a study found that if someone was given a mind-numbing task to perform for an hour, they would be more likely to give a positive evaluation of the task if they are paid $1 at the end of it vs. $20
You are not remembering significant details of this study. Volunteers were drafted for an "exciting and interesting" study. The volunteers were told by the subjects just before them about how interesting the study was. The subjects were then giving a boring and repetitive task to do. After rating the task on how interesting it was, the subjects were either given $1 or $20 to hang around to tell the next subject how interesting the task was.
In follow up interviews, the people that were paid $1 rated the boring and repetitive task as being more interesting than they did in their original evaluations.
Dissonance theory explains the behavior because the people that were paid $20 felt justified in lying about how interesting the task was because they were paid quite well to lie. The people that were paid only $1 did not have a good justification for lying, so their brain went into revision mode to overcome cognitive dissonance. These people remembered the task as being more interesting because they didn't want to think of themselves as liars.
Therefore, companies that have boring open source projects to work on, should give minimal rewards to open source hackers to recruit other hackers by telling them how interesting the boring coding is.;^O
Last spring I snagged myself a NEC 486dx2-50 based laptop on ebay for $200. It came with 20MB of RAM and a 2.1 GB harddisk. I likely got it so cheap because it didn't come with an OS. NEC tech support was fantastic at giving me the specs I needed to get X and PCMCIA support configured properly. I installed Debian base via floppy and then used apt-get over the 56k modem to install the rest. Aside from swapping considerably when I use Xemacs (in X, in console mode Xemacs it cruises along just fine).
Unfortunately, a week ago sunday it got stolen. I hope whoever stole it knows how to crack root.;)
Personally, if someone jiggled my doorknob in the middle of the night, I'd ignore them unless they opened the door and came in. If they simply jiggled and walked away, at most I'd call my neighbors to keep an eye out.
Regardless, this analogy doesn't fit portscanning. A portscan jiggles no knobs, it simply reports that a knob exists and perhaps what type of knob it is. If someone came by in the middle of the night to check my knob, I'd be a bit suspicious. Much less so if a person did such during the day. In either case their actions are not likely to be illegal.
I don't know about you, but if I some guy I don't know (and didn't give permission to) walking around my house with a clipboard inspecting the windows, I'm calling the police.
I am not a lawyer, but from what little reading of law I've done, in the US in most jurisdictions, the police problably wouldn't even come out to investigate. Only in situations where "No Trespassing" signs are clearly posted or in situations where you have personally informed an individual that you do not want them on your property would the police even care that someone was looking at your windows.
[I suppose there would be a few other exceptional circumstance such as the property owner having some sort of injunction against the individual doing the inspection or in the case of the person doing the inspection doing it in a manner that attempts to conceal their identity.]
Connecting a computer to the internet is really more akin to parking an automobile on a public street. It is not illegal (or even necessarily immoral) to examine such a car up close. It is, however, illegal and/or immoral to use the information obtained from such an examination in certain circumstances (such as to pick the lock or hotwire the vehicle). There are also many circumstances where the informatin comes in helpful. For example, if I see a car with he headlights left on, I will almost always check to see if the door is locked and if it isn't I will turn off the headlights. You can sue me for doing that to your car if you please, but you will lose the suit and you will be laughed out of court by virtually any judge.
The simple solution is just what you said -- run a firewall. I guess I'm just speaking for more of an idealist standpoint. In an ideal world, I wouldn't need a firewall. And I wouldn't need to lock the door to my house, either. So while we're going to have to live with port scanning, I just don't see it as something that should be acceptable for folks to do to me..
So am I correct in assuming that you also do not see locking one's doors as something that should be acceptable for folks like you to do?
Palm Computing's first big product was grafitti for the Apple's Newton PDA. The idea eventually morphed into a full blown OS and PDA combination. I suspect that the main reason to go with the Motorola 68k series over ARM was to reduce power consumption. The Palm's twin AAA batteries are one of the main reasons a Palm can fit into a shirt pocket. The Newton was stuck with quadruple AA cells. That's almost the displacement of a Palm just for the batteries!
