Both distribution and creating copies fall under infringement. That would be Title 17 section 106 of US law, and that's the same across the globe. Downloading is creating a copy. Uploading and downloading are essentially equivalent under copyright law.
if you were responsible for downloads, every time you open a webpage, you would open yourself up to liability
Correct. Unbelievable, but essentially correct.
If someone were actually to sue you in court in such a situation, you would pretty much two avenues of defense under U.S. law. Either a Fair Use defense or an Innocent Infringer defense. Note that in either case the law starts from an assumption of guilt and then places the burden upon you to prove your defense.
A Fair Use defense could probably work under these circumstances, and if it does your liability is zero. However the concept of Fair use is a somewhat peculiar fit for these circumstances. Fair Use is not really intended to fix this kind of problem. Innocent Infringer status is actually the "correct" defense to fit this situation. The circumstances you described would give you an instant slam-dunk win on claiming Innocent Infringer status.
And guess how fucked up copyright law is? Under the law an an Innocent Infringer is someone who, through no fault of his own, has technically committed copyright infringement. No fault, no guilt, just an ordinary innocent person who was lied to or given infringing material by some other guilty party. And under US law that means you technically did infringe on someone's copyright. You admitted to this when you laid out the situation. And under those circumstances, IF you prove yourself to be an Innocent Infringer, US law states that the judge is permitted to lower the statutory liability from the standard $750 minimum to a $200 minimum.
And if you think it's insane for you to be liable for $200 damages in your example after proving your Innocent Infringer status, just be glad your example wasn't P2P. If you engage in multiple infringements on P2P you are going to fall under the NET Act. And the NET Act was literally written by copyright industry lawyers, and they slipped in a trick-clause to redefine P2P as "financial gain". And that shoves you under the statutory category originally intended to deal with commercial copyright infringement enterprises. And this commercial infringement statute is a criminal infringement statute. It is a felony infringement statute. If you engage in multiple P2P infringements you technically fall under criminal copyright infringement imposing up to 1, 3, or 5 years in prison depending largely on the number of files involved. Ah, and the sentence is generally doubled on a second offense, up to 10 years in prison.
Here's a link to the Net Act. Pay particular attention to the clause that redefines "financial gain". Note how virtually anyone who has ever touched P2P gets magically swept into the commercial-infringement category.
I agree with you that it is irrational and broken to place legal liability on the downloader. A downloader is in no position to know whether the uploader is authorized to make that upload. Hell, as far as the downloader knows the uploader could be the copyright holder. The downloader cannot even be certain of the contents of the transfer until afterwards. The downloader often has no way to know the copyright status of the file. The uploader is the only one in a position to be certain of the contents, the only one in a position to know whether he has the legal right to send that file. The uploader is the only rational and functional place to put the responsibility and liability. Trying to place responsibility on the downloader causes all sorts of logical and legal messes.
HOWEVER
You're assumptions and assertions about the law are completely wrong. In the U.S. and in every nation in the world under the Berne convention, distribution and the act of creating a copy are both infringement of copyright. If you need a citation, US Title 17 section 106 specifically restricts the act of reproduction - i.e. copying. Under the law, downloading creates a new copy on your computer. In effectively every country on earth, downloading is copyright infringement. (Presuming of course it's a copyrighted and unauthorized file, yada yada yada.)
Not only is it civil copyright infringement, but the U.S. NET Act made virtually all P2P related infringement into criminal copyright infringement. And not merely criminal infringement, but felony infringement subject to several years in prison. Originally the criminal copyright provisions were only designed to target commercial copyright infringement enterprises. Unfortunately all copyright legislation for the last few decades has literally been drafted by lawyers employed by the copyright industry, and our idiot legislators have been pretty well taking those "expert" drafts and passing them. And industry lawyers of course have a nasty habit of slipping legal tricks or gotchyas into legislation when they get to draft it themselves. In this particular case the NET Act had a small easily overlooked provision:
17 U.S.C. S 101 S 101. Definitions Add the following between "display" and "fixed":
The term "financial gain" includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works.
The NET Act slipped that redefinition into the law. And if you're a legislator going over a bill to figure out and consider the actual being proposed, it's natural to focus on the text that will be the actual laws. And in getting to the text of actual criminal law and penalties and whatnot, it's extremely easy to skim over that provision. And in skimming over it, it doesn't seem particularly notable or unreasonable. But you and I are specifically thinking about the internet, and if I draw your attention to that provision, well now it's pretty blatant that that redefinition directly targets P2P. Anyone who uses P2P has the "expectation" that they will be receiving copyrighted works. This clause redefines P2P under the heading "financial gain". The main body of the bill was revising the criminal law for commercial enterprises infringing copyright. It uses a redefinition to shove P2P into the category intended to target gross commercial infringement operations.
The legal details get a bit messy. To make a long story short, practically everyone who has ever touched any form of P2P is technically a felon subject to up to 1, 5, or even 5 years in prison depending mostly upon how much P2P you've used. On a second offense the penalties generally double, up to 10 years in prison. Hell, anyone who ever swapped old audio cassette mix tapes with their friends falls within that "criminal infringement for financial gain" definition.
