FYI a replacement has for alcohol has been known for a very very long time. It is called Kava.
Kava is fine stuff, but very different than alcohol. Somewhat more cannabis-like (though much less powerful); it can even be smoked and is the main active component of a smoking mix called "Buddha's Blend".
There was some fuss a while back about kava and liver damage; turned out that some some unscrupulous companies sold bark as root. Then add the usual exagerated FUD from the usual "if it feels good it must be bad" crowd, and suddenly the poor kava plant was supposed to be the next Threat To Our Children. The FUD seems to have dried up, at least in the US.
Avoid kava if you have an allergy to pepper. Use in moderation. Do not drive or operate heavy machinery under its influence.
TO this day, I really want to buy X10 products, but refuse to on the principal of their advertising methods.
X-10 compatible products are made by many companies. X10.com is just one. The protocol predates the dot-com by many years, so please don't blame the X-10 protocol for X10.com's crappy business practices.
The State has an administrative role to play in the economy - namely, making sure everyone abides by the law. This includes enforcing patents.
Circular reasonsing. The State makes the law, including patent law; and many of these laws are interventions into the economic realm - interventions which favor the concentration of control of resources into the hands of a few people.
In other words, contrary to the rhetoric of so-called "libertarian capitalists" or "anarcho-capitalists", capitalism is not a "ground state" that occurs in the absence of action by the State; it is the result of State action.
This is one of the reasons why its so vital to keep the State out of economic activity; because of the danger of the abuse of that economic power.
Ok, let's start by revoking all State-issued corporate charaters, land and resource deeds, patents and copyrights, and ending the State-created reserve banking system.
Yet they claim that they have never been a windows user before (Making me wonder where they have been for the past 10+ years where windows has been the ubiquitous consumer & business software platform.)
Can't speak for the original querent, but for myself, for the past 10 years I've been in Linux-land and NetBSD-space, avoiding the crappy software distributed by the criminal corporation Microsoft as much as possible.
The last PC that I owned that ran Microsoft software had Windows 3.1 installed, but I just ran it in DOS mode. I've never owned a machine that ran any version MS Windows as its primary OS.
I had one job (actually two separate stints at the same place) where I had a Windows box on my desk; I used it only to run Lotus Notes for e-mail (the horror...), Netscape for browsing (this being pre-Firefox), the X server that let me get work done, and MS Word a couple of times (the horror...).
If you haven't dabbled in windows ever then you're either a recent jail escapee or very good at digging one's own head deeply into sand.
If you beleive that there aren't people who haven't dabbled in Windows than I must say I think you're the one who's demonstrating extraordinary skill at head-burying.
Perverse though it may be, lobbyists are one of three constitutionally protected professions in the United States. The First Amendment guarantees the right to "petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Lobbying as it exists today is bribery, which is not Constitutionally protected.
Given the the progresssive movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was pretty much define by opposition to trusts and robber barons, that's a load of oxymoron there.
I find these new AJAX applications to be very interesting. While I don't think they can overcome the market share of MS Office in the near future, they're very portable on that library computer without a word processor installed.
About ten years ago: "I find these new Java applications, or `applets', to be very interesting."
Didn't we already go down this road and decide that it sucked?
I know you said "without attending to classes", but I'd suggest you reconsider. I'm taking a class at the local community college and finding it well worth the time and money. (A class at a community or commuter college may be much better suited to the part-time student - the intro Japanese class at UMCP is six credit hours, which would be difficult to fit into my schedule, while the one I'm taking is only three.)
I was motivated to finally take a class after my second trip to Japan last fall. After meeting one Spanish woman who spoke four langages, and a Polish woman who was there teaching English and studying shodo, I was embarassed that after twenty years of karate training in a Japanese style, and shiatsu training, and two brief trips to Japan, I knew only enough Japanese to say "thank you", "excuse me", and "please bring me a beer". (Well, and "roundhouse kick to the neck", but that's not a phrase that comes up much in polite conversation.)
The class is sociologically interesting, though - a bunch of 18 and 19 year old anime fans, and me at 36.
My point here is, that porn addictions can only be overcome
if somthing is used to replace it (specificly Christ).
Ah, a bad relationship with myth and supernaturalism rather than a bad
relationship with pornography.
I think staying up late with nudie mags is probably more healthy for you
than staying up late with fanciful tales of a Supreme Being. At least porn
only fails on promises of sex, not promises of eternal life - and the porn
models actually exist (even if the boobs may be fake and the photos heavily
airbrushed).
And porn is an addiction.
