You should be unhappy. The more unhappy you are, the greater your environmental virtue.
Think of it as penance for the world's energy sins. Let your suffering be a beacon to all the unbelievers, climate change deniers, and evil capitalists out there.
You are one of the virtuous greens. Your sacrifice means hope for us all. You have saved the planet.
It's a media hype battle to the death. Your excessive energy use is going to destroy the Earth, so you have to install these bulbs, which contain evil mercury which will destroy the Earth. What should we do? Won't someone in the press tell us?
I'm moving outside into a tent until the press tells us how to avoid certain death.
I wonder why anyone pays attention to the media any more?
I await the next problem-free election. You know, the one where no one can even insinuate anything went wrong.
- There will have to be perfect information about every tiny detail of that election, or they'll say "What are they not telling us? What are they trying to hide?" - Everyone will have to find out absolutely everything at exactly the same time. Otherwise "Why did they wait to release that information? What were they trying to hide?" - All of the ballots will have to be exactly the same. Otherwise "The ballots were misleading!". (Even though every locality has to have different ballots. Hmm.) - All of the ballots will have to be in every dialect of every language, modern, extinct, or completely made up. Otherwise, it's "not fair". - No voter can ever have ambiguous eligibility. I guess we'll all have to agree on who is a voter and who isn't before the election. This will have to include a comprehensive list of names there's unanimous agreement on. - And voters will have to be able to "become" eligible up to the end of voting on election day. Otherwise, someone will be disenfranchised. - And, of course, none of the thousands of election workers can even make the tiniest mistake.
Without this, the election is FIXED. (Unless my guy won. Then it was fair.)
If it were more than an "idea" then it would be easier to find funding for it.
It's interesting that this so-called "cheap energy" source needs 10s of billions of dollars of funding for many, many years to get started.
I have no doubt that someday, fusion will be a vast, cheap energy source. But right now, it's a hugely expensive energy-sink with no foreseeable return on investment for anyone. Funding for something like that is a gift, not something anyone should expect they have a right to.
I won't even dignify the next paragraph with a response, except to say, I hope to God that was a poor attempt at sarcasm or irony or some such.
Nope. That's the current reality. There's no benefit in pretending reality is different than it is. I haven't seen a counter example to my assertions on intellectual honesty in several years. And the trend is against it.
And the last paragraph is more empty platitudes with no thought behind them. I feel dirty from merely having had this conversation. I'm done here.
And the attitude that individuals are idiots and can never be trusted to run their own lives without laws governing their every move? That's not "cynicism"?
Especially in this case, where the only regulating mechanism is the law, as there's zero economic pressure to handle sensitive data securely.
Huh? What makes the data "sensitive" then? You seem to be saying that the data has no value and the disclosure of the data harms no one. If the data has value and the disclosure of that data causes harm, then I can see a financial motive to protect it. Those with that motive can come up with the mechanism to protect the data.
Mouthing empty platitudes in place of real analysis and problem solving gives all anarchists and libertarians a bad name.
I'm not an anarchist. Anarchists should look bad. They are bad.
And mouthing empty platitudes is good enough for 99% of the rest of political debate, why should I be held to a different standard (especially considering I got the FP)? Your belief in thoughtful, honest political debate is naive and outdated. People don't care about intellectual honesty. If they agree with you, you don't need it. If they disagree with you, they won't give you credit for having it. There's no benefit to it at all and the pursuit of it distracts and disarms folks on my side in the fight against folks who hate us and genuinely want to harm us.
I ask you once again, how would you handle this situation without resorting to regulation?
Often, the right solution to a problem is to endure the problem without trying to solve it, and failing, and making things worse as a result. That's a proposed solution. For another, see my last post. If we'd catch the defrauders and criminals, then we wouldn't have to police innocent third parties. We could do it if we wanted to.
Really? Who is the aggressor? Who is the defrauder?
It seems clear that any law in this case would regulate innocent third parties rather than the aggressor. Hence, the government becomes the aggressor with the innocents, as always, being the victims. Is it really just to harshly punish the folks who disobey this new law? (Mild punishments don't deter.)
Rather than make a new law here, we should repeal a bunch of other laws. Then the government agents who were enforcing those other laws can focus on catching the criminals who commit the crimes rather than regulating innocents or collecting fines to enlarge the treasury.
