It's possible that gesture is just taking advantage of hard-coded speech language brain-systems.
That sentence made me think of something. I've recently been diagnosed AS-positive:) and one thing that seems to crop up with aspies is that their spoken language development is as advanced (but idiosyncratic) as their gestural language development (body language, etc) is inhibited. I wonder if there's a connection there? I know I'm (waaaay) reaching here, but I wonder if it was basically the AS trait which advanced human intelligence in the first place - conceiving of linguistic patterns to convey the information they couldn't share gesturally, and in the process kickstarting human social evolution?
Anyway, please ignore this thought if it's ridiculous:)
Hmm. Perhaps this is the start of a Slashdot trend? Will next month bring us the Timecube guy? Or maybe Fleischmann and Pons? Or perhaps the most recent pretender to a perpetual motion machine...?
Except that (i) people with Asperger's Syndrome tend to speak body language which is unintelligible (it's one of the diagnostic criteria); and (ii) juries are not instructed to determine guilt or innocence on their gut feelings, but on the evidence presented to them and that alone - if they don't do that, they're not doing their job.
It's apparent that we are indeed starting from different, and incompatible, assumptions. Given that, I don't think further discussion is going to get us anywhere useful, other than as a "compare and contrast" between two sets of irreconcilable beliefs.
Reminds me of a comment I saw just today on the Sound on Sound forum - something along the lines of "Audiophiles use phono cables because they have unbalanced personalities". I'm grotesquely misquoting, but doesn't that simple observation just tell the whole story...?
I think we're coming from very different places here, but in addition to that I fear you're a little confused.
First of all, you talk about "people who died for our way of life", and in the same breath you mention that they were conscripted. Er, in that case they died because someone pointed a gun at their head and told them they were going to war, and the state bears as much responsibility for killing them as if it had abducted and shot them. Forgive me for Godwinising, but your statement is about as logical as suggesting that the victims of Auschwitz died for the cause of Zionism.
Secondly, you mention that the democratic process has been subverted against the will of the people, and you suggest compulsory voting as a remedy for that. However, compulsory voting has not notably inhibited that subversion in, say, Australia. You say that democracy is flawed, and I agree with you; but you propose forcing people to participate in a flawed process as a stem on the flaws? No, it isn't. If anything, it perpetuates those flaws, by lending faux legitimacy to their results. Otherwise, why would so many opposition figures in oppressive regimes (eg. Zimbabwe) urge their supporters to boycott flawed elections?
Ironic, also, that you say "voting should be seen as a celebration of being free". I don't feel free, and I don't feel like celebrating - but you want me dragged to the party kicking and screaming? So much for freedom...
(Freedom is founded upon the ability to say, and mean, "I decline". A lot of people believe that choice is somehow the same thing as freedom. It isn't. If you can't respond to some choice with "I'm fine without, thanks", or "I'll make my own", or some other variation of "I'll take care of myself", you aren't free in that choice.)
You make some good suggestions for voting machines, but I was actually asking about the current state of things, rather than soliciting suggestions.
Ultimately, though, I'm just far from convinced that allowing people to put themselves forward to be chosen by a popular vote for positions of power is a sane way to choose leaders. It's certainly better than having those leaders choose themselves with a fuck of a lot of firepower, but that's not really saying a whole lot. Democracy has a known tendency to deteriorate into the tyranny of the majority - or even the minority, given that no quorum exists for elections - unless the strictest protections are placed upon individual rights. (God knows, the majority loves its tyranny.)
And forcing people to participate in a process that in almost every way is a piss-poor substitute for actual freedom is no such protection. Rather its opposite, I'd say.
Your last two sentences contradict each other. "Not using it at all" is certainly covered by "do whatever you want", regardless of how you feel about those who don't vote.
My own view is that if I am free to vote, I am necessarily free to not vote; otherwise, voting is as uncoerced as paying tax, and it's but a small step from there to insisting that you must check one of the little boxes. Which raises a question - how does one spoil an electronic ballot? (Or do the voting machines silently convert spoiled "papers" into Republican votes?;) )
In fact, the umpire does retain the power to overrule Hawkeye (or any human linesman) provided they do so immediately; such overrules are not uncommon. (There also seems at least one game every Wimbledon where Hawkeye appears to go off on one and ends up being turned off. If a human was that temperamental they'd be dismissed in short order...)