No, it's not. The use of the word "addiction" to mean any obsession or
bad relationship with an activity is sloppy thinking. Having a gambling or
a porn habit is very different beast than being hooked on heroin.
The reality is that Satan has come to this earth to steal, kill and destroy (john 10:10)...As long as he can get one more soul to go to Hell, he is happy.
Ah, the perfect illustration of my point: how a bad relationship with myth and supernaturalism is more toxic to the mind than a bad relationship with porn. See the kind of crap an otherwise intelligent fellow can fall into believing when Bibles are freely available? I wonder what percentage of 9 to 19 year olds have been exposes to irrational beliefs such as these. Obviously we must regulate religion immediately - to protect the children!
(For those with no sense of sarcasm - I wholeheartedly suppose the First Amendment.)
We have the ability to rule our minds and spirits. To be
able to make a decision based on more than "what makes us feel good". The
danger I see with porn is that it reduces the human race (and specificly
women) to mere animals
Only if you've been infected with the twisted meme that sex is evil.
Yes, most porn is stupid; and because our society's schizophrenic
attitude toward sex pushes it to the edges, some is exploitive. It's the
bathtub gin phenomenon - when something is banned or make taboo it doesn't
go away, but what is available becomes more toxic.
Target is a private entity, if they don't want to cater to blind people, blind people shouldn't shop there.
No coroporation is a private enitity. Coroporations are chartered by governments.
It is sensible that in return for the priviledge of being chartered, that governments require corporations to behave in a way that promotes the public interest. That may include accessibility for the handicapped.
I mean, for all intents and purposes, RMS feels that 'stealing' copyrighted code is justifiable, if it's done with the intent to "liberate it".
No. RMS argues that copying is not stealing, and that code is not property.
(And indeed, despite attempts to introduce memes like "intellectual property", there is still a strong legal distinction between copyright violation and theft.)
He's not condoning theft - he's opposed to the very concept of "IP".
Note-taking is a learning strategy. It requires you to analyze the information to figure out what needs to be written down, and it keeps it in your nervous system for a few seconds.
I learned more from classes where I took notes than if I didn't, even if I never looked at the notes again. Even if class notes or an outline are distributed (a fine idea) I still make additional notes.
So what? If a millionare wants to reign in his spending to match that of someone making $100K, so what?
Part of the purpose of progressive taxation is to act as a check to the accumulation of power. If the government actions that make capitalism (the accumlation of economic power into the hands of a minority class of "owners") possible are compared to an engine, progressive taxation is one of the governors that helps ensure that this engine doesn't run completely wild. (One might argue that we'd be better served by a different sort of "engine" entirely, one based on more democratic control of economic resources...)
The goal of the Fair Tax isn't to make a more cheat-proof system (though I believe it does just that), but rather to make a simpler, fairer system of taxation.
The complexity of the current system has very little to do with the rates involved and much to do with determining what income is taxable. (Though if I were king I'd get rid of tax brackets and make tax a continuous function.)
Indeed, because the effect of an ungrounded Faraday cage is to partially reflect the incident radiation, a radio wave that is incident on the inner surface of the hat (i.e., coming from underneath the hat-wearer) would be reflected and partially 'focused' towards the user's brain.
What, are the mind-control rays being sent from subterranean agents?
Really, though, if you want to prevent government mind-control by radio waves - turn off Fox News. And stop the administrtion from buying journalists.
He stated that something was true, yet gave no evidence that the heroes of myth are equivalent to superheroes. So why did you post to me looking for evidence? Did you do the same for the GP?
The GP's point seems obvious to me; the Greek myths feature heros with power above and beyond those of ordinary men. Super-powers. Thus, super-heroes.
People have been pointing out how superhero stories fit the Campbellean monomyth for years. Roger Zelazny makes mention of it in his introduction to Gaiman's The Book of Magic, for example.
I'd be interested in an analysis to the contrary, and was hoping you might has one. Instead all I've seen from you on this thread can be summarized in "Nah-uh!".
I'll even get you started: one might argue that a distinguishing feature of the modern superhero from the classic super-powered hero is the "secret identity". Which is a very interesting characteristic; as Salman Rushdie said:
:
...the lesson they taught children - or this child, at any rate - was the perhaps unintentionally radical truth that exceptionality was the greatest and most heroic of values; that those who were unlike the crowd were to be treasured the most lovingly; and that this exceptionality was a treasure so great and so easily misunderstood that it had to be concealed, in ordinary life, beneath what the comic books called a "secret identity." Superman could not have survived without "mild-mannered" Clark Kent; "millionaire socialite" Bruce Wayne made possible the nocturnal activities of the Batman.
