All of your other conclutions I can understand, but this confuses me. To me, capitalism means "a system where people have the liberty to trade".
That's a market economy, which (while imperfect) is generally a positive force (provided that there are no external costs or monopolies, and the buyers and sellers meet with equal power and full knowledge). Markets vs. command economies is an independent question to capitialism versus socialism: the first question is "what can we do with property", the second is "what sort of things can become property, and how".
Capitalism is an economic system based on private control of resources (capital); as I've been arguing, this necessitates state force to initially create, and then enforce, that control. And the concentration of power into the hands of this state-backed minority of owners is corrosive to liberty, causing a slide into plutocracy.
It contrasts with socialism, an economic system based on the exchange of labor. Both can be found with or without centralized command of the economy; the US during WWII would be an example of a capitalist command-economy, while libertarian socalists point to voluntary collectivisation in some regions during the Spanish Civil War.
Recommended reading: Libertarian Socialism, a little jargon filled ("fetters of capitalism") but informative about the topic.
No, that is my reasoned conclusion. Others have reasoned conclusions that differ, either because one of us has engaged in a fallacy or because we take different axioms. (If someone takes as an axiom, for example, that it's perfectly ok to have a society in which one group enslaves another, our reasoned conclusions are going to differ, and I can only hope for a compassionate change of heart to lead to a different set of axioms - and in this case. meanwhile be prepared to use force to use this person from putting their conclusions into practice!)
My "opinion" is that chocolate tastes better than stawberry (though chocolate-covered strawberries rock++), Sapporo's new winter brew is better than Kirin's, the Baltimore Orioles are morally superior to the New York Yankees, redheaded women are beautiful (as are blondes, and brunnettes, and purple-dyed punk girls, and shaven-headed artsy types, and...what was the question again?), Escher's works are more interesting than Piccaso's, and Bugs Bunny is better than Mickey Mouse. They are not arguable or examinable, they are simply the untrained reaction of my nervous system to the world.
My "reasoned conclusions" are subject to argument, they are the result of a trained process of logical disciplined thought. Of course I may apply this process imperfectly, which is why I am willing to argue and re-examine them; but after many years I have a high degree of confidence in them. They are propositions such as: capitalism is problematic for anyone who claims to value liberty, animals are due significant ethical consideration, drug prohibition is orders of magnitude more harmful than the level of drug abuse that would prevail in its absence, evoluton rather than religion should be taught in science classes, etcetera.
You seem to believe in your philosophical or political opinion so strongly that you've forgotten it's an opinion, and started thinking it's indisputable.
You seem to be unfamiliar with the conventions of rhetorical writing. Did Tom Paine or Socrates or Lao Tzu go around saying, "In my opinion..."?
Of course you can dispute my conclusions. And of course I'm going to dispute your disputation, unless you find a genuine flaw in my argument.
I didn't mean that they were "defended by state action", I meant that land ownership is created by state action. Just like copyright.
But plenty of regions have property ownership that can be traced back to (nearly) the start of recorded history.
Please name one region where a claim of land ownership can be traced back to near the start of recorded history and does not include land changing hands because of conquest, confiscation, feudalism, or other state action. I'd be fascinated to study it!
And what about Robinson Crusoe? There's no government on the island, but believers in natural rights would still say that he owned his house and the other things he made, just like he had a right to life.
Crusoe's situation is unlikely to pertain to anyone now...
Having the recognized right to occupy a piece of land as your home, perhaps a relationship of stewardship, is not the same as being "owner" of the land. Many societies have not hand the concept of land ownership yet still respected the right to home. (Indeed, in modern Japan, the homeless often set up rather elaborate camps in public parks; they don't "own" the land, yet as a practical matter everyone recognizes their right to occupy that space as home. I don't know much about the amount of legal protection accorded them (would like to learn more), but as a practical matter their space is respected.)
You have a belief about where rights come from and what rights are primary and secondary, others have different beliefs about the same subject. You can't take one of your beliefs and one from someone else and thus produce a "contradiction in terms".
I am not trying to talk about "beliefs" or "opinions". I am attempting to engage in criticism of a poltical philosophy and to offer an alternative. The flaw in libertarian capitalism is not that it contradicts my proposition that property should be regarded as a secondary tool to ensure primary right; the flaw (or rather, one flaw) is that libertarian capitalism makes untrue assertations and assumptions about the relationship between the state and property.