Everything that Rupert Murdoch does is avowedly anti-intellectual. Over there it's FOX News and the New York Post; over here it's the Sun, the News of the World, and the current Labour government.
But isn't the whole point of the Supreme Court that it exists to clarify those parts of the Constitution that no previous court has managed to clarify to everyone's satisfaction - in other words, the most contentious cases? Given that, isn't it entirely to be expected that the vast majority of decisions would be, well, majority decisions? If an issue is clear-cut enough to be decided with a unanimous opinion, surely it would generally be clear-cut enough to be resolved in a lower court? Likewise, there are complaints about judicial activism, but isn't the Supreme Court more or less required to take an activist position in its clarifications - purely because it always has to make its mind up one way or the other, and either way will piss some off?
(For what it's worth, their decision in this case does please me, a great deal - but I am in no position to say whether it was the correct decision, except to say that by definition it must be...)
I'd expect more intellectual honesty from Supreme Court judges.
Ah, an Objectivist. Hello, and welcome to the game - but unfortunately, you lose in the first round for being incapable of recognising that differences of opinion can be, and often are, honest, earnest, and sometimes even necessary; or that the existence of many wrong answers does not necessarily imply a single right one. Thanks for playing.
I dunno. When I think "if I ignore it, it'll go away", I'm usually practising productive procrastination. If it doesn't go away, it's important and I have to sort it out. If it does, I win:)
Slashdot Mirror
That sentence made me think of something. I've recently been diagnosed AS-positive :) and one thing that seems to crop up with aspies is that their spoken language development is as advanced (but idiosyncratic) as their gestural language development (body language, etc) is inhibited. I wonder if there's a connection there? I know I'm (waaaay) reaching here, but I wonder if it was basically the AS trait which advanced human intelligence in the first place - conceiving of linguistic patterns to convey the information they couldn't share gesturally, and in the process kickstarting human social evolution?
Anyway, please ignore this thought if it's ridiculous :)
"We won't let you say that here." "How dare you tell me what I can and can't express? My freedom of speech is sacred!"
"Here's how I think the world should look." "How dare you tell the rest of us how we should act? My freedom is infringed by your expression!"
*sigh* Gotta love slashdotters.
Were you as careful checking your sources as you are checking your hrefs?
I can, but I fear for the company who hires the managers Dixons don't want any more...
No no, the implication of ;)
Linux >> Windows
as a condition is that
Linux > pow(2, Windows)
Much more satisfying.
Hmm. Perhaps this is the start of a Slashdot trend? Will next month bring us the Timecube guy? Or maybe Fleischmann and Pons? Or perhaps the most recent pretender to a perpetual motion machine...?
It's surely obvious that his member is so redundant that he wouldn't even miss it...
6. By me.
The ultimate in involvement. ;)
Actually, doesn't that make you the insensitive clod, by definition?
Except that (i) people with Asperger's Syndrome tend to speak body language which is unintelligible (it's one of the diagnostic criteria); and (ii) juries are not instructed to determine guilt or innocence on their gut feelings, but on the evidence presented to them and that alone - if they don't do that, they're not doing their job.
It's apparent that we are indeed starting from different, and incompatible, assumptions. Given that, I don't think further discussion is going to get us anywhere useful, other than as a "compare and contrast" between two sets of irreconcilable beliefs.
Reminds me of a comment I saw just today on the Sound on Sound forum - something along the lines of "Audiophiles use phono cables because they have unbalanced personalities". I'm grotesquely misquoting, but doesn't that simple observation just tell the whole story...?
According to the contracts, they own the musicians.
And their firstborn.
I think we're coming from very different places here, but in addition to that I fear you're a little confused.