Except, that than excludes from "superhero-dom" those without secret identities, and I do believe there are a few from the comics. What about Professor Xavier? Or Swamp Thing? I'll leave it to those more familiar with comics to debate this point.
But more than that, you should ask yourself why you only ask for evidence from people who disagree with you, instead of from everyone making assertions.
Issac Asimov once said something to the effect that if someone claimed to have the kilograms of salt in their lab, you'd not ask for any additional evidence; if they said they had ten kg of gold, you'd want to see it before accepting the claim; and if the claimed to have ten kg of plutonium, you'd call bullshit without extraordinary evidence.
That ancient myths featured super-powered heroes, is an "I have a bunch of salt" type of claim.
No, that's wrong. You CHOOSE to believe this, but you're wrong. You honestly believe that you're the first to bring up this idea? You also honestly believe it hasn't been refuted?
Well then go ahead and refute it. And others will refute your refutation. And so on, and so on, and so on.
An assertation is not an argument. If you have an argument to make against the grandparent post's claim that `Greeks [were] writing tales of superheroes about 2 millennia before DC or Marvel "invented" the concept"', please put it forth.
If at this point money had never been created, would the government have a right to take four of my chickens just because I was dead?
If you are dead, they're not your chickens anymore. (Leaving aside for the moment the argument that animals belong to themselves, not to us.) Nothing is yours anymore.
The government didn't really help me grow, feed or maintain my chickens, my family did, so if the government wants a chicken dinner they can go grow their own.
You're arguing that labor creats property rights? That's a quite socialist argument, and I'm sympathetic to it. If we assume that labor creates ownership, and we say your family did help you perform the labor, then the chickens aren't yours, but jointly owned.
And of course the claim of your hypothetical labor-sharing family has nothing to do with Richie Rich inheriting millions of dollars that he didn't go a damn thing to earn.
I'm pretty sure inheritance existed before governments did.
Governments predate humanity - even bands of chimps and gorillas have their chieftans and their hierarchy, and I'm sure our pre-Homo ancestors did too.
Great question -- the reason is that this gives opportunity to the poor as well as the rich.
But the poor aren't passing on wealth - they, by definition, don't have it!
Let me be clear, when I say power in the form of wealth should not be inheritable, I'm not talking about you inheriting your parent's house and thus having a few thousand bucks towards a college fund for your own kids. The federal inheritance tax only kicks in on $1,000,000 inheritances (actually it's more like $1.5 million now IIRC); someone becoming an unearned millionare is brokne behavior in the system.
Because the money has already been taxed during its accumulation?
The idea that "money is taxed multiple times" is a good soundbite when speaking against taxes, but it's wrong. What's taxed are transactions: inheriting money is just another transaction like geting paid or buying something.
Because the whole point of amassing wealth is to give your children a better life?
How's that different than the king's attitude that "The whole point of
amassing power is to give the prince children a better life?"
Sorry, you should no more be allowed to pass on the power of wealth to your kids than political leaders should be allowed to pass on their power.
Because the government does absolutely no service of any value in the transferrence of that wealth?
Inheritance is a government service. transfering state-created property (money, real estate, stock in state-chartered corporations, bonds) from one person to another.
Governments exist, they're a fact of life like continental drift. Governments tax, that's their nature. I'd rather have them taxing unearned income like inheritance and gambling winnings (a.k.a "capital gains"), than taxing labor.
Slashdot Mirror
Kava is fine stuff, but very different than alcohol. Somewhat more cannabis-like (though much less powerful); it can even be smoked and is the main active component of a smoking mix called "Buddha's Blend".
There was some fuss a while back about kava and liver damage; turned out that some some unscrupulous companies sold bark as root. Then add the usual exagerated FUD from the usual "if it feels good it must be bad" crowd, and suddenly the poor kava plant was supposed to be the next Threat To Our Children. The FUD seems to have dried up, at least in the US.
Avoid kava if you have an allergy to pepper. Use in moderation. Do not drive or operate heavy machinery under its influence.
X-10 compatible products are made by many companies. X10.com is just one. The protocol predates the dot-com by many years, so please don't blame the X-10 protocol for X10.com's crappy business practices.
Circular reasonsing. The State makes the law, including patent law; and many of these laws are interventions into the economic realm - interventions which favor the concentration of control of resources into the hands of a few people.
