So take it another step and find a church that allows polygamy or to marry your sibling, etc.
I think both of those things are wrong, but we'd be better off if we didn't try to prohibit them legally. People can already enter into contracts with as many consenting adults as they want, and marriage is essentially a contract. As a bonus, the ability for people to have many "spouses" would lead to the decoupling of health insurance from employment.
Who knows how many Einsteins we lose every time Bangladesh floods?
Maybe that's a good reason not to raise sea levels by a meter.
It would be, if we had any choice in the matter, which we don't.
Adaptation will occur slower and with more loss of life if we cripple the world economy trying to limit CO2 emissions.
Adaption is slower, but the climate damages that you have to adapt to are less, too.
Only if we can cause nontrivial climate improvement to occur, which has yet to be shown.
Most economists who have studied the problem find that it's economically beneficial to slow growth (not "cripple the economy") in order to reduce and slow climate change. Even the most conservative estimates (e.g., the "Copenhagen Consensus" analysis) find that it's worthwhile to include CO2 emissions abatement along with adaptation and R&D efforts.
Cite? Economic growth is exponential; even small reductions can have huge effects 100 years later. Nobody suggests that "climate change" is exponential; how would you even measure such a thing? The reports I have seen say that current or proposed measures have huge economic impact and miniscule effect on climate.
Whenever people go on about how it's the sun, their motives are childish and selfish. "The problem is unsolvable, stop trying to fix it, and damn well stop asking me to help!"
Not always. I don't know to what extent the sun contributes, but when I say "The problem is unsolvable. Stop trying to fix it, and damn well stop asking me to help!" I am motivated by the millions or billions of people (mostly in the third world) whose lives will be saved if we adopt free market economic policies and as quickly as possible bring developing nations up to a Western standard of living. Who knows how many Einsteins we lose every time Bangladesh floods? Adaptation will occur slower and with more loss of life if we cripple the world economy trying to limit CO2 emissions.
I have no objection to other people exploring technological ways to adjust the climate, but I hope they are very careful.
Even if they don't go down, they've already cut large numbers of employees and cut production. This mostly due to the republicans in congress and Bush's lack of support and willingness to help pull them out. The extent of damages due to their delay has yet to be seen, but it affects literally millions of people.
The Big 3 have had major problems for decades, and it's Bush's fault? It looks to me like he's is the biggest friend they've got right now, to the tune of $17,400,000,000.00 -- approximately the entire budget of NASA.
There is no rational reason for suicide and it goes against the basic idea of self-preservation. So, I would say someone who is suicidal is NOT rational.
"Rational" and "sane" are not the same, and might be opposites. If someone's goal is to minimize their own gross (not net) discomfort, death might be the only rational solution (depending on one's worldview.) On the other hand, many common human behaviors are irrational.
There proper are ways to report illegal activity. Making a secret phone call to the NYT in hopes of swinging the presidential election is not one of them.
You are making the assumption that going through the 'proper' channels to report illegal activity will actually get results.
You are making the assumption that Tamm tried going through proper channels (the article says he talked to his boss and unofficially to a buddy who worked for a Congressman) and that the activity in question was actually illegal (the article very carefully doesn't say which activity Tamm reported.) Going to the media can cause even worse damage, for example by thwarting an ongoing investigation into those activities, or by revealing a legal activity and therefore causing the enemy to change their behavior to avoid detection.
The article says Tamm acted because he wanted to embarrass the administration. That's never an acceptable reason to reveal national security secrets. Other than that, I'm sympathetic to the guy; it sounds like he and I have similar opinions.
In my programming classes at UW-Milwaukee the professors emphasize that we should design our code to be easy to read/edit even if that means using up more computation cycles. This makes editing the code easier in the future, which is appreciated by future programmers who have to learn your code and can save the company some time and money.
was this professor involved with the design of vista at all?
there is this thing called 'documentation' that you add to your code so other people can understand it.
ignore your instructor. as a user, i very much appreciate whatever gains in efficiency i can get.
This is bad advice. Clear design and coding are extremely important in a nontrivial program. Once it's written, you can profile it to find out exactly where you need to improve performance. Documentation is necessary but not sufficient, and premature optimization makes programs less efficient not more.
I don't think flooding the market with student workers is a good idea during a recession, when people are looking for work in order to feed their families.
