I wouldn't call the baseline Democratic attitudes towards those things fear. It's more like indignation. It is indignation that causes us to value egalitarianism, the sense that we could be so much better than we are if we only tried.
I think the fear (we should really have a broader palette of words for this kind of thing that doesn't automatically cast people as unreasonable) comes into play when a conservative looks at these ideals, which he theoretically shares, and thinks, "we'll probably fail." A liberal looks at the prospect of failure and thinks, "It wouldn't be so bad to fail, certainly not as bad as never trying."
Aristotle says the virtues are always midpoints between extremes, and the extremes are vices.
The opposite of cowardice isn't courage, it's rashness. Courage is the temperate midpoint between the vice of cowardice and the vice of rashness. Courage accepts danger but acts, which makes it different from either extreme.
Rashness and cowardice are the kinds of superficial opposites that have many inner similarities. The coward fears to act, and the fool fears to think.
It's not like Republicans tend to avoid military service after demanding it,
Ever hear the term "chickenhawk"?
I wouldn't extend that to all Republicans, or even exclusively to Republicans. But it is a remarkable phenomenon among ultra-hawkish people, which most Republicans I know are not. It's just that these people are extremely loud and aggressive in their war mongering so we hear them more. They are extremely craven, not just in their military service (or lack of it), but in all their opinions.
I'm not sure that addresses the GP's legal theory.
The GP's legal theory amounts to this: anybody who owns a DVD should be considered (speaking VERY roughly of course) as a de facto licensee of the patent because they have purchased a product which embodies that invention. At least for purposes of playing that DVD.
Here's an analogy (rather bad as usual). Suppose Company X has patents covering anti-lock brake sensors. They then license this to Delco, who produces bearings containing the sensor technology. Delco then sells the bearing to GM, and GM sells the car to you. Company X has no to be able to control GM's resale of its technology, because the technology in each baring has been paid for already -- by Delco. Likewise they can't try to demand some kind of payment from the consumer.
What is different here is that software splits the multimedia problem into two pieces: encoding and decoding. The codec is not the same artifact containing the technology duly paid for by the consumer through various intermediaries. It's not an artifact at all.
Now some thing seem quite clear to me. If some company starts selling (or distributing for free for its own financial benefit which is morally the same thing) a codec with unlicensed, patented technology, they're over the line. They did not pay the patent holder any dough, and so have no right to benefit from the invention that way.
Now what if the user downloads the codec from some place where the patent is not legally recognized? The distributor is not usurping any legal rights of the patent holder. What about the recipient? That's an intriguing question.
There is no way winning this way would "help" Obama, unless winning the Presidency is worth throwing the country into turmoil.
I agree, if Barr wins this, the Texas legislature had better amend the rules. They'd be better off just picking 34 McCain electors than to risk plunging the entire country into crisis.
Theoretically, if the electors are selected according to Texas law, there should be no technical reason for the crisis. You can look at this like a failure tree:
(1) Obama or McCain get an absolute majority without Texas.
Result: no crisis.
(2) Obama gets a plurality which means McCain would have won if he was awarded Texas.
Result: Republicans argue that Texans were disenfranchised, and that the election should go to McCain.
(2.1) Obama plurality + the Supreme Court rules that the Texas electors were legitimately selected.
Result: The results will be technically legitimatee, but Republicans will nonetheless nonetheless refuse to acknowledge this as right or just. If the Democrats don't get a supermajority in the US Senate, the legislative branch grinds to a halt.
(2.2) Obama plurality + Supreme Court rules that the Texas electors were not legitimate.
Result: Real Constitutional crisis, because there's no procedure for dealing with this.
Result: Republicans won't accept this. If the Democrats fail to win a supermajority in the Senate, the Republicans bring all public business to a halt. If the Democrats DO win a supermajority (which is likely), we have millions of angry Republicans ready to continue the fight by other means.
(2.2.2) Tx electors illegitimate + some kind of do-over, perhaps by legislative fiat in Texas.
Result: McCain wins. We have millions of angry Democrats ready to continue the fight by other means.
(3) Obama and McCain tie, exclusive of Texas.
Result: the election goes to the House. Oddly enough, sufficient numbers of red states have blue house delegations that this will PROBABLY throw the election to Obama. See 2.2.1. If it throws the election to McCain see 2.2.2.
(4) McCain wins a plurality.
Result: nothing. Since Obama has no chance of capturing Texas, the Texas situation did not change the result.