That law is virtually never actually enforced, but that does not alter the fact that a very substantial percentage of the population are technicall
I followed it fairly closely at the time. The EU Council created legislation that would have solidly established Software Patents. The EU Parliament then passed several reasonably solid amendments against Software Patents. And then the legislation was killed. Some would speculate that it was killed because certain interests decided that the existing muddy EU patent situation was preferable to permitting the EU Parliament to legislate against Software Patents.
The EU Parliament definitely sided against that "per se" crap.
I would say "theocracy" would be the principal of any of the laws being based upon religion. I suspect that is pretty much what Scotch had in mind, and that you are probably not averse to that as a reasonable definition. So yeah, nitpicking:)
calling your opponents cocksuckers (which is fundamentally what teabagger means)
No, it means ballsuckers. Chuckle.
As far as non-childish criticism of the Tea Party, I would like to start by noting the defining theme of the original Tea Party was "no taxation without representation". I find that hysterically ironic how the no-taxation-without-representation phase comes echoing back to mock them. They are mostly bitching about taxes and the fact is most of them are are throwing a temper tantrum over the particular party and the particular president overwhelmingly elected in the last election. The no-taxation-without-representation thing echoes back to make them look like complete idiots. There was an election and there is representation, and no-taxation-without-representation echoes back to completely delegitimize them the moment the word "taxes" comes out of their mouths. Even before any rational analysis of the issues, it makes them look mike morons and it completely delegitimizes their anger.
I've often noted that the left is incompetent at talk radio and the right are incompetent at comedy (go ahead, try to name any notable comedians on the right). In particular the right is often tragically blind when it comes to irony. I *so* want to go to a Tea Party rally and hand out "no taxation without representation" signs just to watch them eagerly snatch them up and fools of themselves on national television while the news comments on the irony.
Anyway.... you wanted adult rational discussion of adult rational Tea Party issues. And to do that we first need to agree that certain things and certain people are not representative of "the Tea Party" for our purposes. For example we need to acknowledge that there do exist people who just plain have a problem with the fact that the president is black, and that these sorts of people are naturally going to be drawn to the Tea Party. If were agree to "throw out the garbage" on such people we avoid any smear or taint against more reasonable Tea Party people and Tea Party ideas.
So hopefully we can agree to throw out any racists, homophobes, birthers, deathers, wannabe theocrats, the Obama-is-a-muslimers, acorn-stole-the-electioners, anti-christers, anyone mentioning secession from the country, and assorted other loons who apparently think gay soviet space lizards stole the country from them. They do not represent the Tea Party cause.
And note that that throws out the majority of people in the Tea Party movement. 30% of Tea Partiers polled affirmative of the birther issue alone, 59% if were to include in the "not sure" responses. I don't have specific Tea Party polling on muslimers, but muslimer polls substantially higher than birther among Republicans and the general public, so who knows how high muslimer get samong Tea Partiers.
Oh, and lets toss out the people who stormed the gun shops and bought out Walmart's entire supply of ammo because Obama is commin' fer their guns. Because it's kinda starting to look like Obama decided to put off the gun raids until his second term in office. Chuckle.
And hopefully you won't object when I throw out the 44% of Tea Partiers who think taxes when up, when in fact taxes went down on nearly a hundred percent of them.
Anyway, on to rational issues. The Health Care issue pretty well gets thrown out in one of three categories. First we throw out the government-takeover-of-the-health-industry concern as just plain fiction. The biggest baddest thing the Health Bill did was say people would have to pay a tax/fine if they refused to buy private health insurance. Not only does the general public overwhelmingly support virtually every aspect of the health bill that passed, in fact Tea Partiers support virtually every aspect of the bill. Essentially the only component they oppose is the mandate/fine provision. And here I throw out the garbage on the populist candyland morons who want to keep the popular provisions about pre-existing conditions and stuff but reject the unpopular mandate/fi
Cap-and-trade seriously sucks, but you can pretty much blame the Republicans for it.
The proper thing to do is TAX (or fee or fine) emissions, but Republicans have so propagandized the word "tax" that cap-and-trade is the only politically viable road. As much as cap-and-trade sucks, it's better than leaving the public atmosphere as an unlimited dumping ground for industrial waste products.
Lets sidestep and current issues and current controversies and just establish the ultimate validity of the point. Imagine I invented some new useful gadget, and it released vastly larger quantities of waste gases. And we don't care here weather it's toxic mercury vapor or CO2 or harmless Nitrogen gas. I'm completely dismissing any concern over any possible harm caused by the gas, it is merely vast quantities of inert gas. Simply unlimited quantities of waste gas dumped into the atmosphere to the point that it dilutes oxygen to the point that people aren't getting enough O2 to breathe.