I don't see anything in the Constitution which forbids the government from giving out college tuition credits for any reason.
It's this part: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
And the community service for college students isn't mandatory.
In the same way that the drinking age isn't "mandatory"?
and people choking off huge, key portions of people's legislative agendas under this mentality are the reason why our government sucks so horribly right now.
No, choking off peoples' legislative agendas is why our government doesn't suck even worse. Over time, every government position will eventually be used for both good and bad. Concentration of power increases organizational effectiveness, magnifying the bad as well as the good. Separation of powers limits the damage that any one office can do.
Smart people tend to think that we know the answers but we don't. Make me dictator for a year and I'll screw up big time. Give any one person or group absolute power for a year and there's a good chance we'll all be worse off. Every legislative agenda will have unintended consequences and there is no magic bullet.
For what it's worth -- while I consider myself a libertarian at heart, there is no way I could vote for the Barr/Root ticket. Not when the VP candidate runs a sports book.
If it's any consolation, they're not going to win. Voting Libertarian now isn't for the current candidates, it's for the next set of candidates, who will have a larger base to build on. It's also a vote for their platform.
Sigh. Nice job conflating Iraq and 9/11. As has been shown time and time again, there was no plausible link between the two.
There are several plausible links between the two. 9/11 gave Bush the political support to be militarily aggressive. After we invaded Iraq, people allied with those who carried out the 9/11 attacks went to Iraq to fight us. Other groups fighting us in Iraq are supported by Iran, which sponsors Hezbollah, a terrorist group (and it was terrorists who attacked us on 9/11).
Your parent poster didn't conflate Iraq and 9/11. Go back and reread the last paragraph of that post.
The invasion of Iraq will no doubt be regarded as the USA's worst foreign policy disaster of the modern era.
I can doubt it. First, we won't know how much of a disaster it is for multiple decades, and second, there's plenty of opportunity to do much worse. If there's one thing most Americans can agree on it's the ability of our political class to screw up. There's no correlation whatsoever between ability to get elected and ability to lead. Sigh.
denying democrats a large enough majority to correct bush's blunders will result in a ratcheting effect. Bad laws with no reforms.
Democrats don't know how to correct Bush's blunders, and even if they did they might not because they're complicit in those blunders. Whatever happened to "the most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history"? If only there were some way for Democrats (or Republicans, or somebody) to deliver hope and change instead of more of the same.
Often people become wealthy due to both earning more and spending less.
Usually, money that wealthy people don't spend is invested by putting it into an account that earns interest, or into the stock market. This contributes to economic growth just like going out to eat or buying more toys does.
"Yes, welfare and income redistribution is doing horrible things in 3rd world countries like Denmark,Norway,Sweden,France,Germany,Belgium etc..."
Well, if you like that kind of thing...feel free to move there.
Isn't choice a wonderful thing?
More realistically, issues of welfare and income redistribution should be left to the states and not implemented by the federal government in a "one size fits all" way (because it's a big country, and one size doesn't fit all. And because that's what the Constitution says.) It's much easier for an American to move from state to state, and decentralization lets us try more than one thing at a time. More money would remain in the cities, instead of being used by the feds to subsidize rural interests.
Give me a break. Radical Agenda? How come NO ONE seems to talk about the Republican Majority *AND* Dubya as President from 2000 to 2006?
A better example of single-party government is hard to find, and you want more? Switching which party is in charge won't improve things; forcing the parties to compromise might. If nothing else it will slow them down.
This American concept of "Them or us" fascinates me. You shouldn't be voting on that. You should be picking who is the best to run the country.
It's more complicated than that. The best leader is not always the one with the best ideas / the best platform. Who controls Congress, and by how much, is a factor. (What would be worse, 10% of President McCain's agenda or 90% of President Obama's?) What kind of Supreme Court nominees one wants might also be more important than who can run the country best. (For example someone might be willing to put up with 4 years of inexperienced Obama leadership in order to replace retiring liberal justices with new liberal justices.) The best leader is probably neither a Republican nor a Democrat, but one of those two will be the winner, so do you want to vote your conscience, or instead pick who you think will win in order to have bragging rights for the next four years?
Actually it seems you are mistaken about what ID is. Go watch Ken Millers presentation. The Panda's and People creationist book had a mass replacement of Creator/God and Intelligent Design/Creationism. Go look at the legal battles.