Some people say animals have rights, others think they don't - both are opinions or beliefs, not facts. Mock them all you want, but calling "animal rights" an oxymoron is still factually incorrect.
Animal rights is not an "opinion", it is a rigorous philosophical theory, a result of critical thinking. (I refer you to the works of Tom Regan.) Libertarian capitalism is also a philosophical theory, a less sound one than animal rights due to the rather large hole that capitalism, since it relies on the state to create certain property rights, tends away from libertarianism.
(Indeed, libertarian capitalists outright stole the terms "libertarian" from the libertarian socialists, and some - such as the original poster in this thread - are now trying to steal the word "anarchist" as well, as if "anarcho-capitalism" were not a inherent contradiction. One cannot have "a system without hierarchy " that is "based on private control of economic resources", as those who control economic resources are the rulers, the top of the hierarchy!)
No, libertarians think that property ownership is a primary, natural right and not an invention of the state. You may think they're idiots, which is fine, but you can't use your opinion to make something a contradiction.
It's not my opinion, it's a simple observation that any claim of real estate as property rests on state action. As I stated: "Who issued that land deed? Who kicked the Native Americans off the land and gave it to the guy who sold it to the guy who sold it to you?"
But I would really like to know what the primary rights you mentioned are if property ownership is secondary.
Self-determination, self-expression, the right to control one's own life with minimal interference from others. Freedom of speech, of thought, of conscience and consciousness, of choice. The right to be left alone. The right to self-defense. The right to equality under the law, and due process of law.
("But," you protest, "many of these rights can only be exercised when property is recognized?" "Exactly!" I reply. "The justification for property is that its existence supports these primary rights; and if our notion of property is interfering with the exercise of primary rights, it is property, not liberty, that must give way.")
Like with drink cans...they have to rinse them out to keep bugs away...and put into their own storage container outside.
Um, if you have a bug problem, don't you have to rinse your drink cans and store them them outside regardless of whether the ultimate destination is a recycling plant or a landfill? Do the roaches know if your Coke can is doing to be recycled or trashed?
Maybe all this effort is easier for people whose life allows time and idealism about this...perhaps the older one gets, and busier...they don't bother with it at much?
Many of my neighbors are elderly, in fact at 35 I'm probably the youngest homeowner on the block. They recycle, I recycle, age is no excuse. In fact I would think that those who are older, and therefore more likely to have children, might give a little more thought to the future. (I know, "Won't someone *please* think of the children?!?" is attached to many bogus arguments...)
I suppose if you have the room in your house to keep all those bins to sort stuff into...it is workable, but, unless you have a large kitchen...it isn't really practical.
Oh, nonsense. I've been recycling since I shared a small apartment with a tiny kitchen with two to three other people, when we had to cart the stuff to a municipal drop-off point ourselves. Your waste material takes up the same volume whether you sort it or not. If the bins the city provides take up too much floor space, leave them outside and get creative about stacking stuff.
Please stop making excuses and either do the right thing, or just admit that you don't give a shit about cleaning up after yourself.
Really. If you've got curbside recycling, using it is like crapping in a toilet rather than in the middle of the street - the minimum standard of decent behavior required to live in a population-dense society.
I hope you'll be happy when I visit your house tonight and start singing songs by Blind Guardian from dusk to dawn. I mean, it's not like it's your property so you rule there.
You miss the point - my right to peace and quiet applies whether it's my property or not. You can and should be arrested for disturbing my peace whether I'm a home owner, a renter, someone sleeping in a hotel, a squatter, whatever.
Property is a means we use to help define and enforce things like the right to peace and quiet. It is not a primary right.
Are there really THAT many people that go out of their way, to inconvenience themselves to protect the environment?
Are there really THAT many people who think that simple things like recycling are a significant inconvenience?
I mean, do you throw your trash on the ground or do you use trash cans? Do you use toilets or do you find it inconvenient and just take a shit wherever you happen to be?
Shame that you and your acquaintances find it too hard...guess people I know are just smarter or harder working or something. I always see sorted recyclables put out on my street. More progressive areas (like San Francisco) even have separate curbside pickup for compostables. More and more public areas have separate bins for bottles, cans, and paper.
I own stores, they're my property. If I don't want a communist shirt on my property, it's my right. If I'm a landlord and I don't like a tenant, I shouldn't be forced to accept them. It is my property.
Any real estate is "your property" only because of state action. (Who issued that land deed? Who kicked the Native Americans off the land and gave it to the guy who sold it to the guy who sold it to you?)