Anyway, going ARM doesn't mean that Palm is going to beef up the platform's complexity to compete with WinCE devices. They intend to keep it simple and for good reason. The reason Palm is so popular is because it is so simple. I've seen people that are scared of computers (both PC and Macs) because of their complexity take to a Palm like a fish in water.
This isn't exactly new either. Rumors of the transition to ARM have been floating around since early last spring.
The article was mostly pretty fair. I thought it did a decent (not excellent) job of covering some of the reasons why Java and Linux doen't always fit together very well.
Of course, I think a lot more people would have been willing to read the entire article if it didn't start out with this flamebait:
The philosophical differences revolve around the terms open source and free.
Java is neither, all claims to the contrary. Linux, at least in theory, is both.
What is gained by by adding "at least in theory ?" I realize that may simply be an attempt to acknowledge that while Linux is freely available it is possible that some people will pay for it. But it reads more like an allegation that Linux is free in theory but in practices isn't. This especially reads like an allegation when one considers the libre qualities of the Linux source code. How in the world is the source code only theoretically free?
The likelihood that something exists is quantifiable by a non-binary number (i.e. a percentage). The actuality of whether or not something exists is only expressable by a binary number (0 or 1, either it exists or it doesn't).
The likelihood (or probability) that something exists is directly proportional to the amount of evidence we have that that something exists.
IIRC, the reason the DNA evidence in the OJ simpson murder trial was unconvincing to the jury was because the defense proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the labs involved did not adhere to the standards necessary to proved that the correct sample had been analyzed.
The defense did not attack the concept of DNA analysis but the methods that were used in that particular case of DNA analysis.
And as bad as it is to possibly let a guilty man go free over a technicality, I would rather see the occasional guilty party go free than allow the police to abuse their powers with impunity. It was the LAPD that screwed up what was pretty close to an open and shut case.
The attempt to prove that a non-existant creature does not exist is what is known as an unfalsifiable statement. There is no possible way to prove that a non-existent being does not exist.
The correct approach in science and in philosophy is to start with a falsifiable statement (such as "Unicorns exist"). The more scientists and philosophers search for evidence of the existence of unicorns and fail, the more likely it becomes that unicorns do not exist.
You can look at that two ways - that pop is our body equalizing pressure. The connection may be there so that our inner pressure can be equalized based on the
enrvironment we're present in. It doesn't prove that ears evolved from gills...
True. I was not attempting to demonstrate that ears did evolve from gills. I was simply pointing out that in the prior post the reasoning that ears could not have evolved from gills because ears are not connected to the respiratory system in any fashion is fallacious.
Personally, I don't know whether ears evolved from gills or not, but I will be an oustpoken critique of a proponent of either theory that presents their case fallaciously.
States elect the President, not the people. The country is called the United STATES of America, not the United PEOPLE.
So a confederation of states can not have its president selected by a popular vote? That does not make sense to me. The constitution starts out "We the people...." not "We the states...."
I will admit that part of the problem with the electoral college is the current braid-dead winner take all system most states have chosen to implement. Such a system leads to the feeling of not really having a role to play. And this problem is certainly entirely on the shoulders of the states.
However, asserting that the president has to be elected by the states and can not be elected by the people living in the states is absurd. The electoral college needs to be re-thought and disbanded or drastically changed because in its current incarnation it disenfranchises people.
Eliminating the Electoral College would, I believe, simply reinforce in the minds of people this notion that the US is a single super-state, rather than a collection of smaller,
different places.
This would be the case if US senators and representatives were to nationally instead of locally elected, but that is not the case.
The other problem I have with buying into your view is that it assumes that unity within a single state is more important to an individual than having his or her vote be meaninful.
I think the reverse is true, that most people would rather have their vote count in a nationwide election than for their vote to be lost because of geographical quirks.
