The abortion/death penalty "conundrum" is really simple.
Being pro-life is about saving innocent lives.
The death penalty is about ending guilty ones.
Another way to construe the difference is that being pro-life is about saving non-conscious (but diploid) human life, whereas the death penalty is about taking conscious human life.
For myself I think consciousness is a better ethical touchstone than life, since each sperm and ovum are 'alive' (and indeed are haploid human beings) and you would have to be a very radical pro-lifer to be anti-menstruation.
By this definition, 9/11 was not an act of war either
Clearly!
Personally, I agree -- declaring a "war on terrorism" is as stupid as declaring a "war on inflation" or "war on poverty". It's meaningless to declare war on a vague concent (sic)...
I could not have put it better myself. Except that I would not call it "meaningless", I would call it 'marketing.'
But if you're suggesting that right-wing militia and McVeigh's blowing up a building was "mass murder" while Al Queda's blowing up the WTC was "war"
Given the definition of 'war' I gave, how could I possibly be saying that? But there is a difference.
The difference is that the islamic terrorists are often harder to get at. Given they have received shelter from nations like Afghanistan, the position of such nations comes close to being warlike. Even those of us who thought the Iraq debacle was unadulterated madness from the start, regarded the invasion of Afghanistan as justified in the wake of the attack on the WTC &tc., and the refusal of the Taliban regime to hand over those suspected of responsibility.
Ultimately, however, terrorism can't be fought as if you were fighting a war. The capture of Falujiah did not diminish terrorist activity in Iraq, despite the best hopes of those who believed it would. Rather than being a military endeavour, coming to grips with terrorism is a police matter. We need the FBI (or whatever your preferred police agency is) to lead this, with the marines there on call, to get those who are otherwise too difficult to get at.
Um...I don't know where you get your definitions from...but killing over 100 people sounds like an act of war to me.
No an act of war, by the most traditional definition, is something one nation (or the sovereign of a nation) does to another. The notion of civil war, where there are parties with contending claims to be the sovereign within a nation complicates matters a little, but basically war is not something an individual (or group of individuals without a claim to nationhood) can conduct. So no, what Tim did was not an act of war, it was an act of mass murder.
Oh please, this is just typical liberal socialist scare mongering.
Remember, if you aren't doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about. Well maybe if you are mistaken for someone who is doing someone wrong, or... if you have a close relative who is doing something wrong, or... if you once spoke to that guy who...
Anyway, as I was saying, if you aren't doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about. This is for your protection, after all.
But someone has to pay these lawyers to do their dirty deeds.
Which neatly negates you main point.
Perhaps a lawyer decided what kind of action ought to be launched, but only after a bus company came up with the idea to use the law to do something about this perceived threat to their profitability.
Left to themselves lawyers come up with stuff like... um.. the US Constitution. A culture that denigrates lawyers qua lawyers (as opposed to denigrating bad lawyers per se), is a culture well on its way to surrendering it's rights and liberties.
I've always found it intriguing that a programmer who could master several arcane computer languages (especially since computers are notably intolerant of errors), could fail so utterly to master his own native human language.
Might this not be the crux of the problem? If the immediate feedback a compiler supplies in response to such an error becomes your usual learning model, a lack proficiency in the use of human languages mjay not be all that surprising?
No, actually. I'm saying the last thing the middle east needed was for the poor bastards that live there to be perpetually ruled by mysoginistic, medieval-minded, brutal, theocratic thugs.
I couldn't agree more. However, I can't see how this aim can realistically be achieved. The current intervention certainly looks wedded to failure in that regard. Even the strategy to set up a sham democracy with a political strongman to replace Saddam doesn't look like its going to run now.
... the more that people like the Taliban became fashionable, the more that aggressive regimes like Saddam's were going to increase their traffic with them
Saddam was bad, no doubts, but if you truely believe he 'trafficked' with the Taliban you have been sold another big lie. What he did was traffic with Palestinian terrorists. It seems very clear that he never formed alliances with the Taliban or Al Quaeda.
Ask the average Iraqi...
No such person exists, and I have as little access to this non-existent person as you.
But they recognize that it's not some noble struggle against Yankee Crusaders...
You really think Al Sadr and his mob do? Or are you so ignorant as to lump them in with the Sunni insurgency?
It's leftover Baathists and their supporters...