Therefore if your right to select tenants or evict customers is based on the argument that "it's my property!", then your rightful power to do so is created and defined by the state, not any sort of natural right.
Now, there may be more legitimate arguments based on privacy and self-determination rather than on property. Libertarian capitalists generally fail to realize that property is an invention that we use to help support such primary rights, not a primary right in and of itself; and that much of the property that they place such importance on is an artifical creation of the state, thus making "anarcho-" or "libertarian" capitalism a contradiction in terms.
If you don't like a certain form of expression, don't allow it on your property.
...therefore, to silence others, acuqire their property. Landlords can silence tenants, shopping malls can evict patrons wearing political slogans the management disgrees with, etcetera.
Typical libertarian capitalist fallacy that puts property as a primary right, rather than as a secondary tool to ensure primary rights.
Pretty soon you will have the computer in your pocket that you plug into the monitor.
You can almost do this with the newer Sharp Zaurus models. Pocketsized Linux box, 4 GB drive...you can even hook up a USB keyboard and mouse to it.
Supposedly there is an VGA output option, but no one seems to be able to get it to work. You could probably get it going to display on your desktop machine with VNC or with X Windows somehow.
The Zaurus C3000 rocks. For the past few months it's replaced my trusty pencila and notebook for writing poetry and journaling. Gets lots on envious looks when people see mine; unfortnately they're not marketed in the U.S., but a few companies import them and convert them to English from Japanese.
(The clamshell form factor for small electronics is much more common in Japan, widely used for electronic dictionaries and translators.)
UTC was agreed upon by an international body, many many years ago. it is now frowned upon to call it gmt (though pretty much everyone does)
UTC and GMT are not the same, though they are close enough for almost all practical purposes. Maybe you mean UT1? UTC and GMT/UT1 are the two measures that are kept in sync by leap seconds.
A typical calculation: you might pay up to $6,000 on a safer car that reduced your risk of dying by one in a thousand. Six thousand divided by one in a thousand is six million, so you are valuing your own life at about $6m.
Typical economics BS, based upon the false assumption that people always choose rationally.
What behavior like this shows is not how much people rationally value their lives but how they (usually irrationally) perceive risk.
The same guy who spends $6,000 on a safer car will then go off and smoke a pack of Camels.
You know, this might be one of the smartest things anyone in the media has done recently.
Could be. Manga is really taking off - this time last year, I'd never even seen translated manga. In January of this year I found a few in a specialty bookstore in San Francisco's Japantown. Now there is a large section of them at the local Barnes and Noble.
Nonsense. In fact, there's a whole work force employed to do exactly that.
Obviously you can pick up your label gun and stick a price on anything. You cannot meaningfully put a price on life; a price can only be set on things that can be bought and sold.
Taking a picture, on the other hand, seems like more of a "service industry" function. Yes, there is a great deal of skill involved in taking good photos - but it's technical knowledge, such as knowing the best shutter speed to select, the best placement of lighting, the right type and speed of film for the job, etc.
Photography can range from the technical (as you describe) to the artistic (considerations of composition, of what to shoot, of color balance, and so on). It's no different from other arts in that respect - writing ranges from poetry to instruction manuals, music from advertizing jingles (or wordless tone-sequences like the Intel "dum-do-de-do") to Bach.
I've been wondering how, exactly, aiming and shooting a nonexistant gun with a little stick and some buttons could possibly teach me to aim and shoot a real gun with a trigger, weight, and recoil.
Dunno about joystick FPSs, but for light gun games, surprisingly well.
I'd never even picked up a real gun when I took an NRA gun safety class about 12 years ago. But I'd spend many a quarter playing "Mad Dog McCree" and "Beast Busters" in the campus arcade. When we got out to the range, after my first few shots from bench rest the instructor working with me said "Ok, I can see you've been shooting before, so we'll move along..."
Out of about 10 people in the class, I'd say I would have ranked about second, and the only guy shooting better had some previous experience.
Maybe there should be a permitting process for the use of public space so that Hillary and her supporters can apply for and get use of it for her rantings, and I can use if for my rantings too, when it's my turn? Oh wait - we already have that system, and it works just fine.
No, it doesn't work fine. The people have the explict right "peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances", which you can't do from a "free speech zone" that's out of earshot of government officials. Furthermore, governments have on several occasions simply denied permits to groups they didn't want to hear from.