First of all, you talk about "people who died for our way of life", and in the same breath you mention that they were conscripted. Er, in that case they died because someone pointed a gun at their head and told them they were going to war, and the state bears as much responsibility for killing them as if it had abducted and shot them. Forgive me for Godwinising, but your statement is about as logical as suggesting that the victims of Auschwitz died for the cause of Zionism.
Secondly, you mention that the democratic process has been subverted against the will of the people, and you suggest compulsory voting as a remedy for that. However, compulsory voting has not notably inhibited that subversion in, say, Australia. You say that democracy is flawed, and I agree with you; but you propose forcing people to participate in a flawed process as a stem on the flaws? No, it isn't. If anything, it perpetuates those flaws, by lending faux legitimacy to their results. Otherwise, why would so many opposition figures in oppressive regimes (eg. Zimbabwe) urge their supporters to boycott flawed elections?
Ironic, also, that you say "voting should be seen as a celebration of being free". I don't feel free, and I don't feel like celebrating - but you want me dragged to the party kicking and screaming? So much for freedom...
(Freedom is founded upon the ability to say, and mean, "I decline". A lot of people believe that choice is somehow the same thing as freedom. It isn't. If you can't respond to some choice with "I'm fine without, thanks", or "I'll make my own", or some other variation of "I'll take care of myself", you aren't free in that choice.)
You make some good suggestions for voting machines, but I was actually asking about the current state of things, rather than soliciting suggestions.
Ultimately, though, I'm just far from convinced that allowing people to put themselves forward to be chosen by a popular vote for positions of power is a sane way to choose leaders. It's certainly better than having those leaders choose themselves with a fuck of a lot of firepower, but that's not really saying a whole lot. Democracy has a known tendency to deteriorate into the tyranny of the majority - or even the minority, given that no quorum exists for elections - unless the strictest protections are placed upon individual rights. (God knows, the majority loves its tyranny.)
And forcing people to participate in a process that in almost every way is a piss-poor substitute for actual freedom is no such protection. Rather its opposite, I'd say.
Your last two sentences contradict each other. "Not using it at all" is certainly covered by "do whatever you want", regardless of how you feel about those who don't vote.
My own view is that if I am free to vote, I am necessarily free to not vote; otherwise, voting is as uncoerced as paying tax, and it's but a small step from there to insisting that you must check one of the little boxes. Which raises a question - how does one spoil an electronic ballot? (Or do the voting machines silently convert spoiled "papers" into Republican votes? ;) )
Oops! Way to tell a couple of million geeks that you haven't been paying attention...
Ah, yes I am; thanks, and sorry for the unintentional misinformation.
In fact, the umpire does retain the power to overrule Hawkeye (or any human linesman) provided they do so immediately; such overrules are not uncommon. (There also seems at least one game every Wimbledon where Hawkeye appears to go off on one and ends up being turned off. If a human was that temperamental they'd be dismissed in short order...)
And since when did accurately relaying every inconvenient little detail of reality ever serve anyone's agenda?
Everything that Rupert Murdoch does is avowedly anti-intellectual. Over there it's FOX News and the New York Post; over here it's the Sun, the News of the World, and the current Labour government.
Ooh goodie! I've always wanted an automatic sawn-off shotgun with a silencer on it!
In that context, isn't its current meaning "the latest version of Diebold's software"...?
But isn't the whole point of the Supreme Court that it exists to clarify those parts of the Constitution that no previous court has managed to clarify to everyone's satisfaction - in other words, the most contentious cases? Given that, isn't it entirely to be expected that the vast majority of decisions would be, well, majority decisions? If an issue is clear-cut enough to be decided with a unanimous opinion, surely it would generally be clear-cut enough to be resolved in a lower court? Likewise, there are complaints about judicial activism, but isn't the Supreme Court more or less required to take an activist position in its clarifications - purely because it always has to make its mind up one way or the other, and either way will piss some off?
(For what it's worth, their decision in this case does please me, a great deal - but I am in no position to say whether it was the correct decision, except to say that by definition it must be...)
I dunno. When I think "if I ignore it, it'll go away", I'm usually practising productive procrastination. If it doesn't go away, it's important and I have to sort it out. If it does, I win :)