The state I live in was not carried by the candidate I voted for, therefore, my vote does not count in deciding the president. If the president were decided by popular vote, then my vote would have weight whether or not the people that live around me and vote differently than I outnumber me.
Nader appears to have cost Gore Oregano, Ohio, and Florida.
CNN's numbers for Ohio
Bush -> 2,294,049
Gore -> 2,117,555
Nader-> 114,474
Bush's margin of victory was 176,494. Nader's supporters did not cost Gore Ohio even if one fallaciously assumes that all of Nader's voters in Ohio would have voted for Gore if Nader hadn't run.
As of this writing Oregon is not declared yet and given the types of numbers we've had in this election it is currently impossible to say whether or not Nader cost Gore Oregon if we make the same fallacious assumption that all Nader supporters would have voted for Gore.
Also of this writing, we don't know for certain that Gore lost Florida. At the end of the first count, Gore carried Florida by 200 votes. A recount is currently underway.
No country should make their citizens vote, otherwise you have bitter
people voting or non informed people, which on both cases, isn't good.
From what I understand about Australian elections, turning your ballot in is compulsory but filling it out is not. People that really don't care still won't vote.
To repeat the prior response to your post, Gore cost Gore the election. One can speculate all one wants about how many of Nader voters would have voted for Gore, but all the Nader voters I personally know wouldn't have even voted for the office of president if Nader wasn't running. I'm not going to extrapolate my experience onto the rest of the country. Without speaking to a representative sample of Nader supporters, whether or not Nader cost Gore the presidency is simply groundless speculation.
Secondly, if Gore wanted the support of most Nader supporters all he would have to do is put his money where his mouth is and actually support his own party's platform instead of selling out to special interest.
Thirdly, it is apparent that Gore (and Bush to a lesser extent) cost Nader the election. While Nader certainly had no realistic chance to win the presidency the scare tactics (a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush) used by Gore (and Bush) likely cost Nader much more support than Nader cost either.
Lastly, we have to keep in mind there is no what would have been. There is only what is.
In a republic, people are chosen by voters to make laws.
In a true democracy, people vote to make laws.
Republics are typically the first form of government chosen once a society outgrows the scale of which true democracy is efficient.
The US will still be a republic whether or not the electoral college exists as a mediator between the office of the president and the citizens of the US.
You are so full of it! Ears are for hearing, gills are for breathing. Ears are connected to an intricate system for hearing, whereas gills are connected to breathing
organs.
First, ears do more than hear. They also help maintain balance. Shouldn't that be the job of the legs? Hmm. Maybe the systems of the human body are interconnected.
Second, the araul cavity is connected to the sinus cavity. An interesting anecdote: I had a friend that worked in a steel plant for a while. He had a drop of molten lead fly into his hear once. A few minutes later he sneezed and the hardened drop came out his nose. This had the unfortunate side effect of toasting his hearing in one ear, but if the cavities weren't connected, he would still have lead in his inner ear.
Think, how can one pop one's ears by holding one's nose while attempting to exhale if the cavities aren't connected.
"Just" voting is a cop-out for people who want to claim
they participate in the political process.
If the only part of the political process a person takes part in is voting then they are indeed copping out. However, I imagine you and I have different notions of what it means to do more than "just" voting.
For me, voting is but one aspect of living out my ethos. Saying that voting doesn't matter because its just one vote is to misunderstand how democracy works. (Although if one wants to argue that the one vote doesn't matter because its really the electoral college that does the picking and choosing, that is another matter altogether. Personally, I hope that we have a repeat of 1888 where the winner of the popular election was not the winner of the electoral college election. Such might just be an impetus to some much needed change.) OTOH, to claim that voting is the only excercise of the conscience needed to live a moral life is also a miscontruation.
My life declares what I believe by the totality of all my actions. Some of my actions declare me a hypocrite. Some of my actions declare me just. Some of my actions proclaim my faith. Some of my actions proclaim I don't really believe what I say I do.
If you want your voice to be heard, go run a political site, write an editorial, draw a cartoon, publish a book.