The ultimate point is that we cannot allow the public atmosphere be used as an unlimited dumping ground for waste products. The only actual issue is when we can simply ignore the issue of insignificant quantities, and at what levels to we have to start prohibiting them or taxing them or fining them or charging a fee. Things like mercury vapor are extremely toxic and strictly regulated even at very low quantities. CO2 is mostly harmless, but it is being dumped into the atmosphere is such vast quantities that it is materially altering the composition of the public atmosphere. There is controversy over the direct and indirect effects of that CO2 dumped into the atmosphere, controversy over whether the current level of CO2 dumping requires regulation, but I do not think you an dispute point that at some level it becomes legitimate and even necessary to tax or prohibit waste CO2 or anything else into the public atmosphere.
I just think taxing generally works much better than caps or other forms of regulation. It provides vastly better market forces to optimally balance costs vs benefits. It provides an inherently well-balanced profit motive for innovation. It makes perfect sense for the public to "charge a fee" on those who want to use the public atmosphere as a dumping ground for their waste gases, but "taxes" has been twisted into such a dirty word that politicians refuse to use that proper free market based approach. And so we get stuck with crap like cap-and-trade because it doesn't "tax" anything.
But you know what? Clarence Thomas never had a judicial position either. Kagan in fact has VASTLY better qualifications for the Supreme Court than Thomas, not the least of which being that Kagan served as Solicitor General representing the US government's position before the Supreme Court. The Solicitor General position is often infomrally referred to as the "tenth justice".
So ok, I guess you and I can agree on something... like how about Thomas should go and Obama should appoint two well-qualified experienced appellate judges of his choice. Sound like a plan? You and I are good-to-go on something like that, right?
I would like to see studies supporting this overwhelming evidence... [for] genetic changes enabling traits that did not previously exist in the population
Sure! Here's your link. And when I say 'here's your link' I really do mean your link.
That link extensively documents (and admits) many cases of mutations creating new traits that did not previously exist in the population. With very minor editing it would make for an incomplete but rather good explanation and documentation of evolution. It does however contain a few odd habits. For example it uses words such as "generally" to correctly state the most common case and them completely ignore that they are explicitly admitting the less-common more-significant case. For example "mutation is generally degenerative" explicitly admits the opposite also happens, just less often. And "benefits are generally temporary and limited" explicitly admits to benefits and explicitly admits that they are NOT always temporary or limited.
It also has an odd habit of labeling things as "degenerative". Lets say I can eat peas, and evolution has produced in my children the previously-nonexistent trait of eating peas and carrots, they label that as a "loss of specificity". They label that obvious and real benefit as a "degredation".
They also use the fancy-sounding phrase "antagonistic pleiotropy" for the simple fact that almost all beneficial changes involve at least some cost or tradeoff. If I eat peas, and my children eat carrots instead, well that exactly fits your demand for a trait that did not previously exist in the population. And if carrots are an easier, more available, or more nutritious food course, then that is a beneficial evolution. The link uses both tactics to ignore this. It dismisses it because the shortage of peas is "generally" temporary, ignoring the admission that peas may have in fact gone extinct, and it only looks at the "loss" of pea-eating-ability to ignore the fact that carrots may in fact be a far easier or more nutritious food.
If a seagull evolves into a penguin, that's "not evolution" because of antagonistic pleiotropy. Antagonistic pleiotropy meaning the bird lost the ability to fly while gaining the swim. If a penguin evolves into a seagull, that's not evolution again because antagonistic pleiotropy means the bird lost the swimming ability while gaining the flying ability.
They also explicitly admit that genes can be duplicated, but completely ignore the ENORMOUS evolutionary significance of that fact. If a gene changes they define it as "degradation" even if it provides some new benefit, for the sole reason that want to see the only possible change as being "downward". However they completely ignore the fact that a supposed "degradation" changing the function of a gene involves NO LOSS OF ANYTHING if that gene was previously duplicated. The link explicitly admit the fact that changes in genes can and do introducing new useful previously non-existent abilities, and completely ignores the fact that if that gene has been duplicated then that can provide a pure evolutionary gain of the new trait or ability.
The link is an excellent explanation and review of evolution, except for highly selective willful blindness. Somethings are implicitly admitted by words like "generally", and the exceptions of those "generally"s are selectively ignored. Other things are slapped with a derogatory label like "degradation" as a convenient excuse to dismiss them... ignore the real practical literal improvement-of-life that they embody or enable. And most of all the willful blindness and willful ignorance that everything they address CAN and and WILL combine.... here's a wheel but evolution is false because it it can't to move move without a motor and here's a motor but evolution is false because a motor can't move without wheels.
Let me give a concrete example showing just who simple and obvious it
You're right the "of course" shows just how ideologically bigoted and deluded he is. He's so blinded by his radical ideology that he completely missed the fact that most people not only don't agree with him, most people have absolutely no clue what supposedly obvious "of course" crap he was thinking.
Just for the record, I've run into him before and I can illuminate the situation. Mapkinase is not merely tightass puritanical Cristian-Taliban-wannabe (I call them Talibanabees). He is a literal Muslim Talibanabee. He wants to impose Sharia Law on the entire globe, complete with God-gave-me-a-list-of-people-to-kill. In his deluded mind everyone should "of course" have known his reasons for objecting to the image. Not only did he imagine people would "of course" know his reasons, he assumes any sane and non-evil person of course agrees with them.