CONCLUSION: If Barr is successful, then we'd better pray that either Obama wins an outright majority, or McCain wins a plurality, because every other case leads to massive public dissatisfaction and unrest. It'd be the biggest political crisis in American history since the Civil War.
While comparing this to the Civil War might seem melodramatic, this is the kind of crisis that set countries down that path. We'd have millions of very angry, hostile people on either side of this question, and if it didn't lead to outright fighting, it wouldn't be surprising if it lead to a persistent, low level of domestic terror and sabotage.
What makes those parties special is that the vast majority of people want to vote for one or the other of them. Given that BOTH campaigns made a technical violation here, it's fairly certain that there is something broken with the filing requirements or the way that they were communicated.
It seems to me being so doctrinaire about this only creates the incentive for abuse. How do we know that it wasn't some political extremist in the SoS's office feeding the campaigns misinformation? If you could knock out a candidate this way, there'd be real incentive to do so.
The situation with third party candidates is different. They're screwed by plurality voting. If they had a candidate who was a serious contender in a three way race, I'd say bend the rules for them too. If they are too weak to have any chance of winning then tough luck.
Is this unfair to third party candidates? Absolutely. But it's not what keeps them out of power. Nor is this about the candidates. It's about the sovereignty of the people. Rules that interfere with the sovereignty of the people ought to be set aside.
Deadlines and rules ought to be observed, but not to the point with interfering with the sovereignty of the people, which is altogether a superior concern.
My only complaint is that they boot you right into a GUI. What if I don't want a GUI?
Of course, the warm fuzzies I get from having a CLI as close that the alt key is the confidence that if something goes wrong with the GUI I can still have a computer while I muck around with X86Config. So maybe it isn't an entirely rational position.
One thing I've lawyers say about defamation suits is that they're usually not worth bringing. It isn't just the burden of proof, it's that the publicity reinforces the defamation in the public eye. Parody might work here, but you've got to shred the Apple message, not riff off of it. You can't be timid with parody; there's no half way. Half way parody only reinforces what you want to fight.
So Microsoft can't just bring the "I'm a PC" character out to defend himself, because that just reinforces the negative message. "I am not a boring nerd!" ** yawn **. They have to bring out the "I am a Mac" guy out and make him look like a total ass. Make him a pretentious airhead who spends all his time talking about how cool he is while "I am a PC" is quietly getting the job done.
Of course, they can't do that without insulting everybody who has ever bought a Mac -- possibly even insulting everyone who's bought any Apple product. Given the number of iPods out there, that's a lot of people.
Real parody is not nice. That makes it hard to pull it off when people think you're a vicious asshole. Maybe that was the point of the Seinfeld/Gates thing; to give MS a more aw-shucks regular guy image before they pulled out their sharp knives. Looks like they pulled out their sharp knife just long enough for a self-inflicted wound.
The ad would be better just showing all the cool things you can do with a Windows PC, which is the point. They still need a hook, but it couldn't be hard to come up with a better one than, "You probably think I'm boring, but I'm not as boring as you think."
You miss one primary point. It was never the intention of our Founding Fathers that the President should be elected by the "will of the People". In fact it was their intention **not** to elect the President by the will of the People, but by a college of Educated Men
Actually I get that point. However, the process was supposed to be republican, in which the will of the people is filtered through cooler and wiser heads.
A system of selecting electors that does not reflect the will of the people or their representatives is not what they had in mind. An election in which the vast majority of voters are denied a reasonable choice is not republican government, which is guaranteed to citizens of states by the Constitution.
Oh, but it does. The reason the candidates ignore ND is that it's a safe state. The same reason they ignore Massachusetts, which has 12 EVs but are squabbling over NH, with only 4.
So, ironically a system designed to make small states more powerful can reduce the attention paid the interests of small and large states alike. So, overall, the system tends to disenfranchise voters in all kinds of unexpected ways.
If giving small states a bit of an edge is something with pursuing, some kind of state based bonus would do it. Right now the aggregate state bonus in the EC is about 23%, so a bonus of 0.4% or so of the popular vote for every state carried would have the intended effect of boosting small states without disenfranchising anybody.
Likewise, the difference between pirate and prat is "ie".
"Ie" happens to be the country code for "Ireland". So, to talk like a pirate it seems you start by talking like a prat, add a bit of brogue, then mix things up a bit.
