The death penalty would make a fantastic shoplifting deterrent.
Probably not. They tried it in Britain: "...in twenty two years from 1749 to 1771 two hundred and forty persons were convicted of shoplifting and other analogous offences one hundred and nine of whom were actually executed."
Ya , because repeatedly sodomizing someone is a confined space is so much more civilized.
The solution to prison rape is to fix the prisons (largely by stopping overcrowding them with drug offenders and taking rehabilitation seriously again), not to murder convicts on the basis that that's more civilized.
If you have to remove someone from society from the greater good, killing is not necessarily worse or less humane then removing most of their freedoms.
If someone is sentenced to life without parole, I can see giving them the option of euthanasia.
Im much more concerned with a generation that seems to favor some kind of anarchy where everyone decides for themselves which of the laws are worth following.
If you don't think that everyone should decide for themselves which laws are worth following, then it follows that you would have handed over fugitive slaves in the 1850s, or fugitive Jews in the 1940s. If that is the case, then you are a terrible human being.
No, nothing can go faster than the speed of light because it will violate causality. Which is more or less forbidden by the entirety of physics.
Causality-as-we-know-it is an assumption, not a result, of physics. It may be that our everyday notion of cause-and-effect is just wrong in the big picture.
The solution isn't government regulation. The solution is to encourage more corporations to start and grow in this country.
Corporations are a government-created entity that allows investors to concentrate their wealth. If the government is going to create them, it must regulate them in the public interest. If you want more corporations, in order to allow more competition, you have to create a regulatory environment that prevents them from eating each other or getting too big to allow competition.
Because organized labor is detrimental to the economy and a joke.
The economic boom of the 1950s coincided with high union membership. The economic collapse we've had since 1980 coincides with low union membership. History says you're wrong.
If you can't make yourself valuable to your employer on your own merits without these sort of government-backed or thug-backed coercive tactics, you really don't deserve the job.
Unions are not "government-backed". Corporations are -- governments issue corporate charters, governments issue property deeds, governments issue copyrights and patents. And the history of labor is full of the aristocrat class hiring strike-breaking thugs.
All that does is make the corporation less competitive with other global players, which is bad for our economy.
A race to the bottom is what's bad for our economy.
Stop drinking the right-wing Kool Aid; amnesia and ignorance are its main side effects.
Yes, carriers charge pretty much what it costs to send a text message, and keep the infrastructure that the message traveled over running.
The problem is that carriers also charge for a voice call what it takes to connect that voice call, and keep the call that the message traveled over running -- even though it's the same infrastructure used for text messages. Nothing like double billing.
People who work at carriers aren't all driving around in Ferraris, you know.
Of course not. Employee salaries are an expense to be minimized. The profits go to shareholders, not employees.
...by using artificial fertilizers and pesticides made from chemical stocks we are depleting, and by using machinery fueled by petroleum. When we run out of petroleum, those improved yields mostly go away.
It's not really very interesting except to note that photography isn't really a fundamental human right
Howso?
It is a fundamental human write to write whatever I wish. It is a fundamental human right to draw whatever I wish. It is a fundamental human right to remember whatever I wish.
Consider a hypothetical photo-realistic artist with extraordinary visual recall. He can stand at some location, and then go home a draw what he remembers seeing with great accuracy. No state can legitimately outlaw him from doing so.
How can the state then legitimately outlaw me from using a tool to accomplish the same thing?
more like six during the Great Florida Chad Controversy, and about two when Clinton left office.
Nice trick, that, since Clinton left office after the Great Florida Chad Controversy.
Someone who was ten years old in 2004 would have been two in 1996, when Bubba got re-elected, and six in 2000; Clinton's term ended after the massive fraud of the 2000 elections.
Just a little historical review for the younglings.
The TI-8X series ones, and some of the HP calculators, are a known standard, and many tests (SAT, AP tests, etc. if I'm remembering correctly) will not allow other brands to be used, only these specified models.
Nice scam they've got going, then. Back In My Day, we didn't use calculators on the SAT, AP, or even the GRE tests; the arithmetic was easy, it was knowing what to add or multiply to what that was the trick.