Well maybe, but they are no longer Baathists qua Baathists. I think it's clear that this is really an anti-Shiite as well as an anti-US movement. That's why we really have to move on from talking about Baathism and realise the increasingly religious/ethnic dimension of the insurgency.
... have a vested interest in crushing democracy movements.
But not only them. Everyone (not just today's insurgents) is just waiting for the US to leave so they can struggle to set up their particular relgious utopia. That's why Bush is right that you can't set a timetable for withdrawal, that's why in fact the US can't withdraw for the forseeable future and that is precisely why it was a massive blunder ever to go in in the first place! In terms 9/11 and the war on terror, which is what I was responding to, it is clear that the intervention in Iraq has merely fanned the fires of terror, made the US more reviled and boosted the number of terrorists in training.
Anyway you shake it, the "average Iraqi" with whom you are so astoundingly intimate, faces a bleak political future.
there are just as many scientists that will argue against global warming as there are scientists saying its happening
I doubt you'd find a single scientitst who would argue against global warming... now that head island and other measuring effects have been exhaustively studied, the question of whether global mean temperature is rising is fairly easy to answer (it is). As OP pointed out, it is the role of human activities that has been the subject of debate over the last decade. Get with the program sunshine.
On second thoughts, if you paid one enough you could probably get a single scientist to say that global warming isn't occuring...
First, do we even know that global warming is happening, and even if it is a threat
itself...and even then, wouldnt creating this "halo" be interfering with earth's natural process..
But the larger middle east needed some changes following 9/11
Surely the last think the middle east needed after 9/11 was the creation of more terrorists. Or are you saying this was a brilliant ruse to make Iraq a terrorist's playground, so the BadGuys(tm) wouldn't feel the need to come all the way to the US to kill themselves some 'Yankees'?
One - these institutions have been formalized for a couple of thousand years and even then not consistently, and even then only in a geographically limited areas or the globe. It's reasonable to hypothesize that this will not have yet over-ridden a million years of accumumlated genetic tendancies, and the correlation bears this out.
What the hell do you mean "the correlation bears this out?" The point is that for a few thousand years, almost entirely consistently (examples of a monogamous culture devolving are extremely rare), across the largest populations in the world, monogomy is the rule. It is a rule enforced by culture, morality, religion and law. What you must understand is that natural selection can only take place within the limits imposed by the given environment in which the breeding is taking place. The environment for the majority of the human population includes the cultural restraint. Given that this environment results in the vast majority of people having offspring, it is more instructive to ask who it is that is not reproducing, rather than confabulate about the influence of the "dominant" male.
Two - are these institutions set in stone in modern society?
Absolutely! Written in stone and handed down from up high.
Dominant males are more attractive to most girls and will still have a better chance of reproduction and are still more likely to have multiple partners.
Most girls? Maybe, but the more intelligent women don't actually find jocks to be all that attractive. Sorry. In fact your "dominant" male is doomed to breed down on intelligence, and the correlation bears this out. Also note that multiple sexual partners doesn't necessarily (and given contraception is unlikely to mean) multiple breeding partners. Men with offspring with multiple unmarried partners are, in fact, likely to be society's losers/.
You still haven't explained what you mean by 'dominant' in this context. Instead you provide this rather circular example:
... I can elaborate for you. Taking you as an example - if you are a dominant male then your children are more likely to be male.
OK... all male kids... I must be a domiant male, so why is it that all those sissies with daughters are earning so much more than me...:/
Seriously though, this pretty much sinks your entire argument. If dominant males breed more often, and if they produce males more often, then there ought to be (especially in cultures with low infant mortality) a majority of males. In fact the opposite is this case.
In the real world, men in general are very competative with other men. Over a variety of skills, and in a variety of arenas of competition, some men do better than others, such dominance does not necessary generalise. For instance one male can be the dominant mathematician, or football player, yet loose out in the competition for the most desireable females, or not end up as the captain of business.
On the other hand the most successful men are submissive to their female partners. I don't mean whips and chains submissive, but rather that they will allow the female to set the priorities to which they excercise their skills (ie. getting a house etc) and restricting their activities (no chasing other women, drinking too late with the boys... well your married, no?). As the female will be doing the central work of reproducing the species she requires a mate who is capable of protecting and providing for her during this vulnerable time. Not surprisingly this is what most women want: A man who is competitive among other men, but who gives in to her on important questions in the relationship and provides her with protection and other services.