Good point, except that congressional delegation by state is somewhat more complex than blue state/red state. For example ND and SD have, IIRC, one at large House member each, and they're both Democrats.
IIRC, there are 26 states with majority Democrat house delegations in the current congress, so throwing the election to the house throws it to Obama, unless some majority blue red state delegations decide to vote with their state. However, there are some blue states with red delegations too.
In any case, a helluva mess. The discordian in me is fascinated by the prospect. However the practical person in me says this is a really, really bad time for a mess like this.
Nothing has changed about the electoral college other than after two hundred years we're a bit less scared of "mob rule" by people who aren't responsible or intelligent enough to own property.
One legitimate purpose the EC has is to equalize (somewhat) power between populous states an non-populous states. A presidential candidate could safely ignore a state like North Dakota for example, meaning ND voters would have essentially no chance to sway the election.
If I were to reform the system and keep this requirement, I'd have every voter vote for the presidential ticket of is choice. The candidate would receive one EV for every whole 1/435th of the popular vote he receives, plus two EV for every state he wins. This preserves the equalization of powers.
Of course, what we really need to be concerned about aren't states, but media markets. That's a new wrinkle. Concerns of people in southern Ohio or eastern California are swamped by much larger populations on the other end of the state. It's really states that are anachronisms here.
What makes you think Texas won't get its electors?
It will receive its electors. It just won't be able to select those electors in a way that reflects will of the people.
There will be no mechanism by which electors pledged to either candidate can be chosen by the people of TX. Either the electors will be pledged to a third party candidate, or they will be unpledged. If they are unpledged, you have a situation where the people are cut completely out of the process.
I'm a reasonable person. If the unpledged electors voted for McCain, that represents the probable will of the voters, and its probably the best result here should Barr carry the day. But it's not a good thing for small-r republican government. Elections aren't supposed to be about probabilities.
I'm for overruling the rules in this case. What matters here, I think, is not fairness to the candidates. Screw them. It's fairness to the voters.
Empowering the voters in a fair way is what the rules are there for. The Constitution doesn't say how the states are supposed to select electors, but it does require the states to guarantee small-r republican government. You can do that by having the legislature appointing electors, which is bad but not the worst possible thing. You can't do that by holding an election that rules out the choices of the vast majority of voters.
That would be republican in form only, not substance. It is the substance that matters, not the machinery of the election.
If neither candidate can run on the ballot OR as a write in, that would almost certainly precipitate a nationwide constitutional crisis.
To win the Presidency in a one on one race, a candidate needs to get 270 electoral votes, because there are a total of 538 votes in the Electoral College. Texas has the 34 electoral votes, meaning that if the electors from Texas were barred from voting for either candidate, Obama would almost certainly win a plurality.
Except -- the electors aren'tspecifically bound by the constitution to vote for anybody. Theoretically an elector, while elected standing for candidate A, can change his mind and vote for B. About half the states have laws which punish "faithless electors", although the constitutionality of these laws have never been tested. It's doubtful that they are constitutional.
If Obama wins 270 electoral votes, it won't matter. But if he wins 235 electoral votes it won't matter (because McCain will have 370), although that is unlikely in the extreme.
If we have anything in between, we have a constitutional crisis. What would be clear is that had the will of Texans been honored according to how the system was supposed to work, then McCain should have won. If some TX electors acting on this theory votes for him, then he will win, but the legitimacy of this win will be questioned by around half of Americans who voted for Obama -- possibly more than half if Obama wins the popular vote. If not enough TX electors vote for McCain to put him over the top, the people who voted for McCain will not recognize the legitimacy of the elections. If each candidate gets exactly 252 votes (I haven't checked whether this is possible mathematically), then the election goes to the House, which will give the Presidency to Obama.
In any case, in any of these crisis scenarios, the reasonable outcome would be for McCain to get the presidency, because that reflects the will of the peoples as it would have resulted had the proper procedures been followed. But no matter who wins the presidency, the presidency would be deeply weakened -- a happy result for the Libertarians, but potentially disastrous for the country as we navigate some pretty rough waters ahead with a president distracted by legitimacy questions.
Well, reading the responses, it's not O-chem per se, it's the second semester which focuses on compound synthesis. This is very likely a specialized bit of knowledge very few physicians need, so some med schools allow applicants to substitute an additional term of biochemistry, which seems reasonable.