I had an old Radio Shack "scientific" calculator that had some statistical functions that I got a lot of use out of in some lab classes, but that's about it.
There is no easy criteria to put it into the needy versus the greedy. There are plenty of people out there who have no real sense of money. It could be a family that could be living paycheck to paycheck but have $150,000 a year income; or it could be a poor family on welfare somehow has an ipad, iphone and nintendo ds. We don't need to baby people, we need them to be smarter with their money.
Spoken like a true naive right-wing American who wants desperately to believe that poverty is the result of some moral failing on the part of the poor, and therefore can never touch them or their loved ones.
I've had a few cases where a Wikipedia entry contained obvious factual errors, because some notable person stated those errors on their blog/twitter. When I pointed out the errors, I was told I couldn't do original research.
If it's an obvious factual error, then you ought to be able to cite a source for the correction.
If it only has placebo effect, it means it doesn't work.
Only if one defines "works" to mean "works better than a placebo". For most people in pain, for example, "works" means "reduces the pain". Placebos are clinically useful.
Burden of proof is on the one making the positive claim. There are zero double-blind studies showing any effectiveness to homeopathy.
True. There are also zero double-blind studies showing any effectiveness to surgery. In fact, IIRC every placebo-controlled trial of a surgical procedure (there have been a handful) has shown the procedure in question to be no more effective than a "sham" operation.
Most of modern medicine has very little scientific evidence to support it.
The difference being that owning your own machine shop is expensive and knowing how to use your machines to build a gun is a complicated process that takes skill.
It's just not expensive or hard to make guns. Quality, reliable guns, maybe; but desperate people will take a cheap unreliable gun over no gun any day.
Yes, Bundesrepublik Deutschland = "Federal Republic of Germany". Federalism has been a part of German government for centuries, though things have been carved up quite differently over that time.
Gold has no more intrinsic value than paper money. In the event of a total social and economic collapse, no one is going to trade you food, medicine, tools, land, weapons, or services for shiny metal.
If we avoid total meltdown over the next few years, the value of gold will fall just like it did after its peak in the early 80s.
The rich, on the other hand, use their capital to employ the labor of the common folk, in order to increase their wealth.
In other words, the rich use their state-granted and enforced control of capital to increase their wealth through parasitism on those who actually work.
This benefits the laborer, because he is paid a wage from which he can live.
That wasn't true of the US from WWII to about 1960....That period was probably the most successful in American history.
Yes, back when black folks knew their place, women stayed home, gays stayed hidden, and artists and intellectuals could be hauled before Congress and blacklisted if they questioned capitalism. Paradise, indeed...if you happen to be a ideologically-correct white male. The other folks, who enabled that "success" but didn't share in it, might have a few objections to your characterization.
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Probably not. They tried it in Britain: "...in twenty two years from 1749 to 1771 two hundred and forty persons were convicted of shoplifting and other analogous offences one hundred and nine of whom were actually executed."
Either most developed nations - indeed, most nations -- other than the U.S. are civilized and we're not, or uncivilized people don't need a death penalty either.
The solution to prison rape is to fix the prisons (largely by stopping overcrowding them with drug offenders and taking rehabilitation seriously again), not to murder convicts on the basis that that's more civilized.
If someone is sentenced to life without parole, I can see giving them the option of euthanasia.
If you don't think that everyone should decide for themselves which laws are worth following, then it follows that you would have handed over fugitive slaves in the 1850s, or fugitive Jews in the 1940s. If that is the case, then you are a terrible human being.
Law has no moral authority in and of itself.
Causality-as-we-know-it is an assumption, not a result, of physics. It may be that our everyday notion of cause-and-effect is just wrong in the big picture.
Corporations are a government-created entity that allows investors to concentrate their wealth. If the government is going to create them, it must regulate them in the public interest. If you want more corporations, in order to allow more competition, you have to create a regulatory environment that prevents them from eating each other or getting too big to allow competition.
The economic boom of the 1950s coincided with high union membership. The economic collapse we've had since 1980 coincides with low union membership. History says you're wrong.