I'm pretty sure this is what you misunderstand. The "rule of law" doesn't mean that there should be a law to rule every action, inaction, transaction, or interaction in life. "Rule of law" means that governments can only use force according to the law. It stands in contrast to "rule of men" where individual rulers impose their will on the folks who are ruled.
There another concept called "freedom" where individuals are free to act largely without the oversight of a ruler or a law to regulate them through every step in their day.
Freedom trusts the individual. Laws are created to help ensure that the individual is free from force or fraud. The individual can decide things for himself and is expected to decide things based on his best interest.
Tyranny, totalitarianism, authoritarianism, socialism, and monarchy tend to distrust the individual. Laws are created to regulate the individual's everyday actions in as minute a level of detail as possible. That way, he'll make the right decisions to further the goals of the dictator or ruling class or majority, whatever those goals happen to be.
I only suggest that the presumption should be that freedom is correct. Therefore, "make a new law" should be the option of last resort on a problem.
Laws are legislators substituting their choices for yours and mine (because we can't be trusted to make the right choices on our own, but legislators can). Law are backed by threat of violence or force. They are not "just codified rules".
Government taking over services private industry could do is always bad and always has been. Free choices should decide when and if a service is provided or blocked, but governments choose based on politics and force.
It's a Troll because my post lacked equivocation. It was too direct and not nearly wishy-washy enough. There's no shades-of-gray talk and I jumped on no particular bandwagon. Don't I care which way the wind is blowing, which side is popular, or which has the momentum? Must be a troll.
how am i supposed to trust the perspective of a site like that.
Don't. See above about thinking for yourself. I suggest using Google to find information to draw conclusions, like a thoughtful and intelligent person might do.
Or just continue to repeat buzzwords over and over.
Yeah, nevermind thinking for yourself or anything like that. Just say "scientists" and "right wing disinformation campaign" and go on believing whatever you feel like, no matter how unreasonable, illogical, or whether it contradicts your other beliefs.
The true purity test for you guys is to believe something you know isn't true. Only the real enlightened can do that.
What is the point of the label without any information regarding the risks?
1. So you can falsely imply risks and sell your competing product as clone-free. 2. So you can hire more government employees to police the label requirement. They (or their union) will contribute to your campaign. 3. For the revenue from the fines on "improperly" labeled food. 4. You run a law firm and can sue companies for "harm" from cloned food. They settle out of court. 5. Who better to head the food labeling bureau than the guy who wrote the bill?
So the short answer is profit.
This is the reason behind most regulation or other government action.
Never say the hard left isn't as anti-scientific as the hard right.
This statement is incorrect on both counts.
The hard left isn't anti-scientific. They are simply ignorant, emotion-based, hateful, and extremely immature. What would a ten-year-old girl do? That's what a hard lefty would do. Cloning=yuck-fear-greedy-rich-bad-men-harming-cute -animals. This is not anti-scientific exactly, though it's not scientific thinking (or thinking at all really). They're pro-scientific when there's a compelling emotional appeal to something scientific and anti-scientific when the emotional appeal is the other way.
The hard right wants to teach their children an outdated misinterpretation of the Bible. (I assume that's what you're talking about.) They also don't want to be made poorer by being forced to do things against their will because some "expert" says it's a good idea. The hard right is pro-scientific in all other cases.
The hard right needs to re-read their Bible and apply some ordinary logical reasoning to what it actually says. The hard left needs to grow up.
We should listen to a "scientific consensus" when they say climate change will kill us all, but we shouldn't listen to them when they say GM foods are safe?
Slashdot Mirror
The difference between a journalist and a blogger these days is primarily that journalists are more pretentious.
You should be unhappy. The more unhappy you are, the greater your environmental virtue.
Think of it as penance for the world's energy sins. Let your suffering be a beacon to all the unbelievers, climate change deniers, and evil capitalists out there.
You are one of the virtuous greens. Your sacrifice means hope for us all. You have saved the planet.
It's a media hype battle to the death. Your excessive energy use is going to destroy the Earth, so you have to install these bulbs, which contain evil mercury which will destroy the Earth. What should we do? Won't someone in the press tell us?
I'm moving outside into a tent until the press tells us how to avoid certain death.
