepts like "If god is omnipotent, can he make a rock so heavy he cannot lift it?" more closely fit the mold of non-cognitivism than the acutal definitons of deities. Even more entertaining is to read the related page on ignosticism and replace God with "string theory." Even given the debate about the falsifiability of string theory, the applicability is stunning.
Fart jokes may be good but they will never displace the all-time king of comedy: watching some poor schmuck get clobbered in the nuts.
Nothing will ever, ever, EVER compare to the 'ol junk punch in the man business.
To quote Homer Simpson: It works on so many levels!
Too many "shoulds" and you neglect to consider the fact that those intervals are shortened below known safe levels by the city in the first place. Their concern for your safety and well being is already short circuted by their interest in reaching farther into your pocket. What makes you think that some nifty calculation they discarded years ago in the interestes of profit would now matter to them?
Regardless, even if you do go to court and successfully defend yourself you still will pay court costs out of pocket or out of your taxes. The city wins again! And for each person that stands up in court and gets this thrown out there will be 100 that just pay the fine. Another big win for them. And for each protested intersection there are hundreds of others that are not contested. So if they do change that light they can just change others to offset any loss of revenue. Hmmm, city wins again. Seeing a pattern?
Sorry for ranting, I just see a logical fallacy in going to the city court to remedy a situation when the city is the one fucking you. In addition I feel like the governments at city, state, and federal levels all feel entitled to whatever money they want from us. If they can't get it in the form of legallly passed taxes and expenditures they either deficit spend (costing us the $ plus the interest for 30 yeats!) or find ways to defraud us through manipulating the laws on the books. The whole thing leaves a horrible taste in my mouth and is eroding what little trust I had left in humanity and our sub-human elected officials.