Could people PLEASE stop misusing the term "begging the question"? It has nothing to do with "raising interesting or relevant questions" or "answering my own dumb question." It's a logical fallacy having to do with assuming the conclusion of an argument in its premises.
Hey, I would be mad if someone decided that they could take something I'd worked very hard on and do any damn thing they pleased with it: and then a bunch of whiny brats would make up all sorts of ridiculous excuses as to why it's okay. Hey look: something I want! Time to invent a morality that'll justify me taking it!
Ok, you're wrong. The definition of a dictator is having one GUY run the government. I'm talking about the government, or muliple governments, period: the sense in which Weber reffers to the state as having a monopoly on violence. If given a choice between paying both taxes to the government and paying protection to the mob, I'd rather pick one or the other rather than having both squeezing me AND a turf war between the two.
I think you got lost somewhere in there. We're talking about the state monopoly on coercive force, not a productive industry. Yes: democracy is a good way to control this monopoly. But the fact remains, you can't have two military powers controlling the same territory: or maybe you can, but it would probably be more destructive than the alternative.
What people really need to understand is that taxation and the deficit is a choice about financing. The real problem is not WHEN we pay back what we owe, but how much we owe. We can either have higher taxes now, or borrow now and have higher taxes later. In the end, one choice is not really much worse than the other. It's the spending that's the problem: taxation levels really are better left as concerns for their effect on macroeconomic policy, not for their effects on the deficit.
There definately is some merit in the idea that we are better off having one bully with a monopoly on force than several bullies duking it out in turf wars.
---But in the same breath, you have no problem ignoring two amendments of the Constitution and refer to them as ink blots? Amazing. People like you are born for the Gulag.---
The "ink blot" comment comes from ultra-conservative states-right advocate judge Bork. It's not that everyone _disagrees_ with the idea behind them: but as matters of law, they've become moot: nigh useless as tools against federal authority. I have a suggestion: learn what the hell you're talking about before railing on about it.
Well, the one scene I was hoping for isn't there: the "Cloak of Many Colors" exchange between Gandalf and Saruman. Some of the best and most important stuff in the entire book regarding wizards. Maybe it'll be in Two Towers for some reason, but I really can't trust directors and writers that would miss the power and importance of that scene (in favor of THREE repeats of Sauron losing his finger, Sam drowning in slow-mo, etc.)
---Article IX, and references to States rights in Article X (essentially the concept of enumered powers and delegation of powers).---
Oh, you mean the "ink blot"? What a bullshit arguement. No constitutional scholar thinks those vague amendments preclude the government from doing things like keeping a database on guns or doing more extensive background checks.
---So that's really the catch-22 situation with the second ammendment. As long as the government doesn't try fucking with it, you don't need it. But once they mess with your right to bear arms, who knows which ammendment they'll take next, now that you can't fight back.---
Someone could have made the same arguement about any number of bad laws. It just doesn't make sense to pretend that EVERYTHING is a slippery slope. Sometimes avoiding the slippery slope is a slippery slope. Sometimes there's a much stabler plateau a little ways down the slope.
You're being silly (and hey, even if it WAS comparable to tire imprints, even THAT is still often useful). Bullet rifling has been used successfully for IDs in countless trials, and indeed we already have a database of guns and bullets used in crimes. Using rifling information from all firearms would certainly allow us to narrow down the possibilities of a given bullet strike. I can't see how this idea would be objectionable to gun owners.
Uh, when have they taken an anti-gun ownership position on 2nd amendment cases, except on privacy issues? They generally go after underfunded causes when clients ask for their help... and 2nd amendment cases are rarely underfunded, nor do they call the ACLU. They call the NRA.
I don't have any problem with the idea that people should be able to own guns. What boggles my mind is that, in the face of pushing the limits of other constitutional protections, he refuses to impinge on the _privacy_ of gun ownership. For someone who doesn't even think there is a right to privacy, this is certainly a very new and creative reading of the constitution. We can track car ownership, but not ballistic fingerprints of weapons or gun sales? What the heck does that even have to do with the second amendment? Where does it say "the right to bear arms shall not be infringed... nor any data collected on the use of these arms?" There are reasonable efforts to protect people from eroding away the second amendment, and then there's flat-out nutty paranoia.
Re:is it so hard to believe?
on
Life on Pluto?
·
· Score: 2
---I think that free will means that people can make their own decisions with some internal source of true non-deterministic randomness.---
Unfortunately, that doesn't help. Randomness isn't any more conducive to explaining "free will" than is determinism. Determinism breaks the "free" part: randomness, by definition, breaks the "will" part. It's still unintelligible, no matter WHAT you imagine the conditions of the universe are, or what people are (even appealing to the supernatural doesn't help, because no matter what set of laws or explanations you use, the concept STILL doesn't make any sense).