Result is that a dominant male child will get around a lot and have many kids whilst a submissive male will not get many mates.
Only problem is were talking about humans here, who have quaint little institutions like marriage, bigammy and child maintainance laws and the like.
The theory is that dominance or submision will be passed on to the child either through genetic or envrionmental factors.
Rather than merely hedging on the generic or environmental factors, you should also have written "will either be passed on or not." Now that would be difficult to disagree with.
The biggest problem I have though is trying to understand what you actually mean by dominance-submission. Are you merely saying that there exist, within the male population, men who in a particular context at a particular time in leaders and followers? Are you inferring that the position they find themselves in at any particular juncture has been genetically determined? Are you saying that my promotion from copy boy to CEO of our company has had a Lamarckian effect upon my genetic material which I will now be able to pass onto my (male?) offspring? Or is it just that some guys aren't as good at sports?
Actually they still do some real science, though admittedly the focus was set to commerce during the Hawke/Keating years.
Re:Would this ever happen without the licence fee?
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BBC Launches APIs
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But at least the commercial broadcasters don't steal money from people who don't watch their shows in order to make them.
Well there you have it. Life sometimes involves a choice between competing evils. IMO the offence of asking TV viewers for a few pennies pales in comparison to the evil of the intellectual and cultural damage wrought by the brainrot which passes for mainstream entertainment.
If you don't like it, you don't have to watch.
No I don't. Fortunately here in Australia I can watch the (government funded) ABC and SBS, and never have to watch a commercial broadcaster (and hardly ever do). While I may not always approve of how may tax dollar is being spent, I'm very happy that some of it is being spent to give me at least this freedom of choice.
However, this is not merely an issue of what I, as an individual, choose to watch or not to watch. What I cannot opt out of is living in the dumbed-down society fostered (at least in part) by lowest common demomniator programming.
If you're British and you don't like the BBC you don't have to watch that either - but you DO have to pay for it.
You don't, you could simply choose not to watch TV at all. After all, that is what I would be forced to do in an entertainment market devoid of choice such as the one you seem to be advocating.
Re:Would this ever happen without the licence fee?
on
BBC Launches APIs
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· Score: 1
How unfortunate that would be.
To see how unfortunate that would be you only have to tune your TV to a commercial broadcaster. Pretty damn unfortunate I would say, YMMV.
If they were government funded there wouldn't have been all the fuss over BBC vs Government during the whole Iraq thing.
Not so. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is funded from consolidated revenue, and they still had a spat with the government apropos Iraq (though not as big a spat was the BBC did).
Their independence results instead, it from the fact that each of these broadcasters is formally an independent corporation. Of course the question of funding, whether out of consolidated revenue or via a licensing 'fee,' given governments some leverage over these organisations. Additionally, at least in the case of the ABC, appointments to the board (as with judges to the bench) are made by government. In Australia at least, the government, as a matter of convention and honour, has tradtionally resisted making overtly politcal appointments or using funding cuts as a punishment for criticism. Unfortunately given the international Retreat of Democracy this seems no longer to be the case.
... but scrubbers can be used to get out most of the stuff other than CO2.
Which is kinda why we have to stop buring coal sometime about 25 years ago, at least until a viable sequestration technology can be developed. And until that is accomplished, removing particulate matter from coal exhaust actually exacerbates the problem, so srubbers are arguabley worse than useless.
I'll assume you aren't familiar with actual official Nazi policies. See http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/25Po ints.html for a handy list.... erhaps the actual implemented policies differ...
Yes actual policies differed dramatically. You cannot seriously regard the 25 points as reflecting the policy of the NSDAP. It's a propaganda sheet, and it isn't very smart to accept Nazi propaganda at face value. The fact is that most leading Nazi's found it to be an embarassment, and it certainly did not influence Hitler's thinking or actions. But any serious history of the NSDAP will debunk the 25 points for you.
... but they did create heavy government regulation of business, a pension system, and other socialist style programs.
Wrong. Of all the major institutions in German society, business was perhaps the only one to escape Gleichschaltung. As Hitler explained, the captains of business were a natural elite who had proven themselves by their success, and that he was not so foolish as to tamper with business. It is true, however, that government spending boosted German industry in a way that intefered with natural market mechanisms. All in all German Big Business did very well under the Hitler regime, thankyou very much.