In other words, contrary to the rhetoric of so-called "libertarian capitalists" or "anarcho-capitalists", capitalism is not a "ground state" that occurs in the absence of action by the State; it is the result of State action.
Ok, let's start by revoking all State-issued corporate charaters, land and resource deeds, patents and copyrights, and ending the State-created reserve banking system.
Can't speak for the original querent, but for myself, for the past 10 years I've been in Linux-land and NetBSD-space, avoiding the crappy software distributed by the criminal corporation Microsoft as much as possible.
The last PC that I owned that ran Microsoft software had Windows 3.1 installed, but I just ran it in DOS mode. I've never owned a machine that ran any version MS Windows as its primary OS.
I had one job (actually two separate stints at the same place) where I had a Windows box on my desk; I used it only to run Lotus Notes for e-mail (the horror...), Netscape for browsing (this being pre-Firefox), the X server that let me get work done, and MS Word a couple of times (the horror...).
If you beleive that there aren't people who haven't dabbled in Windows than I must say I think you're the one who's demonstrating extraordinary skill at head-burying.
Lobbying as it exists today is bribery, which is not Constitutionally protected.
Don't know who Gates votes for, but Microsoft is more red than blue.
Given the the progresssive movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was pretty much define by opposition to trusts and robber barons, that's a load of oxymoron there.
About ten years ago: "I find these new Java applications, or `applets', to be very interesting."
Didn't we already go down this road and decide that it sucked?
I know you said "without attending to classes", but I'd suggest you reconsider. I'm taking a class at the local community college and finding it well worth the time and money. (A class at a community or commuter college may be much better suited to the part-time student - the intro Japanese class at UMCP is six credit hours, which would be difficult to fit into my schedule, while the one I'm taking is only three.)
I was motivated to finally take a class after my second trip to Japan last fall. After meeting one Spanish woman who spoke four langages, and a Polish woman who was there teaching English and studying shodo, I was embarassed that after twenty years of karate training in a Japanese style, and shiatsu training, and two brief trips to Japan, I knew only enough Japanese to say "thank you", "excuse me", and "please bring me a beer". (Well, and "roundhouse kick to the neck", but that's not a phrase that comes up much in polite conversation.)
The class is sociologically interesting, though - a bunch of 18 and 19 year old anime fans, and me at 36.
Spending on space science is chump change. If we want to reduce the debt, we need to stop spending seven times more on our military than any other nation on the planet. "Military" spending per capita for the U.S. is about $1,420 annually; NASA's budget is about $55.
Ah, a bad relationship with myth and supernaturalism rather than a bad relationship with pornography.
I think staying up late with nudie mags is probably more healthy for you than staying up late with fanciful tales of a Supreme Being. At least porn only fails on promises of sex, not promises of eternal life - and the porn models actually exist (even if the boobs may be fake and the photos heavily airbrushed).
No, it's not. The use of the word "addiction" to mean any obsession or bad relationship with an activity is sloppy thinking. Having a gambling or a porn habit is very different beast than being hooked on heroin.
Ah, the perfect illustration of my point: how a bad relationship with myth and supernaturalism is more toxic to the mind than a bad relationship with porn. See the kind of crap an otherwise intelligent fellow can fall into believing when Bibles are freely available? I wonder what percentage of 9 to 19 year olds have been exposes to irrational beliefs such as these. Obviously we must regulate religion immediately - to protect the children!
(For those with no sense of sarcasm - I wholeheartedly suppose the First Amendment.)
Of course we are. We're certainly not plants, fungi, monera, or protists.
Only if you've been infected with the twisted meme that sex is evil.
Yes, most porn is stupid; and because our society's schizophrenic attitude toward sex pushes it to the edges, some is exploitive. It's the bathtub gin phenomenon - when something is banned or make taboo it doesn't go away, but what is available becomes more toxic.
I worked at a movie theatre when I was in high school (1987), and we did indeed have dollar night on Tuesdays. But studios no longer allow this.
There are some who have not debunked it, but instead claim supporting results. I'm not saying their results are correct, mind you; certainly the consensus is that cold fusion - at least this variety - is bunk.
No coroporation is a private enitity. Coroporations are chartered by governments.
It is sensible that in return for the priviledge of being chartered, that governments require corporations to behave in a way that promotes the public interest. That may include accessibility for the handicapped.
No. RMS argues that copying is not stealing, and that code is not property.
(And indeed, despite attempts to introduce memes like "intellectual property", there is still a strong legal distinction between copyright violation and theft.)
He's not condoning theft - he's opposed to the very concept of "IP".