I wonder why anyone pays attention to the media any more?
I await the next problem-free election. You know, the one where no one can even insinuate anything went wrong.
- There will have to be perfect information about every tiny detail of that election, or they'll say "What are they not telling us? What are they trying to hide?"
- Everyone will have to find out absolutely everything at exactly the same time. Otherwise "Why did they wait to release that information? What were they trying to hide?"
- All of the ballots will have to be exactly the same. Otherwise "The ballots were misleading!". (Even though every locality has to have different ballots. Hmm.)
- All of the ballots will have to be in every dialect of every language, modern, extinct, or completely made up. Otherwise, it's "not fair".
- No voter can ever have ambiguous eligibility. I guess we'll all have to agree on who is a voter and who isn't before the election. This will have to include a comprehensive list of names there's unanimous agreement on.
- And voters will have to be able to "become" eligible up to the end of voting on election day. Otherwise, someone will be disenfranchised.
- And, of course, none of the thousands of election workers can even make the tiniest mistake.
Without this, the election is FIXED. (Unless my guy won. Then it was fair.)
No. The "inner city schools" get about $10,000 per child per year in tax money. Quite a bit more than that in many places.
...the idea of vast, cheap energy sources...
If it were more than an "idea" then it would be easier to find funding for it.
It's interesting that this so-called "cheap energy" source needs 10s of billions of dollars of funding for many, many years to get started.
I have no doubt that someday, fusion will be a vast, cheap energy source. But right now, it's a hugely expensive energy-sink with no foreseeable return on investment for anyone. Funding for something like that is a gift, not something anyone should expect they have a right to.
I won't even dignify the next paragraph with a response, except to say, I hope to God that was a poor attempt at sarcasm or irony or some such.
Nope. That's the current reality. There's no benefit in pretending reality is different than it is. I haven't seen a counter example to my assertions on intellectual honesty in several years. And the trend is against it.
And the last paragraph is more empty platitudes with no thought behind them. I feel dirty from merely having had this conversation. I'm done here.
Your feelings are your own. Bye.
And the attitude that individuals are idiots and can never be trusted to run their own lives without laws governing their every move? That's not "cynicism"?
Especially in this case, where the only regulating mechanism is the law, as there's zero economic pressure to handle sensitive data securely.
Huh? What makes the data "sensitive" then? You seem to be saying that the data has no value and the disclosure of the data harms no one. If the data has value and the disclosure of that data causes harm, then I can see a financial motive to protect it. Those with that motive can come up with the mechanism to protect the data.
Mouthing empty platitudes in place of real analysis and problem solving gives all anarchists and libertarians a bad name.
I'm not an anarchist. Anarchists should look bad. They are bad.
And mouthing empty platitudes is good enough for 99% of the rest of political debate, why should I be held to a different standard (especially considering I got the FP)? Your belief in thoughtful, honest political debate is naive and outdated. People don't care about intellectual honesty. If they agree with you, you don't need it. If they disagree with you, they won't give you credit for having it. There's no benefit to it at all and the pursuit of it distracts and disarms folks on my side in the fight against folks who hate us and genuinely want to harm us.
I ask you once again, how would you handle this situation without resorting to regulation?
Often, the right solution to a problem is to endure the problem without trying to solve it, and failing, and making things worse as a result. That's a proposed solution. For another, see my last post. If we'd catch the defrauders and criminals, then we wouldn't have to police innocent third parties. We could do it if we wanted to.
But corporations aren't individuals, so I don't see why you'd be upset with regulating them
Corporations are groups of individuals. You can't harm a corporation without harming individuals.
This is a law to protect against force and fraud.
Really? Who is the aggressor? Who is the defrauder?
It seems clear that any law in this case would regulate innocent third parties rather than the aggressor. Hence, the government becomes the aggressor with the innocents, as always, being the victims. Is it really just to harshly punish the folks who disobey this new law? (Mild punishments don't deter.)
Rather than make a new law here, we should repeal a bunch of other laws. Then the government agents who were enforcing those other laws can focus on catching the criminals who commit the crimes rather than regulating innocents or collecting fines to enlarge the treasury.
...give up the rule of law...