Pensions are not a socialist policy, they are, to quote Kropotkin, "crumbs off the capitalist's table." Indeed in Germany, pensions were a decidedly conservative policy. They were introduced somewhat earlier, by (arch-conservative) Bismark, in his fight against socialism. The idea of the welfare state as conceived by Bismark, was to "take the wind out of the Socialist sails."
Because only a human hand count, viewed by all interested parties can be verified fair.
Absolutely!
Otherwise, what's to prevent joeblow gifted hacker...
It's not some gifted hacker you have to worry about, it's the incumbents. Without a visible vote scrutinised by all interested parties, it just becomes too easy to rig the poll.
OK, so the use of 'irony' in the above post is probably still a misuse (although I'm willing to admit we've lost that one along with latin plurals - especially on fora such as/.). However I checked your site and you're a little too precious regarding the meaning of the word. Specifically you disregard the (accepted) usuage of as in "irony of fate" (something that approaches what I imagine is meant by 'Morisettan irony').
Of "Morisettan," or "dramatic" irony, you write "... I have as yet been unable to find any examples of this misuse of the term irony in anything even remotely authoritarian (sic.)... going back before the early 1970s." (You mean 'authoritative,' of course, not 'authoritarian.')
Is the mid C17th far back enough for you? Admit it, you've been brave enough to venture into this minefield without even having acess to the full OED, haven't you? Get thee to a library!
irony, n. ... 2. fig. A condition of affairs or events of a character opposite to what was, or might naturally be, expected; a contradictory outcome of events as if in mockery of the promise and fitness of things. (In F. ironie du sort.)
The examples provided for this usage date back to 1649!
1649 G. DANIEL Trinarch., Hen. V, cxcviii, Yet here: (and 'tis the Ironie of Warre Where Arrowes forme the Argument,) he best Acquitts himselfe, who doth a Horse praefer To his proud Rider. 1833 THIRLWALL in Philol. Museum II. 483 (title) On the Irony of Sophocles. Ibid. 493 The contrast between man with his hopes, fears, wishes, and undertakings, and a dark, inflexible fate, affords abundant room for the exhibition of tragic irony. ... etc.
The clincher, IMO, apropos any weight carried in literature, it the title of Thomas Hardy's 1894 work Life's Little Ironies.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm so sick of my wife complaining about cramps and getting generally bitchy...
Try massaging her sacrum.
The abortion/death penalty "conundrum" is really simple.
Being pro-life is about saving innocent lives.
The death penalty is about ending guilty ones.
Another way to construe the difference is that being pro-life is about saving non-conscious (but diploid) human life, whereas the death penalty is about taking conscious human life.
For myself I think consciousness is a better ethical touchstone than life, since each sperm and ovum are 'alive' (and indeed are haploid human beings) and you would have to be a very radical pro-lifer to be anti-menstruation.
By this definition, 9/11 was not an act of war either
Clearly!
Personally, I agree -- declaring a "war on terrorism" is as stupid as declaring a "war on inflation" or "war on poverty". It's meaningless to declare war on a vague concent (sic)...
I could not have put it better myself. Except that I would not call it "meaningless", I would call it 'marketing.'
But if you're suggesting that right-wing militia and McVeigh's blowing up a building was "mass murder" while Al Queda's blowing up the WTC was "war"
Given the definition of 'war' I gave, how could I possibly be saying that? But there is a difference.
The difference is that the islamic terrorists are often harder to get at. Given they have received shelter from nations like Afghanistan, the position of such nations comes close to being warlike. Even those of us who thought the Iraq debacle was unadulterated madness from the start, regarded the invasion of Afghanistan as justified in the wake of the attack on the WTC &tc., and the refusal of the Taliban regime to hand over those suspected of responsibility.
Ultimately, however, terrorism can't be fought as if you were fighting a war. The capture of Falujiah did not diminish terrorist activity in Iraq, despite the best hopes of those who believed it would. Rather than being a military endeavour, coming to grips with terrorism is a police matter. We need the FBI (or whatever your preferred police agency is) to lead this, with the marines there on call, to get those who are otherwise too difficult to get at.
Um...I don't know where you get your definitions from...but killing over 100 people sounds like an act of war to me.