Those are the "not the best critical thinkers" creationists I was speaking of. They're wrong. I realize that there are a lot of them, but as an anal retentive jerk, I still insist on correct terminology. And once they do that, they should get off my lawn!
. First and foremost the ID nonsense is about things being poof magically created whole and perfect, not gradual changes.
No, that's creationism. A bunch of creationists think that creationism == ID, but they're not exactly the best critical thinkers. ID is evolution where (at least some of the) random mutations are actually non-random and are the work of God, space aliens or whatever. Natural selection then proceeds normally.
It's clear that Spore resembles ID. An external intelligence (the player) adds new traits to a critter, which then goes out to compete for survival.
One of the problems with human beings is that we extrapolate from our own circumstances to make conclusions that we think apply to everyone. "I'm doing great, so lots of people are doing great" is as invalid as "I'm doing poorly, so lots of people are doing poorly". The simple truth is that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data".
WE COULD HAVE SAVED IT, BUT WE WERE TOO DOGGONE CHEAP.
A plausible position is that it is more cost-effectivee to adapt to global warming (in money as well as in lives). Nobody knows if we can affect global warming, and attempting to do so by controlling CO2 would bankrupt developing nations. That's what the "immoral" in the summary refers to: some people believe that consumption is inherently immoral and we should return to an agrarian lifestyle. (I prefer indoor plumbing and the internet, myself.)
I thought Linux was supposed to be to OS X as OS X is to Windows in terms of stability (ie, not just rock-solid, but it will punch you in the gut if you try to crash it)... is this not the case?
That's a huge generalization. Even Windows can be made to be stable under some circumstances. There are many Linux distributions, and some are less stable than others.
Slashdot Mirror
I think both of those things are wrong, but we'd be better off if we didn't try to prohibit them legally. People can already enter into contracts with as many consenting adults as they want, and marriage is essentially a contract. As a bonus, the ability for people to have many "spouses" would lead to the decoupling of health insurance from employment.
It would be, if we had any choice in the matter, which we don't.
Only if we can cause nontrivial climate improvement to occur, which has yet to be shown.
Cite? Economic growth is exponential; even small reductions can have huge effects 100 years later. Nobody suggests that "climate change" is exponential; how would you even measure such a thing? The reports I have seen say that current or proposed measures have huge economic impact and miniscule effect on climate.
Not always. I don't know to what extent the sun contributes, but when I say "The problem is unsolvable. Stop trying to fix it, and damn well stop asking me to help!" I am motivated by the millions or billions of people (mostly in the third world) whose lives will be saved if we adopt free market economic policies and as quickly as possible bring developing nations up to a Western standard of living. Who knows how many Einsteins we lose every time Bangladesh floods? Adaptation will occur slower and with more loss of life if we cripple the world economy trying to limit CO2 emissions.
I have no objection to other people exploring technological ways to adjust the climate, but I hope they are very careful.
The Big 3 have had major problems for decades, and it's Bush's fault? It looks to me like he's is the biggest friend they've got right now, to the tune of $17,400,000,000.00 -- approximately the entire budget of NASA.
"Rational" and "sane" are not the same, and might be opposites. If someone's goal is to minimize their own gross (not net) discomfort, death might be the only rational solution (depending on one's worldview.) On the other hand, many common human behaviors are irrational.
You are making the assumption that Tamm tried going through proper channels (the article says he talked to his boss and unofficially to a buddy who worked for a Congressman) and that the activity in question was actually illegal (the article very carefully doesn't say which activity Tamm reported.) Going to the media can cause even worse damage, for example by thwarting an ongoing investigation into those activities, or by revealing a legal activity and therefore causing the enemy to change their behavior to avoid detection.
The article says Tamm acted because he wanted to embarrass the administration. That's never an acceptable reason to reveal national security secrets. Other than that, I'm sympathetic to the guy; it sounds like he and I have similar opinions.
This is bad advice. Clear design and coding are extremely important in a nontrivial program. Once it's written, you can profile it to find out exactly where you need to improve performance. Documentation is necessary but not sufficient, and premature optimization makes programs less efficient not more.
We are the good guys. He doesn't have to deserve it to be treated decently.
I don't think flooding the market with student workers is a good idea during a recession, when people are looking for work in order to feed their families.