I think it is paramount to a repeal of the First Amendment to say that you cannot use your money in the way that you see fit.
Are you saying you think bribery is ok?
If a person gives money to his candidate in order that the candidate can furnish other supporters with soap boxes and megaphones, is it right to take that right away? Where do we draw the line? Why do we draw the line?
If I take out an ad saying "Cops are great", we understand that as free speech. If a cop pulls me over and I say, "Hey, let me give you $50 towards your `Cops are great' ad campaign, wink wink nudge nudge," we know that for bribery.
If I take out an ad saying "Vote Cthulhu! (Why settle for the lesser of two evils?)", we understand that as free speech. If I say, "Oh great Elder One, let me sacrifice to you $50 that you may use it towards your `Vote Cthulhu!' ad campaign, by the way, wink wink nudge nudge, my soul isn't all that tasty..." we should understand that as bribery. (Or rather, in this case, a pathetic attempt at bribery that will get my soul eaten...)
How did that one creep into the language, Shirley a "fold" conveys the implication of division rather than multiplication.
The suffix "-fold" has meant multiplication for a long time. According to etymonline.com, its origin is unrelated to the word "fold", it comes from Old English, and survives mainly in the word "manifold" - "many-fold".
The "Classic Blackspot" looks just like Converse Chuck Taylors.
That is part of the idea...up until a few years ago, Chucks were not only a fashion classic on a par with blue jeans, they were made in the USA (and were also leather-free, for vegans like me). They were an American classic. I loved 'em.
Then Converse shipped manufacture overseas to Indonesia; then Converse was bought by Nike, a company many of us choose not to do business with. Several companies have since started offering Chuck-like shoes made with labor-friendly practices; my favorite is No Sweat.
Number 1 is where scientists should be, but in debates, articles, and various other discussions on the battle between religion a science I have seen prominent and credible scientists arguing 2 and sadly, much more often 3.
Many statements in astrophysics, meteorology, and many other fields fall into your category 2. (Verifying hypotheses about, say, supernovas, through controlled experiements, is a long way off.)
As for your category 3, there is a distinction between "we don't have all the facts but can still apply critical thinking" and "we don't have all the facts but we're smart so our theories are better." Critical thinking can be used in many philosophical fields where the scientific method does not apply; and good scientists should understand themselves as a class of philosophers (i.e., critical thinkers).
ers for a living and our theories are worthier than your theories.if the argument is "we
As a side benefit, the people of Iraq have a chance at self-rule
Well, the 100,000+ dead don't have any chance at self rule, no...and those left have more chance of falling into civil war that, at best, ends up in a theocracy, than of ending up with a stable democracy.
After the way the neocons have fucked things up over there, the very very best we can hope for over there is that in 50 years or so, after a few hundred thousand more people have been killed in the fighting, things will be as nice and stable in Iraq as they are in Northern Ireland now.
...affect your belief that continued power by the gentle, peace-loving Saddamites would have been the better answer for both the (fractured) Iraqi people and the rest of the world.
Having screwed that up, the next next best thing would have been a long-term process of supporting reform in Iraq with diplomatic and economic sanctions and rewards, with the definite threat of military force if Iraq again attacked its neighbors. (With a corresponding promise to defend Iraq if its neighbors attacked it.) Yes, it would have taken years, decades even, to bring about change, and Saddam's brtual rule would have killed people in that time. But fewer than have already died, and orders of magnitude less than those who will die before stable democracy comes to Iraq.
Negotiations are one thing, and the EU/UN can feel free to negotiate until they're blue in the face. But if they want to force the issue, I'm thinking that we should "remind" our foreign allies that a country with our military might cannot and will not be forced.
Settle down, Nationalism Boy. You make it sound like U.N. blue helments (in the famous black helicopters, no doubt) are going to swoop down and occupy the buildings containing the current root servers.
All that has to happen for the U.N. to take control is for them to set up root servers of their own. Other "alternative" root servers already exist.
Keep in mind that the root servers are currently under the control of a private organization.
Not so much. ICANN controls them on behalf of the U.S. Department of Commerce, and it was the DoC's "fsck you" to the rest of the world that started this.
Slashdot Mirror
That's a market economy, which (while imperfect) is generally a positive force (provided that there are no external costs or monopolies, and the buyers and sellers meet with equal power and full knowledge). Markets vs. command economies is an independent question to capitialism versus socialism: the first question is "what can we do with property", the second is "what sort of things can become property, and how".