No an act of war, by the most traditional definition, is something one nation (or the sovereign of a nation) does to another. The notion of civil war, where there are parties with contending claims to be the sovereign within a nation complicates matters a little, but basically war is not something an individual (or group of individuals without a claim to nationhood) can conduct. So no, what Tim did was not an act of war, it was an act of mass murder.
Oh please, this is just typical liberal socialist scare mongering.
Remember, if you aren't doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about. Well maybe if you are mistaken for someone who is doing someone wrong, or ... if you have a close relative who is doing something wrong, or ... if you once spoke to that guy who ...
Anyway, as I was saying, if you aren't doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about. This is for your protection, after all.
And to think... She's an average "geek's girlfriend" oer there in Sverige.
Not to accuse you of sexism or anything, but I think she is the actual geek in this case.
>> The government getting involved to compete is socialism, not capitalism.
so?
What do you mean "so"?! Don't you know ideological purity is sooooo much more important than positive outcomes?
OK, now I get your drift, poor 'scientific' lawyers -> GOOD; rich marked-oriented lawyers -> BAD.
Well Comrade, since you put it like that, who am I to disagree? ;)
But someone has to pay these lawyers to do their dirty deeds.
Which neatly negates you main point.
Perhaps a lawyer decided what kind of action ought to be launched, but only after a bus company came up with the idea to use the law to do something about this perceived threat to their profitability.
Left to themselves lawyers come up with stuff like ... um .. the US Constitution. A culture that denigrates lawyers qua lawyers (as opposed to denigrating bad lawyers per se), is a culture well on its way to surrendering it's rights and liberties.
I've always found it intriguing that a programmer who could master several arcane computer languages (especially since computers are notably intolerant of errors), could fail so utterly to master his own native human language.
Might this not be the crux of the problem? If the immediate feedback a compiler supplies in response to such an error becomes your usual learning model, a lack proficiency in the use of human languages mjay not be all that surprising?
No, actually. I'm saying the last thing the middle east needed was for the poor bastards that live there to be perpetually ruled by mysoginistic, medieval-minded, brutal, theocratic thugs.
I couldn't agree more. However, I can't see how this aim can realistically be achieved. The current intervention certainly looks wedded to failure in that regard. Even the strategy to set up a sham democracy with a political strongman to replace Saddam doesn't look like its going to run now.
Saddam was bad, no doubts, but if you truely believe he 'trafficked' with the Taliban you have been sold another big lie. What he did was traffic with Palestinian terrorists. It seems very clear that he never formed alliances with the Taliban or Al Quaeda.
Ask the average Iraqi ...
No such person exists, and I have as little access to this non-existent person as you.
But they recognize that it's not some noble struggle against Yankee Crusaders ...
You really think Al Sadr and his mob do? Or are you so ignorant as to lump them in with the Sunni insurgency?
It's leftover Baathists and their supporters ...
Well maybe, but they are no longer Baathists qua Baathists. I think it's clear that this is really an anti-Shiite as well as an anti-US movement. That's why we really have to move on from talking about Baathism and realise the increasingly religious/ethnic dimension of the insurgency.
But not only them. Everyone (not just today's insurgents) is just waiting for the US to leave so they can struggle to set up their particular relgious utopia. That's why Bush is right that you can't set a timetable for withdrawal, that's why in fact the US can't withdraw for the forseeable future and that is precisely why it was a massive blunder ever to go in in the first place! In terms 9/11 and the war on terror, which is what I was responding to, it is clear that the intervention in Iraq has merely fanned the fires of terror, made the US more reviled and boosted the number of terrorists in training.
Anyway you shake it, the "average Iraqi" with whom you are so astoundingly intimate, faces a bleak political future.
there are just as many scientists that will argue against global warming as there are scientists saying its happening
I doubt you'd find a single scientitst who would argue against global warming ... now that head island and other measuring effects have been exhaustively studied, the question of whether global mean temperature is rising is fairly easy to answer (it is). As OP pointed out, it is the role of human activities that has been the subject of debate over the last decade. Get with the program sunshine.
On second thoughts, if you paid one enough you could probably get a single scientist to say that global warming isn't occuring ...
First, do we even know that global warming is happening, and even if it is a threat itself...and even then, wouldnt creating this "halo" be interfering with earth's natural process ..
Yes we do.
Yes it is.