I'm not doubting that this is an idea with merit, but IIRC current PV cells are about 10% efficient, recent one being rather better. I can conceive (although I'd be skeptical) of a cell that captures 500% of the energy that similarly priced cells do, which would amount to 50% efficiency. That's seems almost too good to be true, but not nearly as impossible as getting 50x more energy out than the Sun puts in.
Technically, OK, you've got a point. It's a distinction without a difference here.
They're still trying to stick it to him for defending his clients, which is over the line.
Now, from his postings here, I infer he isn't necessarily the nicest guy to have on the other side. He probably takes things a bit more personally than usual, and I'll bet he gets a personal response back. Maybe he should smooth things over with a few drinks at the club, assuming he was invited to become a member.
It seems we have the usual thicket of suits and countersuits, so technically, he is being sued for suing in response to his clients being sued. Got that?
If you unravel this, you get to something deeply disturbing. He's being sued for defending his clients too vigorously. It's absurd to consider a counter-suit "vexatious". When a plaintiff with deep pockets goes after your client, you have a duty to keep the plaintiff from bleeding your client into submission. How could that possibly be "vexatious"?
If I read correctly a "vexatious" lawsuit is a matter that shouldn't have come to the courts in the first place, one that is taken to burden the defendant. Once that defendant has been dragged into the courts, most of the damage is done, and a judge is going to have to rule on quite a bit of BS that has been flung against the wall. The defendant's lawyer isn't obliged to fight with one hand tied behind his back while the plaintiff get to keep piling it deeper.
From what I can see, although lying is pretty common, most of the deceptiveness on display is bullshitting.
Let me draw the distinction between "bullshitting" and ordinary lying. Political bullshitting is making statements whose truthfulness, by unspoken common consent, is measured by artistic effect rather than accuracy. Political bullshitting is about defining a common narrative, not holding that narrative up to the cold light of fact.
The effect is rather mind bending. It goes without saying that what was said is factually wrong, so nobody wants to talk about it. Yeah, yeah, everybody knows the emperor has no clothes, but how about that ermine cape?
The most recent example of this is John McCain recasting himself as a champion of the working man. I don't think he has anything against the working man, and as a working man myself it's a pleasing narrative. It's just not true.
Obama is also not above bullshitting, although he's considerably more subtle. Take his attack on McCain over the latter's remarks on the economy's "fundamental soundness". I think there is a legitimate criticism of McCain trying to have it both ways, but Obama instead recasts what is clearly a botched (or misbegotten) attempt at nuance into the classic political accusation of "flip flopping". Obama's bullshit tends to be a lot more refined, perhaps because he consumes regular doses of rhetorical fiber.
Is it a lie when anybody who uses his head expects a lie, knows its a lie when it comes out, and implicitly assumes that its a lie? Isn't it more like -- a charade?
In any case, I see BS as much greater problem than plain old lying. We complain about governments we elect, or that there aren't enough real alternatives to vote for, but the real problem is that we are completely tolerant of BS. We're like the audience member who is hypnotized by the stage hypnotist into "thinking" he is a chicken. He struts around flapping his arms and clucking, but he knows he's not a chicken, and he knows he doesn't think he's a chicken. He also thinks he can stop if he wants to, but somehow he never seems to want to.
The catch with the analysis of spin is of course, cultural differences
I've read one of Dr. Ekman's books, and one of the points of that research is that facial expressions are more cross-cultural than previously thought.
The thing that makes this tricky, in my opinion, isn't the difficulty of deciphering flickers of emotions in micro expressions (although that is as yet poorly scientifically attested). It's the cultural and personal differences in the conception of what things like "deceptiveness" and "lying" are.
Well, there's the imagination and there's imagination. There's the kind of imagination you might get by sweating over the details of the script into the wee hours of the morning. Then there's the kind of imagination you get by smoking weed with your buddies and riffing off each other's non-sequiturs.
The commercials had that kind of feeling for me, like when you walk into a party where half the people are stoned (actually usually only a handful but somehow they contrive to seem like half) and they're laughing uproariously at how funny they're being. As a rule, I don't smoke it because it isn't pharmacologically possible to get stoned fast enough.
I think the appeal was based on having a good cast.
It's kind of like listening to a jam band. If you're stoned enough, the overall lack of structure isn't a problem for you, as long as the musicians are pretty good.
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I wouldn't call the baseline Democratic attitudes towards those things fear. It's more like indignation. It is indignation that causes us to value egalitarianism, the sense that we could be so much better than we are if we only tried.