I've been on Slashdot a long time, and Mapkinase one of only three people I've used the Slashdot "Foe" system on. I reserve it for people who make an explicitly admission that rational discussion with them is pointless. I think one of the three admitted to being a deliberate trolling account (not Mapkinase), but the other two (including Mapkinase) made explicit statements that they were dedicated to blind dogmatic ideology and would would simply ignore any attempt at reason and logic.
"Why would I want to sit there for six hours watching overweight bearded guys talk about where on the screen they clicked with a mouse?"
I'm going to have to revoke your brainiac geek club card if you didn't have some immediate suitable comeback on that one:) I don't know what your fiancee watches but had to something that was easy pickins. Something such as:
You're obviously thinking of PokéBerries, which should never be confused with PokeBerries. PokeBerries are quite toxic, while PokéBerries are merely quite nauseating.
Maybe then we can send them to prison for five years for circumventing your technical protection measures to illegally access your copyrighted communications.
Wow, that planet must have a more advanced civilization than ours. Just imagine how powerful a super-collider would have to be to produce something as massive as anti-cows!
Afghanistan and the Tribal Areas of Pakistan are going boom.
They kinda went boom a long time ago. They are currently both a mess with countless small ups and downs. I'm not certain there's a reliable upward trend, but I haven't noticed any particularly significant new booms lately either. Was there some event I missed? Something that Obama was either responsible for or which he reasonably could have averted?
The transparency of the Executive Branch are going boom, every week there is a new story about how the White House is closing itself to the media.
I'd say labeling transparency issues as "booms" is rather excessive. Transparency in a process is very helpful in avoiding bad outcomes from that process, but it would only be a concrete harmful outcome itself that might qualify as a boom.
Nonetheless, yes I am quite disappointed with a number of things that have been going on in this area. The current level of transparency much better than it was under the last administration, however Obama set high expectations in this area and those improvements fall short of being satisfactory.
The economy is going boom
Hello?!?
Before Obama took office economists were all afraid of a complete financial and economic collapse, many talking of a possible second great depression.
And perhaps you don't own a TV, but the financial news lately has been about how economists are all saying the recession technically ended around 9 months ago and the economic indicators are now showing growth. The economy is now in an upswing. The current economy is still bad, but that is because the economy got tossed off a cliff before Obama entered office and it takes a while for steady growth to climb up out of the pit its in.
The economy is not going boom. It when boom under Bush. Economists left-center-and-right all agree the economy now well into recovery. Still down in the pit, but rising.
unemployment
Unemployment is a lagging economic indicator. Unemployment is always a lagging indicator. Unemployment is always the last thing to climb back up during a recovery. Always.
When a recession ends and economic activity starts increasing businesses start taking up their slack capacity to fill increasing demand. It generally takes several mounts of increasing demand for that slack business capacity to get used up, and businesses generally wait for significant and sustained excess demand before they begin hiring new workers and potentially spending on other capital expansions requiring new workers.
We've got a huge backlog of unemployed workers and it's going to be some time before the existing growth can put a decent dent in it.
US relations with Israel are going boom.
You have an odd definition of "boom".
Some government agency in Israel made an extremely badly timed announcement of an issue extremely unhelpful to peace negotiations, the Israeli Prime Minister had no clue that the the agency was even going to make that announcement, some in the administration called Israel out on that blunder and there was a bit of media fuss but politicians on both sides were already falling all over each other with kissies and huggies on how the US and Israelis were BFFs. A fuss, but no real harm. No boom.
If anything the US blew an opportunity with the overblown kissies and huggies. Some Israeli agency bad a political blunder with that announcement and particularly the timing, and the US could have gained at least some margin of respectability in Palestinian eyes for calling out Israel on it. Rightly or wrongly, Palestinians view the US as Israel's lapdog and not a credible mediator for peace. The US criticism of Israel in this situation could have been a virtually zero-cost way of gaining some credibility and independence from Israel in the Palestinian's view.
And make no mistake here... while I don't think the Israelis are saints I have absolutely no illusions about who the more reasonable and rationa
Don't blame me. I'm not eligible to vote in US elections.
If I were some delusional Teabagger racist ranting about illegal aliens and Obama stealing the election I'd probably have some witty comment about that not stopping you.
Slashdot Mirror
Both distribution and creating copies fall under infringement. That would be Title 17 section 106 of US law, and that's the same across the globe. Downloading is creating a copy. Uploading and downloading are essentially equivalent under copyright law.
if you were responsible for downloads, every time you open a webpage, you would open yourself up to liability
Correct.
Unbelievable, but essentially correct.
If someone were actually to sue you in court in such a situation, you would pretty much two avenues of defense under U.S. law. Either a Fair Use defense or an Innocent Infringer defense. Note that in either case the law starts from an assumption of guilt and then places the burden upon you to prove your defense.
A Fair Use defense could probably work under these circumstances, and if it does your liability is zero. However the concept of Fair use is a somewhat peculiar fit for these circumstances. Fair Use is not really intended to fix this kind of problem. Innocent Infringer status is actually the "correct" defense to fit this situation. The circumstances you described would give you an instant slam-dunk win on claiming Innocent Infringer status.