Talking to friends, family and co-workers helps, too. A few books (but not many) have actually changed my thinking on one issue or the other. Most of the reasoning that has had an impact on my life has come through dialogue with acquaintences of one sort or the other. I don't think it incorrect to assume that the same is true for others as well.
The lesson seems that being able to influence a lot of
people leads to political consequences, some (most?) of which are unintended and unforeseen. I still don't see how you conclude from this that your individual
voice counts.
It's simple. My vote represents my conscience. Granted, in the current elections we don't have a choice that seems anywhere close to Adolf Hitler. However, the act of me voting my conscience does indeed voice my opinion, however small that voice is. The Roman Pontif may have encouraged the Catholics in Germany to do (or not do) certain things, but the concordat with Hitler was only effective because Catholics in Germany chose to obey.
Your argument seems to be that in any system where the result is generated by by a large number, the individual events that contribute to that number are inconsequential. I would dispute this. General systems theory (and its bastard child, chaos theory) teaches us the opposite, that small actions can and do have large impacts on the system.
While a single vote does not change the system, the combination of many votes does. If your vote is never cast, it makes it that less likely for anyone with similiar views to make his or her voice herd.
And don't sweat the Reformation thread. I know how it goes. I dropped off the economics/entropy thread. I'm currently doing a bit of homework on the latter to submit a full fledged article on my ideas on how monoplolies in a free market relate to entropy in a thermodynamic system.
I voted for Nader. I was surprised to find his checkbox at the bottom. I thought that the ballot was supposed to go in alphabetical
order by party name
On my ballot he was first. First or last, he had my vote sewn up a long time ago. I wavered a bit after reading about some of the skeletons in his closet at realchange.org, but OTOH its not like his opponenents in the race for president don't have their own skeletons.
Don't blame me, I don't vote.
Why should I pick either of two evils?
Reading the book, Hitler's Pope:m The Secret History of Pius XII by John Cornwell completely changed my mind.
Cornwell's thesis is that Pacelli (who later became Pope Pius XII) negotiated a concordat with Hitler. The concordat basically stated that the Church would remove Catholics from all political life (including voting, demonstrating, etc.). In exchange the Church received the assurance that the Nazi regime would not persecute the Church.
The effect was that the Center Party, the single largest opposition group to the National Socialists, fell apart. The Center Party was almost exclusively Catholic. Once the Church forbid the party, it fell over and the Nazi's had very little other serious opposition.
The conclusion I drew from reading this book is that my voice does matter. If for no other reason than preventing another catastrophe like the holocaust, I will go to the polls and vote.
Personally I don't really care if anybody in government acknowledges *ANY* religion, as its is not the role of government to say this way is right and the other way is not
right...
I care to the extent that freedom of/from religion is a constitutional right. For example, if the armed services grants Christians the right to practice their religion, this is acknowledgement of Christianity as a valid religion. The armed services can deny that same right from other religions by refusing to acknoledge other religions as valid religions. So what ends up happening is by selectively choosing which religions are valid, a branch of the government begins deciding which religions are valid to practice and which aren't, which is something that I feel the government has not place doing.
Christian though I may be, I believe the government has no right to decide what religions are valid or not and George W. Bush seems to believe otherwise.
Slashdot Mirror
You are not remembering significant details of this study. Volunteers were drafted for an "exciting and interesting" study. The volunteers were told by the subjects just before them about how interesting the study was. The subjects were then giving a boring and repetitive task to do. After rating the task on how interesting it was, the subjects were either given $1 or $20 to hang around to tell the next subject how interesting the task was.
In follow up interviews, the people that were paid $1 rated the boring and repetitive task as being more interesting than they did in their original evaluations.
Dissonance theory explains the behavior because the people that were paid $20 felt justified in lying about how interesting the task was because they were paid quite well to lie. The people that were paid only $1 did not have a good justification for lying, so their brain went into revision mode to overcome cognitive dissonance. These people remembered the task as being more interesting because they didn't want to think of themselves as liars.