Capitalism is an economic system based on private control of resources (capital); as I've been arguing, this necessitates state force to initially create, and then enforce, that control. And the concentration of power into the hands of this state-backed minority of owners is corrosive to liberty, causing a slide into plutocracy.
It contrasts with socialism, an economic system based on the exchange of labor. Both can be found with or without centralized command of the economy; the US during WWII would be an example of a capitalist command-economy, while libertarian socalists point to voluntary collectivisation in some regions during the Spanish Civil War.
Recommended reading: Libertarian Socialism, a little jargon filled ("fetters of capitalism") but informative about the topic.
No, that is my reasoned conclusion. Others have reasoned conclusions that differ, either because one of us has engaged in a fallacy or because we take different axioms. (If someone takes as an axiom, for example, that it's perfectly ok to have a society in which one group enslaves another, our reasoned conclusions are going to differ, and I can only hope for a compassionate change of heart to lead to a different set of axioms - and in this case. meanwhile be prepared to use force to use this person from putting their conclusions into practice!)
My "opinion" is that chocolate tastes better than stawberry (though chocolate-covered strawberries rock++), Sapporo's new winter brew is better than Kirin's, the Baltimore Orioles are morally superior to the New York Yankees, redheaded women are beautiful (as are blondes, and brunnettes, and purple-dyed punk girls, and shaven-headed artsy types, and...what was the question again?), Escher's works are more interesting than Piccaso's, and Bugs Bunny is better than Mickey Mouse. They are not arguable or examinable, they are simply the untrained reaction of my nervous system to the world.
My "reasoned conclusions" are subject to argument, they are the result of a trained process of logical disciplined thought. Of course I may apply this process imperfectly, which is why I am willing to argue and re-examine them; but after many years I have a high degree of confidence in them. They are propositions such as: capitalism is problematic for anyone who claims to value liberty, animals are due significant ethical consideration, drug prohibition is orders of magnitude more harmful than the level of drug abuse that would prevail in its absence, evoluton rather than religion should be taught in science classes, etcetera.
You seem to be unfamiliar with the conventions of rhetorical writing. Did Tom Paine or Socrates or Lao Tzu go around saying, "In my opinion..."?
Of course you can dispute my conclusions. And of course I'm going to dispute your disputation, unless you find a genuine flaw in my argument.
I didn't mean that they were "defended by state action", I meant that land ownership is created by state action. Just like copyright.
Please name one region where a claim of land ownership can be traced back to near the start of recorded history and does not include land changing hands because of conquest, confiscation, feudalism, or other state action. I'd be fascinated to study it!
Crusoe's situation is unlikely to pertain to anyone now...
Having the recognized right to occupy a piece of land as your home, perhaps a relationship of stewardship, is not the same as being "owner" of the land. Many societies have not hand the concept of land ownership yet still respected the right to home. (Indeed, in modern Japan, the homeless often set up rather elaborate camps in public parks; they don't "own" the land, yet as a practical matter everyone recognizes their right to occupy that space as home. I don't know much about the amount of legal protection accorded them (would like to learn more), but as a practical matter their space is respected.)
I am not trying to talk about "beliefs" or "opinions". I am attempting to engage in criticism of a poltical philosophy and to offer an alternative. The flaw in libertarian capitalism is not that it contradicts my proposition that property should be regarded as a secondary tool to ensure primary right; the flaw (or rather, one flaw) is that libertarian capitalism makes untrue assertations and assumptions about the relationship between the state and property.
Animal rights is not an "opinion", it is a rigorous philosophical theory, a result of critical thinking. (I refer you to the works of Tom Regan.) Libertarian capitalism is also a philosophical theory, a less sound one than animal rights due to the rather large hole that capitalism, since it relies on the state to create certain property rights, tends away from libertarianism.
(Indeed, libertarian capitalists outright stole the terms "libertarian" from the libertarian socialists, and some - such as the original poster in this thread - are now trying to steal the word "anarchist" as well, as if "anarcho-capitalism" were not a inherent contradiction. One cannot have "a system without hierarchy " that is "based on private control of economic resources", as those who control economic resources are the rulers, the top of the hierarchy!)
It's not my opinion, it's a simple observation that any claim of real estate as property rests on state action. As I stated: "Who issued that land deed? Who kicked the Native Americans off the land and gave it to the guy who sold it to the guy who sold it to you?"