And guess how fucked up copyright law is? Under the law an an Innocent Infringer is someone who, through no fault of his own, has technically committed copyright infringement. No fault, no guilt, just an ordinary innocent person who was lied to or given infringing material by some other guilty party. And under US law that means you technically did infringe on someone's copyright. You admitted to this when you laid out the situation. And under those circumstances, IF you prove yourself to be an Innocent Infringer, US law states that the judge is permitted to lower the statutory liability from the standard $750 minimum to a $200 minimum.
US LAW, TITLE 17, CHAPTER 5, SECTION 504, SUBSECTION C, PARAGRAPH 2
And if you think it's insane for you to be liable for $200 damages in your example after proving your Innocent Infringer status, just be glad your example wasn't P2P. If you engage in multiple infringements on P2P you are going to fall under the NET Act. And the NET Act was literally written by copyright industry lawyers, and they slipped in a trick-clause to redefine P2P as "financial gain". And that shoves you under the statutory category originally intended to deal with commercial copyright infringement enterprises. And this commercial infringement statute is a criminal infringement statute. It is a felony infringement statute. If you engage in multiple P2P infringements you technically fall under criminal copyright infringement imposing up to 1, 3, or 5 years in prison depending largely on the number of files involved. Ah, and the sentence is generally doubled on a second offense, up to 10 years in prison.
Here's a link to the Net Act. Pay particular attention to the clause that redefines "financial gain". Note how virtually anyone who has ever touched P2P gets magically swept into the commercial-infringement category.
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I agree with you that it is irrational and broken to place legal liability on the downloader. A downloader is in no position to know whether the uploader is authorized to make that upload. Hell, as far as the downloader knows the uploader could be the copyright holder. The downloader cannot even be certain of the contents of the transfer until afterwards. The downloader often has no way to know the copyright status of the file. The uploader is the only one in a position to be certain of the contents, the only one in a position to know whether he has the legal right to send that file. The uploader is the only rational and functional place to put the responsibility and liability. Trying to place responsibility on the downloader causes all sorts of logical and legal messes.
HOWEVER
You're assumptions and assertions about the law are completely wrong. In the U.S. and in every nation in the world under the Berne convention, distribution and the act of creating a copy are both infringement of copyright. If you need a citation, US Title 17 section 106 specifically restricts the act of reproduction - i.e. copying. Under the law, downloading creates a new copy on your computer. In effectively every country on earth, downloading is copyright infringement. (Presuming of course it's a copyrighted and unauthorized file, yada yada yada.)
Not only is it civil copyright infringement, but the U.S. NET Act made virtually all P2P related infringement into criminal copyright infringement. And not merely criminal infringement, but felony infringement subject to several years in prison. Originally the criminal copyright provisions were only designed to target commercial copyright infringement enterprises. Unfortunately all copyright legislation for the last few decades has literally been drafted by lawyers employed by the copyright industry, and our idiot legislators have been pretty well taking those "expert" drafts and passing them. And industry lawyers of course have a nasty habit of slipping legal tricks or gotchyas into legislation when they get to draft it themselves. In this particular case the NET Act had a small easily overlooked provision:
17 U.S.C. S 101
S 101. Definitions
Add the following between "display" and "fixed":
The term "financial gain" includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works.
The NET Act slipped that redefinition into the law. And if you're a legislator going over a bill to figure out and consider the actual being proposed, it's natural to focus on the text that will be the actual laws. And in getting to the text of actual criminal law and penalties and whatnot, it's extremely easy to skim over that provision. And in skimming over it, it doesn't seem particularly notable or unreasonable. But you and I are specifically thinking about the internet, and if I draw your attention to that provision, well now it's pretty blatant that that redefinition directly targets P2P. Anyone who uses P2P has the "expectation" that they will be receiving copyrighted works. This clause redefines P2P under the heading "financial gain". The main body of the bill was revising the criminal law for commercial enterprises infringing copyright. It uses a redefinition to shove P2P into the category intended to target gross commercial infringement operations.
The legal details get a bit messy. To make a long story short, practically everyone who has ever touched any form of P2P is technically a felon subject to up to 1, 5, or even 5 years in prison depending mostly upon how much P2P you've used. On a second offense the penalties generally double, up to 10 years in prison. Hell, anyone who ever swapped old audio cassette mix tapes with their friends falls within that "criminal infringement for financial gain" definition.
That law is virtually never actually enforced, but that does not alter the fact that a very substantial percentage of the population are technicall
I followed it fairly closely at the time. The EU Council created legislation that would have solidly established Software Patents. The EU Parliament then passed several reasonably solid amendments against Software Patents. And then the legislation was killed. Some would speculate that it was killed because certain interests decided that the existing muddy EU patent situation was preferable to permitting the EU Parliament to legislate against Software Patents.
The EU Parliament definitely sided against that "per se" crap.
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I would say "theocracy" would be the principal of any of the laws being based upon religion. I suspect that is pretty much what Scotch had in mind, and that you are probably not averse to that as a reasonable definition. So yeah, nitpicking :)
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calling your opponents cocksuckers (which is fundamentally what teabagger means)
No, it means ballsuckers. Chuckle.