Therefore, companies that have boring open source projects to work on, should give minimal rewards to open source hackers to recruit other hackers by telling them how interesting the boring coding is. ;^O
have a day,
-l
Unfortunately, a week ago sunday it got stolen. I hope whoever stole it knows how to crack root. ;)
have a day,
-l
Regardless, this analogy doesn't fit portscanning. A portscan jiggles no knobs, it simply reports that a knob exists and perhaps what type of knob it is. If someone came by in the middle of the night to check my knob, I'd be a bit suspicious. Much less so if a person did such during the day. In either case their actions are not likely to be illegal.
have a day,
-l
I am not a lawyer, but from what little reading of law I've done, in the US in most jurisdictions, the police problably wouldn't even come out to investigate. Only in situations where "No Trespassing" signs are clearly posted or in situations where you have personally informed an individual that you do not want them on your property would the police even care that someone was looking at your windows.
[I suppose there would be a few other exceptional circumstance such as the property owner having some sort of injunction against the individual doing the inspection or in the case of the person doing the inspection doing it in a manner that attempts to conceal their identity.]
Connecting a computer to the internet is really more akin to parking an automobile on a public street. It is not illegal (or even necessarily immoral) to examine such a car up close. It is, however, illegal and/or immoral to use the information obtained from such an examination in certain circumstances (such as to pick the lock or hotwire the vehicle). There are also many circumstances where the informatin comes in helpful. For example, if I see a car with he headlights left on, I will almost always check to see if the door is locked and if it isn't I will turn off the headlights. You can sue me for doing that to your car if you please, but you will lose the suit and you will be laughed out of court by virtually any judge.
have a day,
-l
So am I correct in assuming that you also do not see locking one's doors as something that should be acceptable for folks like you to do?
have a day,
-l
Anyway, going ARM doesn't mean that Palm is going to beef up the platform's complexity to compete with WinCE devices. They intend to keep it simple and for good reason. The reason Palm is so popular is because it is so simple. I've seen people that are scared of computers (both PC and Macs) because of their complexity take to a Palm like a fish in water. This isn't exactly new either. Rumors of the transition to ARM have been floating around since early last spring.
have a day,
-l
The article was mostly pretty fair. I thought it did a decent (not excellent) job of covering some of the reasons why Java and Linux doen't always fit together very well.
Of course, I think a lot more people would have been willing to read the entire article if it didn't start out with this flamebait:
What is gained by by adding "at least in theory ?" I realize that may simply be an attempt to acknowledge that while Linux is freely available it is possible that some people will pay for it. But it reads more like an allegation that Linux is free in theory but in practices isn't. This especially reads like an allegation when one considers the libre qualities of the Linux source code. How in the world is the source code only theoretically free?
have a day,
-l
The likelihood that something exists is quantifiable by a non-binary number (i.e. a percentage). The actuality of whether or not something exists is only expressable by a binary number (0 or 1, either it exists or it doesn't).
The likelihood (or probability) that something exists is directly proportional to the amount of evidence we have that that something exists.
have a day,
-l
IIRC, the reason the DNA evidence in the OJ simpson murder trial was unconvincing to the jury was because the defense proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the labs involved did not adhere to the standards necessary to proved that the correct sample had been analyzed.
The defense did not attack the concept of DNA analysis but the methods that were used in that particular case of DNA analysis.
And as bad as it is to possibly let a guilty man go free over a technicality, I would rather see the occasional guilty party go free than allow the police to abuse their powers with impunity. It was the LAPD that screwed up what was pretty close to an open and shut case.
have a day,
-l
The attempt to prove that a non-existant creature does not exist is what is known as an unfalsifiable statement. There is no possible way to prove that a non-existent being does not exist.
The correct approach in science and in philosophy is to start with a falsifiable statement (such as "Unicorns exist"). The more scientists and philosophers search for evidence of the existence of unicorns and fail, the more likely it becomes that unicorns do not exist.
have a day,
-l
have a day,
-l
True. I was not attempting to demonstrate that ears did evolve from gills. I was simply pointing out that in the prior post the reasoning that ears could not have evolved from gills because ears are not connected to the respiratory system in any fashion is fallacious.