And again ... yes it would be.
But the larger middle east needed some changes following 9/11
Surely the last think the middle east needed after 9/11 was the creation of more terrorists. Or are you saying this was a brilliant ruse to make Iraq a terrorist's playground, so the BadGuys(tm) wouldn't feel the need to come all the way to the US to kill themselves some 'Yankees'?
One - these institutions have been formalized for a couple of thousand years and even then not consistently, and even then only in a geographically limited areas or the globe. It's reasonable to hypothesize that this will not have yet over-ridden a million years of accumumlated genetic tendancies, and the correlation bears this out.
What the hell do you mean "the correlation bears this out?" The point is that for a few thousand years, almost entirely consistently (examples of a monogamous culture devolving are extremely rare), across the largest populations in the world, monogomy is the rule. It is a rule enforced by culture, morality, religion and law. What you must understand is that natural selection can only take place within the limits imposed by the given environment in which the breeding is taking place. The environment for the majority of the human population includes the cultural restraint. Given that this environment results in the vast majority of people having offspring, it is more instructive to ask who it is that is not reproducing, rather than confabulate about the influence of the "dominant" male.
Two - are these institutions set in stone in modern society?
Absolutely! Written in stone and handed down from up high.
Dominant males are more attractive to most girls and will still have a better chance of reproduction and are still more likely to have multiple partners.
Most girls? Maybe, but the more intelligent women don't actually find jocks to be all that attractive. Sorry. In fact your "dominant" male is doomed to breed down on intelligence, and the correlation bears this out. Also note that multiple sexual partners doesn't necessarily (and given contraception is unlikely to mean) multiple breeding partners. Men with offspring with multiple unmarried partners are, in fact, likely to be society's losers/.
You still haven't explained what you mean by 'dominant' in this context. Instead you provide this rather circular example:
OK ... all male kids ... I must be a domiant male, so why is it that all those sissies with daughters are earning so much more than me ... :/
Seriously though, this pretty much sinks your entire argument. If dominant males breed more often, and if they produce males more often, then there ought to be (especially in cultures with low infant mortality) a majority of males. In fact the opposite is this case.
In the real world, men in general are very competative with other men. Over a variety of skills, and in a variety of arenas of competition, some men do better than others, such dominance does not necessary generalise. For instance one male can be the dominant mathematician, or football player, yet loose out in the competition for the most desireable females, or not end up as the captain of business.
On the other hand the most successful men are submissive to their female partners. I don't mean whips and chains submissive, but rather that they will allow the female to set the priorities to which they excercise their skills (ie. getting a house etc) and restricting their activities (no chasing other women, drinking too late with the boys ... well your married, no?). As the female will be doing the central work of reproducing the species she requires a mate who is capable of protecting and providing for her during this vulnerable time. Not surprisingly this is what most women want: A man who is competitive among other men, but who gives in to her on important questions in the relationship and provides her with protection and other services.
Result is that a dominant male child will get around a lot and have many kids whilst a submissive male will not get many mates.
Only problem is were talking about humans here, who have quaint little institutions like marriage, bigammy and child maintainance laws and the like.
The theory is that dominance or submision will be passed on to the child either through genetic or envrionmental factors.
Rather than merely hedging on the generic or environmental factors, you should also have written "will either be passed on or not." Now that would be difficult to disagree with.
The biggest problem I have though is trying to understand what you actually mean by dominance-submission. Are you merely saying that there exist, within the male population, men who in a particular context at a particular time in leaders and followers? Are you inferring that the position they find themselves in at any particular juncture has been genetically determined? Are you saying that my promotion from copy boy to CEO of our company has had a Lamarckian effect upon my genetic material which I will now be able to pass onto my (male?) offspring? Or is it just that some guys aren't as good at sports?
CSIRO is an applied science research organisation
Actually they still do some real science, though admittedly the focus was set to commerce during the Hawke/Keating years.
But at least the commercial broadcasters don't steal money from people who don't watch their shows in order to make them.
Well there you have it. Life sometimes involves a choice between competing evils. IMO the offence of asking TV viewers for a few pennies pales in comparison to the evil of the intellectual and cultural damage wrought by the brainrot which passes for mainstream entertainment.
If you don't like it, you don't have to watch.