As far as non-childish criticism of the Tea Party, I would like to start by noting the defining theme of the original Tea Party was "no taxation without representation". I find that hysterically ironic how the no-taxation-without-representation phase comes echoing back to mock them. They are mostly bitching about taxes and the fact is most of them are are throwing a temper tantrum over the particular party and the particular president overwhelmingly elected in the last election. The no-taxation-without-representation thing echoes back to make them look like complete idiots. There was an election and there is representation, and no-taxation-without-representation echoes back to completely delegitimize them the moment the word "taxes" comes out of their mouths. Even before any rational analysis of the issues, it makes them look mike morons and it completely delegitimizes their anger.
I've often noted that the left is incompetent at talk radio and the right are incompetent at comedy (go ahead, try to name any notable comedians on the right). In particular the right is often tragically blind when it comes to irony. I *so* want to go to a Tea Party rally and hand out "no taxation without representation" signs just to watch them eagerly snatch them up and fools of themselves on national television while the news comments on the irony.
Anyway.... you wanted adult rational discussion of adult rational Tea Party issues. And to do that we first need to agree that certain things and certain people are not representative of "the Tea Party" for our purposes. For example we need to acknowledge that there do exist people who just plain have a problem with the fact that the president is black, and that these sorts of people are naturally going to be drawn to the Tea Party. If were agree to "throw out the garbage" on such people we avoid any smear or taint against more reasonable Tea Party people and Tea Party ideas.
So hopefully we can agree to throw out any racists, homophobes, birthers, deathers, wannabe theocrats, the Obama-is-a-muslimers, acorn-stole-the-electioners, anti-christers, anyone mentioning secession from the country, and assorted other loons who apparently think gay soviet space lizards stole the country from them. They do not represent the Tea Party cause.
And note that that throws out the majority of people in the Tea Party movement. 30% of Tea Partiers polled affirmative of the birther issue alone, 59% if were to include in the "not sure" responses. I don't have specific Tea Party polling on muslimers, but muslimer polls substantially higher than birther among Republicans and the general public, so who knows how high muslimer get samong Tea Partiers.
Oh, and lets toss out the people who stormed the gun shops and bought out Walmart's entire supply of ammo because Obama is commin' fer their guns. Because it's kinda starting to look like Obama decided to put off the gun raids until his second term in office. Chuckle.
And hopefully you won't object when I throw out the 44% of Tea Partiers who think taxes when up, when in fact taxes went down on nearly a hundred percent of them.
Anyway, on to rational issues. The Health Care issue pretty well gets thrown out in one of three categories. First we throw out the government-takeover-of-the-health-industry concern as just plain fiction. The biggest baddest thing the Health Bill did was say people would have to pay a tax/fine if they refused to buy private health insurance. Not only does the general public overwhelmingly support virtually every aspect of the health bill that passed, in fact Tea Partiers support virtually every aspect of the bill. Essentially the only component they oppose is the mandate/fine provision. And here I throw out the garbage on the populist candyland morons who want to keep the popular provisions about pre-existing conditions and stuff but reject the unpopular mandate/fi
Cap-and-trade seriously sucks, but you can pretty much blame the Republicans for it.
The proper thing to do is TAX (or fee or fine) emissions, but Republicans have so propagandized the word "tax" that cap-and-trade is the only politically viable road. As much as cap-and-trade sucks, it's better than leaving the public atmosphere as an unlimited dumping ground for industrial waste products.
Lets sidestep and current issues and current controversies and just establish the ultimate validity of the point. Imagine I invented some new useful gadget, and it released vastly larger quantities of waste gases. And we don't care here weather it's toxic mercury vapor or CO2 or harmless Nitrogen gas. I'm completely dismissing any concern over any possible harm caused by the gas, it is merely vast quantities of inert gas. Simply unlimited quantities of waste gas dumped into the atmosphere to the point that it dilutes oxygen to the point that people aren't getting enough O2 to breathe.
The ultimate point is that we cannot allow the public atmosphere be used as an unlimited dumping ground for waste products. The only actual issue is when we can simply ignore the issue of insignificant quantities, and at what levels to we have to start prohibiting them or taxing them or fining them or charging a fee. Things like mercury vapor are extremely toxic and strictly regulated even at very low quantities. CO2 is mostly harmless, but it is being dumped into the atmosphere is such vast quantities that it is materially altering the composition of the public atmosphere. There is controversy over the direct and indirect effects of that CO2 dumped into the atmosphere, controversy over whether the current level of CO2 dumping requires regulation, but I do not think you an dispute point that at some level it becomes legitimate and even necessary to tax or prohibit waste CO2 or anything else into the public atmosphere.
I just think taxing generally works much better than caps or other forms of regulation. It provides vastly better market forces to optimally balance costs vs benefits. It provides an inherently well-balanced profit motive for innovation. It makes perfect sense for the public to "charge a fee" on those who want to use the public atmosphere as a dumping ground for their waste gases, but "taxes" has been twisted into such a dirty word that politicians refuse to use that proper free market based approach. And so we get stuck with crap like cap-and-trade because it doesn't "tax" anything.