It's this part: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
In the same way that the drinking age isn't "mandatory"?
No, choking off peoples' legislative agendas is why our government doesn't suck even worse. Over time, every government position will eventually be used for both good and bad. Concentration of power increases organizational effectiveness, magnifying the bad as well as the good. Separation of powers limits the damage that any one office can do.
Smart people tend to think that we know the answers but we don't. Make me dictator for a year and I'll screw up big time. Give any one person or group absolute power for a year and there's a good chance we'll all be worse off. Every legislative agenda will have unintended consequences and there is no magic bullet.
That's what people said about Bush in 2000. Good luck with that.
If it's any consolation, they're not going to win. Voting Libertarian now isn't for the current candidates, it's for the next set of candidates, who will have a larger base to build on. It's also a vote for their platform.
There are several plausible links between the two. 9/11 gave Bush the political support to be militarily aggressive. After we invaded Iraq, people allied with those who carried out the 9/11 attacks went to Iraq to fight us. Other groups fighting us in Iraq are supported by Iran, which sponsors Hezbollah, a terrorist group (and it was terrorists who attacked us on 9/11).
Your parent poster didn't conflate Iraq and 9/11. Go back and reread the last paragraph of that post.
I can doubt it. First, we won't know how much of a disaster it is for multiple decades, and second, there's plenty of opportunity to do much worse. If there's one thing most Americans can agree on it's the ability of our political class to screw up. There's no correlation whatsoever between ability to get elected and ability to lead. Sigh.
Democrats don't know how to correct Bush's blunders, and even if they did they might not because they're complicit in those blunders. Whatever happened to "the most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history"? If only there were some way for Democrats (or Republicans, or somebody) to deliver hope and change instead of more of the same.
Usually, money that wealthy people don't spend is invested by putting it into an account that earns interest, or into the stock market. This contributes to economic growth just like going out to eat or buying more toys does.
More realistically, issues of welfare and income redistribution should be left to the states and not implemented by the federal government in a "one size fits all" way (because it's a big country, and one size doesn't fit all. And because that's what the Constitution says.) It's much easier for an American to move from state to state, and decentralization lets us try more than one thing at a time. More money would remain in the cities, instead of being used by the feds to subsidize rural interests.
A better example of single-party government is hard to find, and you want more? Switching which party is in charge won't improve things; forcing the parties to compromise might. If nothing else it will slow them down.
It's more complicated than that. The best leader is not always the one with the best ideas / the best platform. Who controls Congress, and by how much, is a factor. (What would be worse, 10% of President McCain's agenda or 90% of President Obama's?) What kind of Supreme Court nominees one wants might also be more important than who can run the country best. (For example someone might be willing to put up with 4 years of inexperienced Obama leadership in order to replace retiring liberal justices with new liberal justices.) The best leader is probably neither a Republican nor a Democrat, but one of those two will be the winner, so do you want to vote your conscience, or instead pick who you think will win in order to have bragging rights for the next four years?
I'm voting for Barr, myself.
I hate to admit it, but having now looked into it more closely I see that you're right.
Those are the "not the best critical thinkers" creationists I was speaking of. They're wrong. I realize that there are a lot of them, but as an anal retentive jerk, I still insist on correct terminology. And once they do that, they should get off my lawn!
No, that's creationism. A bunch of creationists think that creationism == ID, but they're not exactly the best critical thinkers. ID is evolution where (at least some of the) random mutations are actually non-random and are the work of God, space aliens or whatever. Natural selection then proceeds normally.
It's clear that Spore resembles ID. An external intelligence (the player) adds new traits to a critter, which then goes out to compete for survival.
One of the problems with human beings is that we extrapolate from our own circumstances to make conclusions that we think apply to everyone. "I'm doing great, so lots of people are doing great" is as invalid as "I'm doing poorly, so lots of people are doing poorly". The simple truth is that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data".
A plausible position is that it is more cost-effectivee to adapt to global warming (in money as well as in lives). Nobody knows if we can affect global warming, and attempting to do so by controlling CO2 would bankrupt developing nations. That's what the "immoral" in the summary refers to: some people believe that consumption is inherently immoral and we should return to an agrarian lifestyle. (I prefer indoor plumbing and the internet, myself.)
That's a huge generalization. Even Windows can be made to be stable under some circumstances. There are many Linux distributions, and some are less stable than others.