Note-taking is a learning strategy. It requires you to analyze the information to figure out what needs to be written down, and it keeps it in your nervous system for a few seconds.
I learned more from classes where I took notes than if I didn't, even if I never looked at the notes again. Even if class notes or an outline are distributed (a fine idea) I still make additional notes.
Part of the purpose of progressive taxation is to act as a check to the accumulation of power. If the government actions that make capitalism (the accumlation of economic power into the hands of a minority class of "owners") possible are compared to an engine, progressive taxation is one of the governors that helps ensure that this engine doesn't run completely wild. (One might argue that we'd be better served by a different sort of "engine" entirely, one based on more democratic control of economic resources...)
The complexity of the current system has very little to do with the rates involved and much to do with determining what income is taxable. (Though if I were king I'd get rid of tax brackets and make tax a continuous function.)
Yep. They sent me the long form. I told them how many people live here and left the rest blank.
The feds are empowered to conduct an enumeration in order to apportion representatives, not a snooping expedition.
What, are the mind-control rays being sent from subterranean agents?
Really, though, if you want to prevent government mind-control by radio waves - turn off Fox News. And stop the administrtion from buying journalists.
The GP's point seems obvious to me; the Greek myths feature heros with power above and beyond those of ordinary men. Super-powers. Thus, super-heroes.
People have been pointing out how superhero stories fit the Campbellean monomyth for years. Roger Zelazny makes mention of it in his introduction to Gaiman's The Book of Magic, for example.
I'd be interested in an analysis to the contrary, and was hoping you might has one. Instead all I've seen from you on this thread can be summarized in "Nah-uh!".
I'll even get you started: one might argue that a distinguishing feature of the modern superhero from the classic super-powered hero is the "secret identity". Which is a very interesting characteristic; as Salman Rushdie said: :
Except, that than excludes from "superhero-dom" those without secret identities, and I do believe there are a few from the comics. What about Professor Xavier? Or Swamp Thing? I'll leave it to those more familiar with comics to debate this point.
Issac Asimov once said something to the effect that if someone claimed to have the kilograms of salt in their lab, you'd not ask for any additional evidence; if they said they had ten kg of gold, you'd want to see it before accepting the claim; and if the claimed to have ten kg of plutonium, you'd call bullshit without extraordinary evidence.
That ancient myths featured super-powered heroes, is an "I have a bunch of salt" type of claim.
Well then go ahead and refute it. And others will refute your refutation. And so on, and so on, and so on.
An assertation is not an argument. If you have an argument to make against the grandparent post's claim that `Greeks [were] writing tales of superheroes about 2 millennia before DC or Marvel "invented" the concept"', please put it forth.
If you are dead, they're not your chickens anymore. (Leaving aside for the moment the argument that animals belong to themselves, not to us.) Nothing is yours anymore.
You're arguing that labor creats property rights? That's a quite socialist argument, and I'm sympathetic to it. If we assume that labor creates ownership, and we say your family did help you perform the labor, then the chickens aren't yours, but jointly owned.
Of course your chicken will still be taxed somewhere along the line; taxes come with governments, and governments will be with us until we get to the Univeral Enlightenment that is prerequisite to the abolition of the State.
And of course the claim of your hypothetical labor-sharing family has nothing to do with Richie Rich inheriting millions of dollars that he didn't go a damn thing to earn.
Governments predate humanity - even bands of chimps and gorillas have their chieftans and their hierarchy, and I'm sure our pre-Homo ancestors did too.
But the poor aren't passing on wealth - they, by definition, don't have it!
Let me be clear, when I say power in the form of wealth should not be inheritable, I'm not talking about you inheriting your parent's house and thus having a few thousand bucks towards a college fund for your own kids. The federal inheritance tax only kicks in on $1,000,000 inheritances (actually it's more like $1.5 million now IIRC); someone becoming an unearned millionare is brokne behavior in the system.
The idea that "money is taxed multiple times" is a good soundbite when speaking against taxes, but it's wrong. What's taxed are transactions: inheriting money is just another transaction like geting paid or buying something.
How's that different than the king's attitude that "The whole point of amassing power is to give the prince children a better life?"
Sorry, you should no more be allowed to pass on the power of wealth to your kids than political leaders should be allowed to pass on their power.
Inheritance is a government service. transfering state-created property (money, real estate, stock in state-chartered corporations, bonds) from one person to another.
Governments exist, they're a fact of life like continental drift. Governments tax, that's their nature. I'd rather have them taxing unearned income like inheritance and gambling winnings (a.k.a "capital gains"), than taxing labor.