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By golly, maybe you're right!
But you know what? Clarence Thomas never had a judicial position either. Kagan in fact has VASTLY better qualifications for the Supreme Court than Thomas, not the least of which being that Kagan served as Solicitor General representing the US government's position before the Supreme Court. The Solicitor General position is often infomrally referred to as the "tenth justice".
So ok, I guess you and I can agree on something... like how about Thomas should go and Obama should appoint two well-qualified experienced appellate judges of his choice. Sound like a plan? You and I are good-to-go on something like that, right?
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Gregory House has a new career as an ice cream truck driver, serving up abuse and sexual innuendo for ten year old kids.
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"I can show you this," wherupon he looks at the screen and gives his review in a single, somewhat gaudily overacted word.
It sounded like Mr. Takei suddenly saw a male Kalvin Kline model taking his jeans off.
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Perhaps I'm a bit dim, but I don't get the joke. Could someone enlighten me?
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I would like to see studies supporting this overwhelming evidence... [for] genetic changes enabling traits that did not previously exist in the population
Sure! Here's your link. And when I say 'here's your link' I really do mean your link.
That link extensively documents (and admits) many cases of mutations creating new traits that did not previously exist in the population. With very minor editing it would make for an incomplete but rather good explanation and documentation of evolution. It does however contain a few odd habits. For example it uses words such as "generally" to correctly state the most common case and them completely ignore that they are explicitly admitting the less-common more-significant case. For example "mutation is generally degenerative" explicitly admits the opposite also happens, just less often. And "benefits are generally temporary and limited" explicitly admits to benefits and explicitly admits that they are NOT always temporary or limited.
It also has an odd habit of labeling things as "degenerative". Lets say I can eat peas, and evolution has produced in my children the previously-nonexistent trait of eating peas and carrots, they label that as a "loss of specificity". They label that obvious and real benefit as a "degredation".
They also use the fancy-sounding phrase "antagonistic pleiotropy" for the simple fact that almost all beneficial changes involve at least some cost or tradeoff. If I eat peas, and my children eat carrots instead, well that exactly fits your demand for a trait that did not previously exist in the population. And if carrots are an easier, more available, or more nutritious food course, then that is a beneficial evolution. The link uses both tactics to ignore this. It dismisses it because the shortage of peas is "generally" temporary, ignoring the admission that peas may have in fact gone extinct, and it only looks at the "loss" of pea-eating-ability to ignore the fact that carrots may in fact be a far easier or more nutritious food.
If a seagull evolves into a penguin, that's "not evolution" because of antagonistic pleiotropy. Antagonistic pleiotropy meaning the bird lost the ability to fly while gaining the swim. If a penguin evolves into a seagull, that's not evolution again because antagonistic pleiotropy means the bird lost the swimming ability while gaining the flying ability.
They also explicitly admit that genes can be duplicated, but completely ignore the ENORMOUS evolutionary significance of that fact. If a gene changes they define it as "degradation" even if it provides some new benefit, for the sole reason that want to see the only possible change as being "downward". However they completely ignore the fact that a supposed "degradation" changing the function of a gene involves NO LOSS OF ANYTHING if that gene was previously duplicated. The link explicitly admit the fact that changes in genes can and do introducing new useful previously non-existent abilities, and completely ignores the fact that if that gene has been duplicated then that can provide a pure evolutionary gain of the new trait or ability.
The link is an excellent explanation and review of evolution, except for highly selective willful blindness. Somethings are implicitly admitted by words like "generally", and the exceptions of those "generally"s are selectively ignored. Other things are slapped with a derogatory label like "degradation" as a convenient excuse to dismiss them... ignore the real practical literal improvement-of-life that they embody or enable. And most of all the willful blindness and willful ignorance that everything they address CAN and and WILL combine.... here's a wheel but evolution is false because it it can't to move move without a motor and here's a motor but evolution is false because a motor can't move without wheels.
Let me give a concrete example showing just who simple and obvious it
an iPhone app to cure the most common cases of vertigo, which about 300,000 Canadians develop annually.
I DON'T WANT THIS FUCKING METRIC UNIT CRAP!
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You're right the "of course" shows just how ideologically bigoted and deluded he is. He's so blinded by his radical ideology that he completely missed the fact that most people not only don't agree with him, most people have absolutely no clue what supposedly obvious "of course" crap he was thinking.
Just for the record, I've run into him before and I can illuminate the situation. Mapkinase is not merely tightass puritanical Cristian-Taliban-wannabe (I call them Talibanabees). He is a literal Muslim Talibanabee. He wants to impose Sharia Law on the entire globe, complete with God-gave-me-a-list-of-people-to-kill. In his deluded mind everyone should "of course" have known his reasons for objecting to the image. Not only did he imagine people would "of course" know his reasons, he assumes any sane and non-evil person of course agrees with them.
I've been on Slashdot a long time, and Mapkinase one of only three people I've used the Slashdot "Foe" system on. I reserve it for people who make an explicitly admission that rational discussion with them is pointless. I think one of the three admitted to being a deliberate trolling account (not Mapkinase), but the other two (including Mapkinase) made explicit statements that they were dedicated to blind dogmatic ideology and would would simply ignore any attempt at reason and logic.