Re:is it so hard to believe?
on
Life on Pluto?
·
· Score: 2
The problem is that "free will" is a non-idea. No one can even explain what you mean by it, so how can we discuss whether we have it or not?
The main confusion comes because people talk about "free will" in the sense that we can make decisions internally, without being wholly forced by immediate outside factors: this is the sense in which "human experience" confirms free will. Unfortunately, it's not what anyone really means by "free will" which is something even weirder: that we someone make choices "free" from ourselves, our natures, our will. It's almost an oxymoron. If some particular "will" isn't making the choices, what is? Specifying anything destroys the very concept its trying to establish!
But... it did have the musical score that the original poster was interested in.
The history of St. Joan is conflicted, not simple. It's something that could benefit from multiple interpretations, and I don't see why the interpretation of the Messenger is a bad thing. It may have been a lousy movie (I didn't see it), but that doesn't make the concept lousy, or even historically inaccurate.
No, it wasn't awful. I think there are a lot of things to praise in it: it was an action movie in which the characters definately seemed to feel geniune emotion about each other. But the clowning Merry and Pippin, the awful council of Elrond: it just felt like the people who did the script had no feel for the material, or ANY material. Stilted dialogue, poorly timed... bah. There shouldn't be stuff that could have been so easily corrected with a little thought.
Yeah: fucking idiotic of them. It wouldn't have been THAT hard to conceal Gandalf's return, but in the trailer they not only show him, but even pretty much what's been happening with him up till now!
Woe is me. I thought there were too many just plain movie cliches that sucked the life out of the story. Gandalf simply falls, instead of being pulled down by the whip? Five minutes of Sam drowning in slow motion after an already exhausting few hours? Cutting out the cloak of many colors discussion in favor of a bunch of goofy orc training montages and a wizard battle? Arwen bursting into tears and reading Halmark card dialogue over someone she's never even met before? If it was any other film than LOTR, I'd STILL think those were just plain stupid.
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Funny how people will "understand" anything that justifies their desires.
Or perhaps interested in these brilliant gems of wit and wisdom?:
you are very bright
Shut up
Quiet tards
---Maybe this is begging the question---
Could people PLEASE stop misusing the term "begging the question"? It has nothing to do with "raising interesting or relevant questions" or "answering my own dumb question." It's a logical fallacy having to do with assuming the conclusion of an argument in its premises.
---displayed to world in an unfinished state and open to vastly inaccurate judgement.---
Not to mention a bunch of retarded kids who'll climb all over each other to piss on everything in sight just to prove how cool they are.
Hey, I would be mad if someone decided that they could take something I'd worked very hard on and do any damn thing they pleased with it: and then a bunch of whiny brats would make up all sorts of ridiculous excuses as to why it's okay. Hey look: something I want! Time to invent a morality that'll justify me taking it!
Ok, you're wrong. The definition of a dictator is having one GUY run the government. I'm talking about the government, or muliple governments, period: the sense in which Weber reffers to the state as having a monopoly on violence. If given a choice between paying both taxes to the government and paying protection to the mob, I'd rather pick one or the other rather than having both squeezing me AND a turf war between the two.
I think you got lost somewhere in there. We're talking about the state monopoly on coercive force, not a productive industry. Yes: democracy is a good way to control this monopoly. But the fact remains, you can't have two military powers controlling the same territory: or maybe you can, but it would probably be more destructive than the alternative.
What people really need to understand is that taxation and the deficit is a choice about financing. The real problem is not WHEN we pay back what we owe, but how much we owe. We can either have higher taxes now, or borrow now and have higher taxes later. In the end, one choice is not really much worse than the other. It's the spending that's the problem: taxation levels really are better left as concerns for their effect on macroeconomic policy, not for their effects on the deficit.
There definately is some merit in the idea that we are better off having one bully with a monopoly on force than several bullies duking it out in turf wars.
---But in the same breath, you have no problem ignoring two amendments of the Constitution and refer to them as ink blots? Amazing. People like you are born for the Gulag.---
The "ink blot" comment comes from ultra-conservative states-right advocate judge Bork. It's not that everyone _disagrees_ with the idea behind them: but as matters of law, they've become moot: nigh useless as tools against federal authority. I have a suggestion: learn what the hell you're talking about before railing on about it.
Well, the one scene I was hoping for isn't there: the "Cloak of Many Colors" exchange between Gandalf and Saruman. Some of the best and most important stuff in the entire book regarding wizards. Maybe it'll be in Two Towers for some reason, but I really can't trust directors and writers that would miss the power and importance of that scene (in favor of THREE repeats of Sauron losing his finger, Sam drowning in slow-mo, etc.)