I think the fear (we should really have a broader palette of words for this kind of thing that doesn't automatically cast people as unreasonable) comes into play when a conservative looks at these ideals, which he theoretically shares, and thinks, "we'll probably fail." A liberal looks at the prospect of failure and thinks, "It wouldn't be so bad to fail, certainly not as bad as never trying."
Aristotle says the virtues are always midpoints between extremes, and the extremes are vices.
The opposite of cowardice isn't courage, it's rashness. Courage is the temperate midpoint between the vice of cowardice and the vice of rashness. Courage accepts danger but acts, which makes it different from either extreme.
Rashness and cowardice are the kinds of superficial opposites that have many inner similarities. The coward fears to act, and the fool fears to think.
It's not like Republicans tend to avoid military service after demanding it,
Ever hear the term "chickenhawk"?
I wouldn't extend that to all Republicans, or even exclusively to Republicans. But it is a remarkable phenomenon among ultra-hawkish people, which most Republicans I know are not. It's just that these people are extremely loud and aggressive in their war mongering so we hear them more. They are extremely craven, not just in their military service (or lack of it), but in all their opinions.
I'm not sure that addresses the GP's legal theory.
The GP's legal theory amounts to this: anybody who owns a DVD should be considered (speaking VERY roughly of course) as a de facto licensee of the patent because they have purchased a product which embodies that invention. At least for purposes of playing that DVD.
Here's an analogy (rather bad as usual). Suppose Company X has patents covering anti-lock brake sensors. They then license this to Delco, who produces bearings containing the sensor technology. Delco then sells the bearing to GM, and GM sells the car to you. Company X has no to be able to control GM's resale of its technology, because the technology in each baring has been paid for already -- by Delco. Likewise they can't try to demand some kind of payment from the consumer.
What is different here is that software splits the multimedia problem into two pieces: encoding and decoding. The codec is not the same artifact containing the technology duly paid for by the consumer through various intermediaries. It's not an artifact at all.
Now some thing seem quite clear to me. If some company starts selling (or distributing for free for its own financial benefit which is morally the same thing) a codec with unlicensed, patented technology, they're over the line. They did not pay the patent holder any dough, and so have no right to benefit from the invention that way.
Now what if the user downloads the codec from some place where the patent is not legally recognized? The distributor is not usurping any legal rights of the patent holder. What about the recipient? That's an intriguing question.
There is no way winning this way would "help" Obama, unless winning the Presidency is worth throwing the country into turmoil.
I agree, if Barr wins this, the Texas legislature had better amend the rules. They'd be better off just picking 34 McCain electors than to risk plunging the entire country into crisis.
Al Gore conceded. Would McCain? Would his followers accept that?
Midnightwolf has this correct.
Theoretically, if the electors are selected according to Texas law, there should be no technical reason for the crisis. You can look at this like a failure tree:
(1) Obama or McCain get an absolute majority without Texas.
Result: no crisis.
(2) Obama gets a plurality which means McCain would have won if he was awarded Texas.
Result: Republicans argue that Texans were disenfranchised, and that the election should go to McCain.
(2.1) Obama plurality + the Supreme Court rules that the Texas electors were legitimately selected.
Result: The results will be technically legitimatee, but Republicans will nonetheless nonetheless refuse to acknowledge this as right or just. If the Democrats don't get a supermajority in the US Senate, the legislative branch grinds to a halt.
(2.2) Obama plurality + Supreme Court rules that the Texas electors were not legitimate.
Result: Real Constitutional crisis, because there's no procedure for dealing with this.
(2.2.1) TX Electors illegitimate + Texas electoral votes discounted.
Result: Republicans won't accept this. If the Democrats fail to win a supermajority in the Senate, the Republicans bring all public business to a halt. If the Democrats DO win a supermajority (which is likely), we have millions of angry Republicans ready to continue the fight by other means.
(2.2.2) Tx electors illegitimate + some kind of do-over, perhaps by legislative fiat in Texas.
Result: McCain wins. We have millions of angry Democrats ready to continue the fight by other means.
(3) Obama and McCain tie, exclusive of Texas.
Result: the election goes to the House. Oddly enough, sufficient numbers of red states have blue house delegations that this will PROBABLY throw the election to Obama. See 2.2.1. If it throws the election to McCain see 2.2.2.
(4) McCain wins a plurality.
Result: nothing. Since Obama has no chance of capturing Texas, the Texas situation did not change the result.