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My new bumper sticker:
Save the Ice,
Kill a Whale.
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I don't find it hard to believe that politicians will soon act like scientists.
From your lips to God's ears.
(Virtus, of course.)
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"Why would I want to sit there for six hours watching overweight bearded guys talk about where on the screen they clicked with a mouse?"
I'm going to have to revoke your brainiac geek club card if you didn't have some immediate suitable comeback on that one :) I don't know what your fiancee watches but had to something that was easy pickins. Something such as:
Why would anyone want to sit there watching fat people diet?
Or maybe America's Next Top Anorexic Crackwhore?
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You're obviously thinking of PokéBerries, which should never be confused with PokeBerries.
PokeBerries are quite toxic, while PokéBerries are merely quite nauseating.
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I really liked your images showing the volumes of water and air.
I just thought I'd contribute free AOL disks, spam, politics, and the average person's grasp of logic science and reality.
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If you don't like the way I drive, stay the hell off the sidewalk.
If you don't like the way I fly, keep your damn car the hell out of the field.
P.S.
He said the balloon was then seen lying partially-inflated above a paddock "like a white Uluru".
What the hell is an Uluru?
I guess it's something that kinda looks like a partially-inflated balloon over a paddock, except it's not white.
Ah... yeah... something like that.
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Maybe then we can send them to prison for five years for circumventing your technical protection measures to illegally access your copyrighted communications.
We may as well put the DMCA to some positive use.
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Wow, that planet must have a more advanced civilization than ours. Just imagine how powerful a super-collider would have to be to produce something as massive as anti-cows!
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Afghanistan and the Tribal Areas of Pakistan are going boom.
They kinda went boom a long time ago. They are currently both a mess with countless small ups and downs. I'm not certain there's a reliable upward trend, but I haven't noticed any particularly significant new booms lately either. Was there some event I missed? Something that Obama was either responsible for or which he reasonably could have averted?
The transparency of the Executive Branch are going boom, every week there is a new story about how the White House is closing itself to the media.
I'd say labeling transparency issues as "booms" is rather excessive. Transparency in a process is very helpful in avoiding bad outcomes from that process, but it would only be a concrete harmful outcome itself that might qualify as a boom.
Nonetheless, yes I am quite disappointed with a number of things that have been going on in this area. The current level of transparency much better than it was under the last administration, however Obama set high expectations in this area and those improvements fall short of being satisfactory.
The economy is going boom
Hello?!?
Before Obama took office economists were all afraid of a complete financial and economic collapse, many talking of a possible second great depression.
And perhaps you don't own a TV, but the financial news lately has been about how economists are all saying the recession technically ended around 9 months ago and the economic indicators are now showing growth. The economy is now in an upswing. The current economy is still bad, but that is because the economy got tossed off a cliff before Obama entered office and it takes a while for steady growth to climb up out of the pit its in.
The economy is not going boom. It when boom under Bush. Economists left-center-and-right all agree the economy now well into recovery. Still down in the pit, but rising.
unemployment
Unemployment is a lagging economic indicator.
Unemployment is always a lagging indicator.
Unemployment is always the last thing to climb back up during a recovery. Always.
When a recession ends and economic activity starts increasing businesses start taking up their slack capacity to fill increasing demand. It generally takes several mounts of increasing demand for that slack business capacity to get used up, and businesses generally wait for significant and sustained excess demand before they begin hiring new workers and potentially spending on other capital expansions requiring new workers.
We've got a huge backlog of unemployed workers and it's going to be some time before the existing growth can put a decent dent in it.
US relations with Israel are going boom.
You have an odd definition of "boom".
Some government agency in Israel made an extremely badly timed announcement of an issue extremely unhelpful to peace negotiations, the Israeli Prime Minister had no clue that the the agency was even going to make that announcement, some in the administration called Israel out on that blunder and there was a bit of media fuss but politicians on both sides were already falling all over each other with kissies and huggies on how the US and Israelis were BFFs. A fuss, but no real harm. No boom.
If anything the US blew an opportunity with the overblown kissies and huggies. Some Israeli agency bad a political blunder with that announcement and particularly the timing, and the US could have gained at least some margin of respectability in Palestinian eyes for calling out Israel on it. Rightly or wrongly, Palestinians view the US as Israel's lapdog and not a credible mediator for peace. The US criticism of Israel in this situation could have been a virtually zero-cost way of gaining some credibility and independence from Israel in the Palestinian's view.
And make no mistake here... while I don't think the Israelis are saints I have absolutely no illusions about who the more reasonable and rationa
I never realized just how huge the "leftist big media crowd" was.
And just to be strictly fair..... and for laughs... I did the same search for McCain.
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When Obama takes a book out of the library it's because he wants to read it and return it.
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Don't blame me. I'm not eligible to vote in US elections.
If I were some delusional Teabagger racist ranting about illegal aliens and Obama stealing the election I'd probably have some witty comment about that not stopping you.
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