Self-determination, self-expression, the right to control one's own life with minimal interference from others. Freedom of speech, of thought, of conscience and consciousness, of choice. The right to be left alone. The right to self-defense. The right to equality under the law, and due process of law.
("But," you protest, "many of these rights can only be exercised when property is recognized?" "Exactly!" I reply. "The justification for property is that its existence supports these primary rights; and if our notion of property is interfering with the exercise of primary rights, it is property, not liberty, that must give way.")
Um, if you have a bug problem, don't you have to rinse your drink cans and store them them outside regardless of whether the ultimate destination is a recycling plant or a landfill? Do the roaches know if your Coke can is doing to be recycled or trashed?
Many of my neighbors are elderly, in fact at 35 I'm probably the youngest homeowner on the block. They recycle, I recycle, age is no excuse. In fact I would think that those who are older, and therefore more likely to have children, might give a little more thought to the future. (I know, "Won't someone *please* think of the children?!?" is attached to many bogus arguments...)
Oh, nonsense. I've been recycling since I shared a small apartment with a tiny kitchen with two to three other people, when we had to cart the stuff to a municipal drop-off point ourselves. Your waste material takes up the same volume whether you sort it or not. If the bins the city provides take up too much floor space, leave them outside and get creative about stacking stuff.
Please stop making excuses and either do the right thing, or just admit that you don't give a shit about cleaning up after yourself.
Really. If you've got curbside recycling, using it is like crapping in a toilet rather than in the middle of the street - the minimum standard of decent behavior required to live in a population-dense society.
You miss the point - my right to peace and quiet applies whether it's my property or not. You can and should be arrested for disturbing my peace whether I'm a home owner, a renter, someone sleeping in a hotel, a squatter, whatever.
Property is a means we use to help define and enforce things like the right to peace and quiet. It is not a primary right.
Are there really THAT many people who think that simple things like recycling are a significant inconvenience?
I mean, do you throw your trash on the ground or do you use trash cans? Do you use toilets or do you find it inconvenient and just take a shit wherever you happen to be?
Shame that you and your acquaintances find it too hard...guess people I know are just smarter or harder working or something. I always see sorted recyclables put out on my street. More progressive areas (like San Francisco) even have separate curbside pickup for compostables. More and more public areas have separate bins for bottles, cans, and paper.
Any real estate is "your property" only because of state action. (Who issued that land deed? Who kicked the Native Americans off the land and gave it to the guy who sold it to the guy who sold it to you?)
Therefore if your right to select tenants or evict customers is based on the argument that "it's my property!", then your rightful power to do so is created and defined by the state, not any sort of natural right.
Now, there may be more legitimate arguments based on privacy and self-determination rather than on property. Libertarian capitalists generally fail to realize that property is an invention that we use to help support such primary rights, not a primary right in and of itself; and that much of the property that they place such importance on is an artifical creation of the state, thus making "anarcho-" or "libertarian" capitalism a contradiction in terms.
...therefore, to silence others, acuqire their property. Landlords can silence tenants, shopping malls can evict patrons wearing political slogans the management disgrees with, etcetera.
Typical libertarian capitalist fallacy that puts property as a primary right, rather than as a secondary tool to ensure primary rights.
You can almost do this with the newer Sharp Zaurus models. Pocketsized Linux box, 4 GB drive...you can even hook up a USB keyboard and mouse to it.
Supposedly there is an VGA output option, but no one seems to be able to get it to work. You could probably get it going to display on your desktop machine with VNC or with X Windows somehow.
The Zaurus C3000 rocks. For the past few months it's replaced my trusty pencila and notebook for writing poetry and journaling. Gets lots on envious looks when people see mine; unfortnately they're not marketed in the U.S., but a few companies import them and convert them to English from Japanese.
(The clamshell form factor for small electronics is much more common in Japan, widely used for electronic dictionaries and translators.)
Typical economics BS, based upon the false assumption that people always choose rationally.
What behavior like this shows is not how much people rationally value their lives but how they (usually irrationally) perceive risk. The same guy who spends $6,000 on a safer car will then go off and smoke a pack of Camels.
Could be. Manga is really taking off - this time last year, I'd never even seen translated manga. In January of this year I found a few in a specialty bookstore in San Francisco's Japantown. Now there is a large section of them at the local Barnes and Noble.