CONCLUSION: If Barr is successful, then we'd better pray that either Obama wins an outright majority, or McCain wins a plurality, because every other case leads to massive public dissatisfaction and unrest. It'd be the biggest political crisis in American history since the Civil War.
While comparing this to the Civil War might seem melodramatic, this is the kind of crisis that set countries down that path. We'd have millions of very angry, hostile people on either side of this question, and if it didn't lead to outright fighting, it wouldn't be surprising if it lead to a persistent, low level of domestic terror and sabotage.
What makes those parties special is that the vast majority of people want to vote for one or the other of them. Given that BOTH campaigns made a technical violation here, it's fairly certain that there is something broken with the filing requirements or the way that they were communicated.
It seems to me being so doctrinaire about this only creates the incentive for abuse. How do we know that it wasn't some political extremist in the SoS's office feeding the campaigns misinformation? If you could knock out a candidate this way, there'd be real incentive to do so.
The situation with third party candidates is different. They're screwed by plurality voting. If they had a candidate who was a serious contender in a three way race, I'd say bend the rules for them too. If they are too weak to have any chance of winning then tough luck.
Is this unfair to third party candidates? Absolutely. But it's not what keeps them out of power. Nor is this about the candidates. It's about the sovereignty of the people. Rules that interfere with the sovereignty of the people ought to be set aside.
Deadlines and rules ought to be observed, but not to the point with interfering with the sovereignty of the people, which is altogether a superior concern.
Err... you do know that MacOS is Unix?
My only complaint is that they boot you right into a GUI. What if I don't want a GUI?
Of course, the warm fuzzies I get from having a CLI as close that the alt key is the confidence that if something goes wrong with the GUI I can still have a computer while I muck around with X86Config. So maybe it isn't an entirely rational position.
Parody? Maybe. But not effective parody.
One thing I've lawyers say about defamation suits is that they're usually not worth bringing. It isn't just the burden of proof, it's that the publicity reinforces the defamation in the public eye. Parody might work here, but you've got to shred the Apple message, not riff off of it. You can't be timid with parody; there's no half way. Half way parody only reinforces what you want to fight.
So Microsoft can't just bring the "I'm a PC" character out to defend himself, because that just reinforces the negative message. "I am not a boring nerd!" ** yawn **. They have to bring out the "I am a Mac" guy out and make him look like a total ass. Make him a pretentious airhead who spends all his time talking about how cool he is while "I am a PC" is quietly getting the job done.
Of course, they can't do that without insulting everybody who has ever bought a Mac -- possibly even insulting everyone who's bought any Apple product. Given the number of iPods out there, that's a lot of people.
Real parody is not nice. That makes it hard to pull it off when people think you're a vicious asshole. Maybe that was the point of the Seinfeld/Gates thing; to give MS a more aw-shucks regular guy image before they pulled out their sharp knives. Looks like they pulled out their sharp knife just long enough for a self-inflicted wound.
The ad would be better just showing all the cool things you can do with a Windows PC, which is the point. They still need a hook, but it couldn't be hard to come up with a better one than, "You probably think I'm boring, but I'm not as boring as you think."
You miss one primary point. It was never the intention of our Founding Fathers that the President should be elected by the "will of the People". In fact it was their intention **not** to elect the President by the will of the People, but by a college of Educated Men
Actually I get that point. However, the process was supposed to be republican, in which the will of the people is filtered through cooler and wiser heads.
A system of selecting electors that does not reflect the will of the people or their representatives is not what they had in mind. An election in which the vast majority of voters are denied a reasonable choice is not republican government, which is guaranteed to citizens of states by the Constitution.
Oh, but it does. The reason the candidates ignore ND is that it's a safe state. The same reason they ignore Massachusetts, which has 12 EVs but are squabbling over NH, with only 4.
So, ironically a system designed to make small states more powerful can reduce the attention paid the interests of small and large states alike. So, overall, the system tends to disenfranchise voters in all kinds of unexpected ways.
If giving small states a bit of an edge is something with pursuing, some kind of state based bonus would do it. Right now the aggregate state bonus in the EC is about 23%, so a bonus of 0.4% or so of the popular vote for every state carried would have the intended effect of boosting small states without disenfranchising anybody.
to quote David St. Hubbins.
Likewise, the difference between pirate and prat is "ie".