No I don't. Fortunately here in Australia I can watch the (government funded) ABC and SBS, and never have to watch a commercial broadcaster (and hardly ever do). While I may not always approve of how may tax dollar is being spent, I'm very happy that some of it is being spent to give me at least this freedom of choice.
However, this is not merely an issue of what I, as an individual, choose to watch or not to watch. What I cannot opt out of is living in the dumbed-down society fostered (at least in part) by lowest common demomniator programming.
If you're British and you don't like the BBC you don't have to watch that either - but you DO have to pay for it.
You don't, you could simply choose not to watch TV at all. After all, that is what I would be forced to do in an entertainment market devoid of choice such as the one you seem to be advocating.
How unfortunate that would be.
To see how unfortunate that would be you only have to tune your TV to a commercial broadcaster. Pretty damn unfortunate I would say, YMMV.
If they were government funded there wouldn't have been all the fuss over BBC vs Government during the whole Iraq thing.
Not so. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is funded from consolidated revenue, and they still had a spat with the government apropos Iraq (though not as big a spat was the BBC did).
Their independence results instead, it from the fact that each of these broadcasters is formally an independent corporation. Of course the question of funding, whether out of consolidated revenue or via a licensing 'fee,' given governments some leverage over these organisations. Additionally, at least in the case of the ABC, appointments to the board (as with judges to the bench) are made by government. In Australia at least, the government, as a matter of convention and honour, has tradtionally resisted making overtly politcal appointments or using funding cuts as a punishment for criticism. Unfortunately given the international Retreat of Democracy this seems no longer to be the case.
Knowledge or what UK government thinks is knowledge?
The BBC broadcast what [the] UK government thinks? Now that's a novel idea!
Which is kinda why we have to stop buring coal sometime about 25 years ago, at least until a viable sequestration technology can be developed. And until that is accomplished, removing particulate matter from coal exhaust actually exacerbates the problem, so srubbers are arguabley worse than useless.
I'll assume you aren't familiar with actual official Nazi policies. See http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/25Po ints.html for a handy list. ... erhaps the actual implemented policies differ ...
Yes actual policies differed dramatically. You cannot seriously regard the 25 points as reflecting the policy of the NSDAP. It's a propaganda sheet, and it isn't very smart to accept Nazi propaganda at face value. The fact is that most leading Nazi's found it to be an embarassment, and it certainly did not influence Hitler's thinking or actions. But any serious history of the NSDAP will debunk the 25 points for you.
Wrong. Of all the major institutions in German society, business was perhaps the only one to escape Gleichschaltung. As Hitler explained, the captains of business were a natural elite who had proven themselves by their success, and that he was not so foolish as to tamper with business. It is true, however, that government spending boosted German industry in a way that intefered with natural market mechanisms. All in all German Big Business did very well under the Hitler regime, thankyou very much.
Pensions are not a socialist policy, they are, to quote Kropotkin, "crumbs off the capitalist's table." Indeed in Germany, pensions were a decidedly conservative policy. They were introduced somewhat earlier, by (arch-conservative) Bismark, in his fight against socialism. The idea of the welfare state as conceived by Bismark, was to "take the wind out of the Socialist sails."
Because only a human hand count, viewed by all interested parties can be verified fair.
Absolutely!
Otherwise, what's to prevent joeblow gifted hacker ...
It's not some gifted hacker you have to worry about, it's the incumbents. Without a visible vote scrutinised by all interested parties, it just becomes too easy to rig the poll.
OK, so the use of 'irony' in the above post is probably still a misuse (although I'm willing to admit we've lost that one along with latin plurals - especially on fora such as /.). However I checked your site and you're a little too precious regarding the meaning of the word. Specifically you disregard the (accepted) usuage of as in "irony of fate" (something that approaches what I imagine is meant by 'Morisettan irony').
Of "Morisettan," or "dramatic" irony, you write "... I have as yet been unable to find any examples of this misuse of the term irony in anything even remotely authoritarian (sic.) ... going back before the early 1970s." (You mean 'authoritative,' of course, not 'authoritarian.')
Is the mid C17th far back enough for you? Admit it, you've been brave enough to venture into this minefield without even having acess to the full OED, haven't you? Get thee to a library!
The examples provided for this usage date back to 1649!
The clincher, IMO, apropos any weight carried in literature, it the title of Thomas Hardy's 1894 work Life's Little Ironies .