Personally, I don't know whether ears evolved from gills or not, but I will be an oustpoken critique of a proponent of either theory that presents their case fallaciously.
have a day,
-l
So a confederation of states can not have its president selected by a popular vote? That does not make sense to me. The constitution starts out "We the people...." not "We the states...."
I will admit that part of the problem with the electoral college is the current braid-dead winner take all system most states have chosen to implement. Such a system leads to the feeling of not really having a role to play. And this problem is certainly entirely on the shoulders of the states.
However, asserting that the president has to be elected by the states and can not be elected by the people living in the states is absurd. The electoral college needs to be re-thought and disbanded or drastically changed because in its current incarnation it disenfranchises people.
have a day,
-l
Being upset at not having the freedom to not vote, you vote for a party that wants to take away more freedom?
have a day,
-l
This would be the case if US senators and representatives were to nationally instead of locally elected, but that is not the case.
The other problem I have with buying into your view is that it assumes that unity within a single state is more important to an individual than having his or her vote be meaninful.
I think the reverse is true, that most people would rather have their vote count in a nationwide election than for their vote to be lost because of geographical quirks.
The state I live in was not carried by the candidate I voted for, therefore, my vote does not count in deciding the president. If the president were decided by popular vote, then my vote would have weight whether or not the people that live around me and vote differently than I outnumber me.
have a day,
-l
CNN's numbers for Ohio
Bush -> 2,294,049
Gore -> 2,117,555
Nader-> 114,474
Bush's margin of victory was 176,494. Nader's supporters did not cost Gore Ohio even if one fallaciously assumes that all of Nader's voters in Ohio would have voted for Gore if Nader hadn't run.
As of this writing Oregon is not declared yet and given the types of numbers we've had in this election it is currently impossible to say whether or not Nader cost Gore Oregon if we make the same fallacious assumption that all Nader supporters would have voted for Gore.
Also of this writing, we don't know for certain that Gore lost Florida. At the end of the first count, Gore carried Florida by 200 votes. A recount is currently underway.
have a day,
-l
From what I understand about Australian elections, turning your ballot in is compulsory but filling it out is not. People that really don't care still won't vote.
have a day,
-l
To repeat the prior response to your post, Gore cost Gore the election. One can speculate all one wants about how many of Nader voters would have voted for Gore, but all the Nader voters I personally know wouldn't have even voted for the office of president if Nader wasn't running. I'm not going to extrapolate my experience onto the rest of the country. Without speaking to a representative sample of Nader supporters, whether or not Nader cost Gore the presidency is simply groundless speculation.
Secondly, if Gore wanted the support of most Nader supporters all he would have to do is put his money where his mouth is and actually support his own party's platform instead of selling out to special interest.
Thirdly, it is apparent that Gore (and Bush to a lesser extent) cost Nader the election. While Nader certainly had no realistic chance to win the presidency the scare tactics (a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush) used by Gore (and Bush) likely cost Nader much more support than Nader cost either.
Lastly, we have to keep in mind there is no what would have been. There is only what is.
have a day,
-l
In a republic, people are chosen by voters to make laws.
In a true democracy, people vote to make laws.
Republics are typically the first form of government chosen once a society outgrows the scale of which true democracy is efficient.
The US will still be a republic whether or not the electoral college exists as a mediator between the office of the president and the citizens of the US.
have a day,
-l
First, ears do more than hear. They also help maintain balance. Shouldn't that be the job of the legs? Hmm. Maybe the systems of the human body are interconnected.
Second, the araul cavity is connected to the sinus cavity. An interesting anecdote: I had a friend that worked in a steel plant for a while. He had a drop of molten lead fly into his hear once. A few minutes later he sneezed and the hardened drop came out his nose. This had the unfortunate side effect of toasting his hearing in one ear, but if the cavities weren't connected, he would still have lead in his inner ear.