"Ie" happens to be the country code for "Ireland". So, to talk like a pirate it seems you start by talking like a prat, add a bit of brogue, then mix things up a bit.
Good point, except that congressional delegation by state is somewhat more complex than blue state/red state. For example ND and SD have, IIRC, one at large House member each, and they're both Democrats.
IIRC, there are 26 states with majority Democrat house delegations in the current congress, so throwing the election to the house throws it to Obama, unless some majority blue red state delegations decide to vote with their state. However, there are some blue states with red delegations too.
In any case, a helluva mess. The discordian in me is fascinated by the prospect. However the practical person in me says this is a really, really bad time for a mess like this.
Nothing has changed about the electoral college other than after two hundred years we're a bit less scared of "mob rule" by people who aren't responsible or intelligent enough to own property.
One legitimate purpose the EC has is to equalize (somewhat) power between populous states an non-populous states. A presidential candidate could safely ignore a state like North Dakota for example, meaning ND voters would have essentially no chance to sway the election.
If I were to reform the system and keep this requirement, I'd have every voter vote for the presidential ticket of is choice. The candidate would receive one EV for every whole 1/435th of the popular vote he receives, plus two EV for every state he wins. This preserves the equalization of powers.
Of course, what we really need to be concerned about aren't states, but media markets. That's a new wrinkle. Concerns of people in southern Ohio or eastern California are swamped by much larger populations on the other end of the state. It's really states that are anachronisms here.
What makes you think Texas won't get its electors?
It will receive its electors. It just won't be able to select those electors in a way that reflects will of the people.
There will be no mechanism by which electors pledged to either candidate can be chosen by the people of TX. Either the electors will be pledged to a third party candidate, or they will be unpledged. If they are unpledged, you have a situation where the people are cut completely out of the process.
I'm a reasonable person. If the unpledged electors voted for McCain, that represents the probable will of the voters, and its probably the best result here should Barr carry the day. But it's not a good thing for small-r republican government. Elections aren't supposed to be about probabilities.
I'm for overruling the rules in this case. What matters here, I think, is not fairness to the candidates. Screw them. It's fairness to the voters.
Empowering the voters in a fair way is what the rules are there for. The Constitution doesn't say how the states are supposed to select electors, but it does require the states to guarantee small-r republican government. You can do that by having the legislature appointing electors, which is bad but not the worst possible thing. You can't do that by holding an election that rules out the choices of the vast majority of voters.
That would be republican in form only, not substance. It is the substance that matters, not the machinery of the election.
If neither candidate can run on the ballot OR as a write in, that would almost certainly precipitate a nationwide constitutional crisis.
To win the Presidency in a one on one race, a candidate needs to get 270 electoral votes, because there are a total of 538 votes in the Electoral College. Texas has the 34 electoral votes, meaning that if the electors from Texas were barred from voting for either candidate, Obama would almost certainly win a plurality.
Except -- the electors aren'tspecifically bound by the constitution to vote for anybody. Theoretically an elector, while elected standing for candidate A, can change his mind and vote for B. About half the states have laws which punish "faithless electors", although the constitutionality of these laws have never been tested. It's doubtful that they are constitutional.
If Obama wins 270 electoral votes, it won't matter. But if he wins 235 electoral votes it won't matter (because McCain will have 370), although that is unlikely in the extreme.
If we have anything in between, we have a constitutional crisis. What would be clear is that had the will of Texans been honored according to how the system was supposed to work, then McCain should have won. If some TX electors acting on this theory votes for him, then he will win, but the legitimacy of this win will be questioned by around half of Americans who voted for Obama -- possibly more than half if Obama wins the popular vote. If not enough TX electors vote for McCain to put him over the top, the people who voted for McCain will not recognize the legitimacy of the elections. If each candidate gets exactly 252 votes (I haven't checked whether this is possible mathematically), then the election goes to the House, which will give the Presidency to Obama.
In any case, in any of these crisis scenarios, the reasonable outcome would be for McCain to get the presidency, because that reflects the will of the peoples as it would have resulted had the proper procedures been followed. But no matter who wins the presidency, the presidency would be deeply weakened -- a happy result for the Libertarians, but potentially disastrous for the country as we navigate some pretty rough waters ahead with a president distracted by legitimacy questions.
Well, reading the responses, it's not O-chem per se, it's the second semester which focuses on compound synthesis. This is very likely a specialized bit of knowledge very few physicians need, so some med schools allow applicants to substitute an additional term of biochemistry, which seems reasonable.