---Article IX, and references to States rights in Article X (essentially the concept of enumered powers and delegation of powers).---
Oh, you mean the "ink blot"? What a bullshit arguement. No constitutional scholar thinks those vague amendments preclude the government from doing things like keeping a database on guns or doing more extensive background checks.
---So that's really the catch-22 situation with the second ammendment. As long as the government doesn't try fucking with it, you don't need it. But once they mess with your right to bear arms, who knows which ammendment they'll take next, now that you can't fight back.---
Someone could have made the same arguement about any number of bad laws. It just doesn't make sense to pretend that EVERYTHING is a slippery slope. Sometimes avoiding the slippery slope is a slippery slope. Sometimes there's a much stabler plateau a little ways down the slope.
You're being silly (and hey, even if it WAS comparable to tire imprints, even THAT is still often useful). Bullet rifling has been used successfully for IDs in countless trials, and indeed we already have a database of guns and bullets used in crimes. Using rifling information from all firearms would certainly allow us to narrow down the possibilities of a given bullet strike. I can't see how this idea would be objectionable to gun owners.
Uh, when have they taken an anti-gun ownership position on 2nd amendment cases, except on privacy issues? They generally go after underfunded causes when clients ask for their help... and 2nd amendment cases are rarely underfunded, nor do they call the ACLU. They call the NRA.
I don't have any problem with the idea that people should be able to own guns. What boggles my mind is that, in the face of pushing the limits of other constitutional protections, he refuses to impinge on the _privacy_ of gun ownership. For someone who doesn't even think there is a right to privacy, this is certainly a very new and creative reading of the constitution. We can track car ownership, but not ballistic fingerprints of weapons or gun sales? What the heck does that even have to do with the second amendment? Where does it say "the right to bear arms shall not be infringed... nor any data collected on the use of these arms?" There are reasonable efforts to protect people from eroding away the second amendment, and then there's flat-out nutty paranoia.
God is $1 being with $3 faces...
Richard DAWKINS, not Dawson. Dawson is a creek.
---I think that free will means that people can make their own decisions with some internal source of true non-deterministic randomness.---
Unfortunately, that doesn't help. Randomness isn't any more conducive to explaining "free will" than is determinism. Determinism breaks the "free" part: randomness, by definition, breaks the "will" part. It's still unintelligible, no matter WHAT you imagine the conditions of the universe are, or what people are (even appealing to the supernatural doesn't help, because no matter what set of laws or explanations you use, the concept STILL doesn't make any sense).
The problem is that "free will" is a non-idea. No one can even explain what you mean by it, so how can we discuss whether we have it or not?
The main confusion comes because people talk about "free will" in the sense that we can make decisions internally, without being wholly forced by immediate outside factors: this is the sense in which "human experience" confirms free will. Unfortunately, it's not what anyone really means by "free will" which is something even weirder: that we someone make choices "free" from ourselves, our natures, our will. It's almost an oxymoron. If some particular "will" isn't making the choices, what is? Specifying anything destroys the very concept its trying to establish!
But... it did have the musical score that the original poster was interested in.
The history of St. Joan is conflicted, not simple. It's something that could benefit from multiple interpretations, and I don't see why the interpretation of the Messenger is a bad thing. It may have been a lousy movie (I didn't see it), but that doesn't make the concept lousy, or even historically inaccurate.
No, it wasn't awful. I think there are a lot of things to praise in it: it was an action movie in which the characters definately seemed to feel geniune emotion about each other. But the clowning Merry and Pippin, the awful council of Elrond: it just felt like the people who did the script had no feel for the material, or ANY material. Stilted dialogue, poorly timed... bah. There shouldn't be stuff that could have been so easily corrected with a little thought.
It's from some Joan of Arc movie with that chic the Fifth Element. I forget theexact name, but you should be able to find it from that description.
Yeah: fucking idiotic of them. It wouldn't have been THAT hard to conceal Gandalf's return, but in the trailer they not only show him, but even pretty much what's been happening with him up till now!
Woe is me. I thought there were too many just plain movie cliches that sucked the life out of the story. Gandalf simply falls, instead of being pulled down by the whip? Five minutes of Sam drowning in slow motion after an already exhausting few hours? Cutting out the cloak of many colors discussion in favor of a bunch of goofy orc training montages and a wizard battle? Arwen bursting into tears and reading Halmark card dialogue over someone she's never even met before? If it was any other film than LOTR, I'd STILL think those were just plain stupid.