I'm pretty sure this is what you misunderstand. The "rule of law" doesn't mean that there should be a law to rule every action, inaction, transaction, or interaction in life. "Rule of law" means that governments can only use force according to the law. It stands in contrast to "rule of men" where individual rulers impose their will on the folks who are ruled.
There another concept called "freedom" where individuals are free to act largely without the oversight of a ruler or a law to regulate them through every step in their day.
Freedom trusts the individual. Laws are created to help ensure that the individual is free from force or fraud. The individual can decide things for himself and is expected to decide things based on his best interest.
Tyranny, totalitarianism, authoritarianism, socialism, and monarchy tend to distrust the individual. Laws are created to regulate the individual's everyday actions in as minute a level of detail as possible. That way, he'll make the right decisions to further the goals of the dictator or ruling class or majority, whatever those goals happen to be.
I only suggest that the presumption should be that freedom is correct. Therefore, "make a new law" should be the option of last resort on a problem.
So suggesting that new laws aren't the answer to every problem is "cynicism"?
Laws are just codified rules.
Laws are legislators substituting their choices for yours and mine (because we can't be trusted to make the right choices on our own, but legislators can). Law are backed by threat of violence or force. They are not "just codified rules".
I know we're just one law short. With one more law, nothing will ever go wrong and everyone will live forever. Just one more law.
I'm sure this is the one. No one will accidentally release anyone's private details when it's illegal.
Why haven't they made getting in a car accident illegal?
Municipal WiFi is bad after all.
Government taking over services private industry could do is always bad and always has been. Free choices should decide when and if a service is provided or blocked, but governments choose based on politics and force.
I like mine. I wish I had more time to play games and watch movies.
I have no complaints about the capabilities or operation of the system. It needs more great games and a better online store that sells video though.
I think I clearly made the right choice in buying it. It's still the best choice for HD movies at a semi-reasonable cost.
Yeah, maybe it was someone in the hard middle:
It's a Troll because my post lacked equivocation. It was too direct and not nearly wishy-washy enough. There's no shades-of-gray talk and I jumped on no particular bandwagon. Don't I care which way the wind is blowing, which side is popular, or which has the momentum? Must be a troll.
how am i supposed to trust the perspective of a site like that.
Don't. See above about thinking for yourself. I suggest using Google to find information to draw conclusions, like a thoughtful and intelligent person might do.
Or just continue to repeat buzzwords over and over.
Yeah, nevermind thinking for yourself or anything like that. Just say "scientists" and "right wing disinformation campaign" and go on believing whatever you feel like, no matter how unreasonable, illogical, or whether it contradicts your other beliefs.
The true purity test for you guys is to believe something you know isn't true. Only the real enlightened can do that.
Except the Union of Concerned Scientists are not scientists. They are a far-left political activist group.
Pipelines are good for transporting liquids and gasses.
What is the point of the label without any information regarding the risks?
1. So you can falsely imply risks and sell your competing product as clone-free.
2. So you can hire more government employees to police the label requirement. They (or their union) will contribute to your campaign.
3. For the revenue from the fines on "improperly" labeled food.
4. You run a law firm and can sue companies for "harm" from cloned food. They settle out of court.
5. Who better to head the food labeling bureau than the guy who wrote the bill?
So the short answer is profit.
This is the reason behind most regulation or other government action.
Never say the hard left isn't as anti-scientific as the hard right.
e -animals. This is not anti-scientific exactly, though it's not scientific thinking (or thinking at all really). They're pro-scientific when there's a compelling emotional appeal to something scientific and anti-scientific when the emotional appeal is the other way.
This statement is incorrect on both counts.
The hard left isn't anti-scientific. They are simply ignorant, emotion-based, hateful, and extremely immature. What would a ten-year-old girl do? That's what a hard lefty would do. Cloning=yuck-fear-greedy-rich-bad-men-harming-cut
The hard right wants to teach their children an outdated misinterpretation of the Bible. (I assume that's what you're talking about.) They also don't want to be made poorer by being forced to do things against their will because some "expert" says it's a good idea. The hard right is pro-scientific in all other cases.
The hard right needs to re-read their Bible and apply some ordinary logical reasoning to what it actually says. The hard left needs to grow up.
There's a scientific consensus that GM foods are safe.
We should listen to a "scientific consensus" when they say climate change will kill us all, but we shouldn't listen to them when they say GM foods are safe?