Unions are not "government-backed". Corporations are -- governments issue corporate charters, governments issue property deeds, governments issue copyrights and patents. And the history of labor is full of the aristocrat class hiring strike-breaking thugs.
A race to the bottom is what's bad for our economy.
Stop drinking the right-wing Kool Aid; amnesia and ignorance are its main side effects.
The problem is that carriers also charge for a voice call what it takes to connect that voice call, and keep the call that the message traveled over running -- even though it's the same infrastructure used for text messages. Nothing like double billing.
Of course not. Employee salaries are an expense to be minimized. The profits go to shareholders, not employees.
GMOs often have lower yields, and organic yields are comparable to conventional -- and are more sustainable, since they're not petrochemical dependent.
I respectfully suggest you stop drinking Monsanto-brand Kool Aid and seek to become more informed about this issue.
...by using artificial fertilizers and pesticides made from chemical stocks we are depleting, and by using machinery fueled by petroleum. When we run out of petroleum, those improved yields mostly go away.
Howso?
It is a fundamental human write to write whatever I wish. It is a fundamental human right to draw whatever I wish. It is a fundamental human right to remember whatever I wish.
Consider a hypothetical photo-realistic artist with extraordinary visual recall. He can stand at some location, and then go home a draw what he remembers seeing with great accuracy. No state can legitimately outlaw him from doing so.
How can the state then legitimately outlaw me from using a tool to accomplish the same thing?
Nice trick, that, since Clinton left office after the Great Florida Chad Controversy.
Someone who was ten years old in 2004 would have been two in 1996, when Bubba got re-elected, and six in 2000; Clinton's term ended after the massive fraud of the 2000 elections.
Just a little historical review for the younglings.
Nice scam they've got going, then. Back In My Day, we didn't use calculators on the SAT, AP, or even the GRE tests; the arithmetic was easy, it was knowing what to add or multiply to what that was the trick.
I had an old Radio Shack "scientific" calculator that had some statistical functions that I got a lot of use out of in some lab classes, but that's about it.
Spoken like a true naive right-wing American who wants desperately to believe that poverty is the result of some moral failing on the part of the poor, and therefore can never touch them or their loved ones.
Sorry, but the world doesn't work that way.
If it's an obvious factual error, then you ought to be able to cite a source for the correction.
"Online" sharing of information, including pictures, existed before the web / HTTP. People put stuff up on anonymous FTP sites.
Only if one defines "works" to mean "works better than a placebo". For most people in pain, for example, "works" means "reduces the pain". Placebos are clinically useful.
True. There are also zero double-blind studies showing any effectiveness to surgery. In fact, IIRC every placebo-controlled trial of a surgical procedure (there have been a handful) has shown the procedure in question to be no more effective than a "sham" operation.
Most of modern medicine has very little scientific evidence to support it.
Black-market gunsmiths in the Philippines produce submachine guns. During WWII, resistance movements in Nazi-occupied countries were able to produce Sten guns in underground shops.
It's just not expensive or hard to make guns. Quality, reliable guns, maybe; but desperate people will take a cheap unreliable gun over no gun any day.
Yes, Bundesrepublik Deutschland = "Federal Republic of Germany". Federalism has been a part of German government for centuries, though things have been carved up quite differently over that time.
[citation needed]
I'm a WikiLeask supporter; I've never DDoS'd anyone.
Gold has no more intrinsic value than paper money. In the event of a total social and economic collapse, no one is going to trade you food, medicine, tools, land, weapons, or services for shiny metal.
If we avoid total meltdown over the next few years, the value of gold will fall just like it did after its peak in the early 80s.
In other words, the rich use their state-granted and enforced control of capital to increase their wealth through parasitism on those who actually work.
In other words, the workers can enjoy the scraps from the king's table.
Yes, back when black folks knew their place, women stayed home, gays stayed hidden, and artists and intellectuals could be hauled before Congress and blacklisted if they questioned capitalism. Paradise, indeed...if you happen to be a ideologically-correct white male. The other folks, who enabled that "success" but didn't share in it, might have a few objections to your characterization.
3.6.x has been EOLed; the March 2012 release was the last one.