Think, how can one pop one's ears by holding one's nose while attempting to exhale if the cavities aren't connected.
have a day,
-l
If the only part of the political process a person takes part in is voting then they are indeed copping out. However, I imagine you and I have different notions of what it means to do more than "just" voting.
For me, voting is but one aspect of living out my ethos. Saying that voting doesn't matter because its just one vote is to misunderstand how democracy works. (Although if one wants to argue that the one vote doesn't matter because its really the electoral college that does the picking and choosing, that is another matter altogether. Personally, I hope that we have a repeat of 1888 where the winner of the popular election was not the winner of the electoral college election. Such might just be an impetus to some much needed change.) OTOH, to claim that voting is the only excercise of the conscience needed to live a moral life is also a miscontruation.
My life declares what I believe by the totality of all my actions. Some of my actions declare me a hypocrite. Some of my actions declare me just. Some of my actions proclaim my faith. Some of my actions proclaim I don't really believe what I say I do.
Talking to friends, family and co-workers helps, too. A few books (but not many) have actually changed my thinking on one issue or the other. Most of the reasoning that has had an impact on my life has come through dialogue with acquaintences of one sort or the other. I don't think it incorrect to assume that the same is true for others as well.
have a day,
-l
It's simple. My vote represents my conscience. Granted, in the current elections we don't have a choice that seems anywhere close to Adolf Hitler. However, the act of me voting my conscience does indeed voice my opinion, however small that voice is. The Roman Pontif may have encouraged the Catholics in Germany to do (or not do) certain things, but the concordat with Hitler was only effective because Catholics in Germany chose to obey.
Your argument seems to be that in any system where the result is generated by by a large number, the individual events that contribute to that number are inconsequential. I would dispute this. General systems theory (and its bastard child, chaos theory) teaches us the opposite, that small actions can and do have large impacts on the system.
While a single vote does not change the system, the combination of many votes does. If your vote is never cast, it makes it that less likely for anyone with similiar views to make his or her voice herd.
And don't sweat the Reformation thread. I know how it goes. I dropped off the economics/entropy thread. I'm currently doing a bit of homework on the latter to submit a full fledged article on my ideas on how monoplolies in a free market relate to entropy in a thermodynamic system.
have a day,
-l
On my ballot he was first. First or last, he had my vote sewn up a long time ago. I wavered a bit after reading about some of the skeletons in his closet at realchange.org, but OTOH its not like his opponenents in the race for president don't have their own skeletons.
have a day,
-l
My motto used to be two fold:
Don't blame me, I don't vote.
Why should I pick either of two evils?
Reading the book, Hitler's Pope:m The Secret History of Pius XII by John Cornwell completely changed my mind.
Cornwell's thesis is that Pacelli (who later became Pope Pius XII) negotiated a concordat with Hitler. The concordat basically stated that the Church would remove Catholics from all political life (including voting, demonstrating, etc.). In exchange the Church received the assurance that the Nazi regime would not persecute the Church.
The effect was that the Center Party, the single largest opposition group to the National Socialists, fell apart. The Center Party was almost exclusively Catholic. Once the Church forbid the party, it fell over and the Nazi's had very little other serious opposition.
The conclusion I drew from reading this book is that my voice does matter. If for no other reason than preventing another catastrophe like the holocaust, I will go to the polls and vote.
have a day,
-l
I care to the extent that freedom of/from religion is a constitutional right. For example, if the armed services grants Christians the right to practice their religion, this is acknowledgement of Christianity as a valid religion. The armed services can deny that same right from other religions by refusing to acknoledge other religions as valid religions. So what ends up happening is by selectively choosing which religions are valid, a branch of the government begins deciding which religions are valid to practice and which aren't, which is something that I feel the government has not place doing.
Christian though I may be, I believe the government has no right to decide what religions are valid or not and George W. Bush seems to believe otherwise.
have a day,
-l