Obviously you can pick up your label gun and stick a price on anything. You cannot meaningfully put a price on life; a price can only be set on things that can be bought and sold.
Photography can range from the technical (as you describe) to the artistic (considerations of composition, of what to shoot, of color balance, and so on). It's no different from other arts in that respect - writing ranges from poetry to instruction manuals, music from advertizing jingles (or wordless tone-sequences like the Intel "dum-do-de-do") to Bach.
Dunno about joystick FPSs, but for light gun games, surprisingly well.
I'd never even picked up a real gun when I took an NRA gun safety class about 12 years ago. But I'd spend many a quarter playing "Mad Dog McCree" and "Beast Busters" in the campus arcade. When we got out to the range, after my first few shots from bench rest the instructor working with me said "Ok, I can see you've been shooting before, so we'll move along..."
Out of about 10 people in the class, I'd say I would have ranked about second, and the only guy shooting better had some previous experience.
No, it doesn't work fine. The people have the explict right "peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances", which you can't do from a "free speech zone" that's out of earshot of government officials. Furthermore, governments have on several occasions simply denied permits to groups they didn't want to hear from.
Are you saying you think bribery is ok?
If I take out an ad saying "Cops are great", we understand that as free speech. If a cop pulls me over and I say, "Hey, let me give you $50 towards your `Cops are great' ad campaign, wink wink nudge nudge," we know that for bribery.
If I take out an ad saying "Vote Cthulhu! (Why settle for the lesser of two evils?)", we understand that as free speech. If I say, "Oh great Elder One, let me sacrifice to you $50 that you may use it towards your `Vote Cthulhu!' ad campaign, by the way, wink wink nudge nudge, my soul isn't all that tasty..." we should understand that as bribery. (Or rather, in this case, a pathetic attempt at bribery that will get my soul eaten...)
Almost always, but every once in a while Nature finds a way.
That is part of the idea...up until a few years ago, Chucks were not only a fashion classic on a par with blue jeans, they were made in the USA (and were also leather-free, for vegans like me). They were an American classic. I loved 'em.
Then Converse shipped manufacture overseas to Indonesia; then Converse was bought by Nike, a company many of us choose not to do business with. Several companies have since started offering Chuck-like shoes made with labor-friendly practices; my favorite is No Sweat.
Now contains ads for the "black spot" sneaker. (Which is a stupid idea IMHO - an "anti-brand"? But I do have to give them props for including their critics on their website.)
I guess it might be argued that those are not there for advertising revenue...maybe they are more along the lines of news.
Many statements in astrophysics, meteorology, and many other fields fall into your category 2. (Verifying hypotheses about, say, supernovas, through controlled experiements, is a long way off.)
As for your category 3, there is a distinction between "we don't have all the facts but can still apply critical thinking" and "we don't have all the facts but we're smart so our theories are better." Critical thinking can be used in many philosophical fields where the scientific method does not apply; and good scientists should understand themselves as a class of philosophers (i.e., critical thinkers). ers for a living and our theories are worthier than your theories.if the argument is "we
Well, the 100,000+ dead don't have any chance at self rule, no...and those left have more chance of falling into civil war that, at best, ends up in a theocracy, than of ending up with a stable democracy.
After the way the neocons have fucked things up over there, the very very best we can hope for over there is that in 50 years or so, after a few hundred thousand more people have been killed in the fighting, things will be as nice and stable in Iraq as they are in Northern Ireland now.
The best course would have been for the U.S. to not help bring the Baathists to power in the first place. Having screwed that up, the next best thing would have been to not have supported Hussein in the 1980s.
Having screwed that up, the next next best thing would have been a long-term process of supporting reform in Iraq with diplomatic and economic sanctions and rewards, with the definite threat of military force if Iraq again attacked its neighbors. (With a corresponding promise to defend Iraq if its neighbors attacked it.) Yes, it would have taken years, decades even, to bring about change, and Saddam's brtual rule would have killed people in that time. But fewer than have already died, and orders of magnitude less than those who will die before stable democracy comes to Iraq.
Settle down, Nationalism Boy. You make it sound like U.N. blue helments (in the famous black helicopters, no doubt) are going to swoop down and occupy the buildings containing the current root servers.
All that has to happen for the U.N. to take control is for them to set up root servers of their own. Other "alternative" root servers already exist.
Not so much. ICANN controls them on behalf of the U.S. Department of Commerce, and it was the DoC's "fsck you" to the rest of the world that started this.