You can't absorb more light than is there.
I'm not doubting that this is an idea with merit, but IIRC current PV cells are about 10% efficient, recent one being rather better. I can conceive (although I'd be skeptical) of a cell that captures 500% of the energy that similarly priced cells do, which would amount to 50% efficiency. That's seems almost too good to be true, but not nearly as impossible as getting 50x more energy out than the Sun puts in.
Technically, OK, you've got a point. It's a distinction without a difference here.
They're still trying to stick it to him for defending his clients, which is over the line.
Now, from his postings here, I infer he isn't necessarily the nicest guy to have on the other side. He probably takes things a bit more personally than usual, and I'll bet he gets a personal response back. Maybe he should smooth things over with a few drinks at the club, assuming he was invited to become a member.
It seems we have the usual thicket of suits and countersuits, so technically, he is being sued for suing in response to his clients being sued. Got that?
If you unravel this, you get to something deeply disturbing. He's being sued for defending his clients too vigorously. It's absurd to consider a counter-suit "vexatious". When a plaintiff with deep pockets goes after your client, you have a duty to keep the plaintiff from bleeding your client into submission. How could that possibly be "vexatious"?
If I read correctly a "vexatious" lawsuit is a matter that shouldn't have come to the courts in the first place, one that is taken to burden the defendant. Once that defendant has been dragged into the courts, most of the damage is done, and a judge is going to have to rule on quite a bit of BS that has been flung against the wall. The defendant's lawyer isn't obliged to fight with one hand tied behind his back while the plaintiff get to keep piling it deeper.
Is "bullshitting" the same as lying?
From what I can see, although lying is pretty common, most of the deceptiveness on display is bullshitting.
Let me draw the distinction between "bullshitting" and ordinary lying. Political bullshitting is making statements whose truthfulness, by unspoken common consent, is measured by artistic effect rather than accuracy. Political bullshitting is about defining a common narrative, not holding that narrative up to the cold light of fact.
The effect is rather mind bending. It goes without saying that what was said is factually wrong, so nobody wants to talk about it. Yeah, yeah, everybody knows the emperor has no clothes, but how about that ermine cape?
The most recent example of this is John McCain recasting himself as a champion of the working man. I don't think he has anything against the working man, and as a working man myself it's a pleasing narrative. It's just not true.
Obama is also not above bullshitting, although he's considerably more subtle. Take his attack on McCain over the latter's remarks on the economy's "fundamental soundness". I think there is a legitimate criticism of McCain trying to have it both ways, but Obama instead recasts what is clearly a botched (or misbegotten) attempt at nuance into the classic political accusation of "flip flopping". Obama's bullshit tends to be a lot more refined, perhaps because he consumes regular doses of rhetorical fiber.
Is it a lie when anybody who uses his head expects a lie, knows its a lie when it comes out, and implicitly assumes that its a lie? Isn't it more like -- a charade?
In any case, I see BS as much greater problem than plain old lying. We complain about governments we elect, or that there aren't enough real alternatives to vote for, but the real problem is that we are completely tolerant of BS. We're like the audience member who is hypnotized by the stage hypnotist into "thinking" he is a chicken. He struts around flapping his arms and clucking, but he knows he's not a chicken, and he knows he doesn't think he's a chicken. He also thinks he can stop if he wants to, but somehow he never seems to want to.
I've read one of Dr. Ekman's books, and one of the points of that research is that facial expressions are more cross-cultural than previously thought.
The thing that makes this tricky, in my opinion, isn't the difficulty of deciphering flickers of emotions in micro expressions (although that is as yet poorly scientifically attested). It's the cultural and personal differences in the conception of what things like "deceptiveness" and "lying" are.
Imaginative?
Well, there's the imagination and there's imagination. There's the kind of imagination you might get by sweating over the details of the script into the wee hours of the morning. Then there's the kind of imagination you get by smoking weed with your buddies and riffing off each other's non-sequiturs.
The commercials had that kind of feeling for me, like when you walk into a party where half the people are stoned (actually usually only a handful but somehow they contrive to seem like half) and they're laughing uproariously at how funny they're being. As a rule, I don't smoke it because it isn't pharmacologically possible to get stoned fast enough.
I think the appeal was based on having a good cast.
It's kind of like listening to a jam band. If you're stoned enough, the overall lack of structure isn't a problem for you, as long as the musicians are pretty good.