The issue both sides are arguing is whether the choice for women to appear in porn is or can be a free choice in a meaningful way.
The other issue that Dworkin in particular argues is that viewing pornography turns otherwise decent men into rapists. That sort of thing might well be amenable to scientific data, such as a survey of rapists to find out why they committed their crimes. If someone were to demonstrate that viewing particular kinds of porn led to rape or sexual assault or domestic violence, I'd at least take their position seriously, but right now there's simply fears about porn with no data of any kind to back it up.
Even among feminists, there's significant disagreement about whether porn is inherently exploitative of women, or whether it's fine if all the performers have consented to participate (if they haven't then it's sexual assault at least). And this debate has been going on for several decades at least, with some (e.g. Andrea Dworkin and Gloria Steinem) taking the anti-porn side, while others (e.g. Ellen Willis and Susie Bright) taking the view that women should be able to express their sexuality on film if they want. The key problem: There's no scientific data to support any position on the subject, so it's come down to gut feelings with various rationalizations on both sides.
My own take: I'm not going to support passing laws to deal with purely theoretical problems. If the anti-porn side can demonstrate some actual documented harm, then I'll change my mind.
"Ending is better than mending. The more stitches, the less riches." -Aldous Huxley
Of course a consumer society isn't supposed to have anything that can be repaired by a normal human being. If you want anything, you're supposed to cough up your hard-earned cash to your corporate overlords.
In the US we won't face a lack of water but it'll get expensive and food prices are likely to double and could triple or more in adjusted dollars.
There have been areas of the US that have had to face water shortages already, actually: Los Angeles periodically has to ban watering of front lawns, for example. It's kind of interesting living where I do, less than 5 miles away from the world's largest supply of fresh water anywhere: there have been numerous attempts to convince the various governments that have access to it to divert as much of it as possible in various directions, thankfully none of them successful. Generally speaking, liberals want to protect the water for environmental reasons, while conservatives want to protect the water so that businesses that need the water will relocate to the area.
No, the big scare that was that the revolution in Iran in 1979 was cutting off the supplies of oil to the US, which was already causing gasoline shortages and other serious problems. Environmental concerns had nothing to do with it.
But aren't minimum wage increases one of the (albeit small) contributors to inflation?
Some economists think that average wage increases are the primary cause of inflation, some think that price increases in important commodities are the primary cause of inflation. If you're in the first camp, then the importance of a minimum wage increase depends on what percentage of workers make minimum wage, which in the US is about 1% of all workers. If you're in the second camp, then the minimum wage increase has no effect on prices.
And as such, wouldn't tying minimum wage increases to inflation create a circular reference of sorts?
Of sorts, but the effects would probably vary a lot based on what industries we're talking about. The risk is this: The increase in pay leads to an increase in the price of, say, hamburgers, which leads to inflation, which leads to an increase in pay, in a vicious cycle. The alternative is that the increase in pay leads to decreased profits for McDonalds Inc shareholders, which has no effects on inflation whatsoever.
Talk is cheap, and the State of the Union address is about pageantry and blowing hot air, not anything that will actually happen. Come back to me when you have a serious effort, which will probably involve legislation, a budget, an actual agency, probably some grant programs, and other tangible steps. Come back to me when thanks to some serious efforts and funding, we have solar or geothermal or hydro power that could handle the entire energy needs of the US. Come back to me when you have serious conservation efforts that make Americans not the most wasteful people on the planet.
You know, people made fun of Jimmy Carter suggesting things like turning down the thermostat and wearing a sweater, and for installing solar panels on the White House, but he was basically right about the necessary course of action.
Well, up to a point. As Neil deGrasse Tyson points out, from the Principia Mathematica: "But is it not to be conceived that mere mechanical causes could give birth to so many regular motions." - Isaac Newton
Newton, that crazy alchemist who revolutionized physics just for fun and invented calculus more-or-less on a lark, also invoked intelligent design. Ridiculously smart guy, and even he was hampered by his own religious beliefs.
And what is it that put America in the forefront of the nuclear nations? and what is it that will make it possible to spend 20 billion dollars of your money to put some clown on the moon? Well, it's good old American know-how, that's what, as provided by good old Americans like Dr. Wernher von Braun.
... we'll see that schools that teach hogwash will be less successful than schools that teach science.
What do you mean by "less successful"? There is, right now, a network of parents and private schools and churches and non-accredited "universities" and museums that have the specific goal of teaching what the reality-based community sees as hogwash. They make huge sums of money, have growing numbers of students, and show no signs of going away any time soon. Their goal is to prevent students from learning about evolution, the Big Bang, psychology, or anything else that would convince a student to reconsider the religious truth that their parents and Bible-thumping preachers have told them.
Actually, it really wasn't all that long of a run, in the grand scheme of things. I mean, Athens had a century or so as the center of learning, Alexandria lasted several centuries, Rome had a couple of really good centuries, Baghdad spent 3 centuries on top, Britain had a pretty impressive run from about the mid 1600's to the end of the Industrial Revolution, etc. And what all of those societies had in common was that they placed the highest value on knowledge and learning and not so much value on foolish religiousity. And the ruling class supported those scientific efforts for their own sake, not just because they were profitable.
Now, not only do I know never to post a profile on Dice.com and never search Dice.com for potential employees, I should also never ever accept a job offer from EMC. And probably should also avoid using their products if I can manage it, since they show all the signs of making their tech team work insane hours to churn out overpriced garbage.
Full-time programmers often sign an employment contract that assigns all IP to their employer for $1.
I've never, ever, signed an agreement that says that stuff done on my own time belongs to my employer. And in fact that's one of the things I specifically ask about during interviews, along with any expectations of non-compete, non-disclosure, and attempts to influence my non-work life.
And long-term gets shorter all the time. We've made more technological progress in the last 50 years than we did in the 100 before that, or the 200 before those, or the 500 before.
So logically, we're going to asymptote and know everything about everything and do anything we want to in 2063. Or so the singularity believers claim.
The trouble is, it's based on a phony idea. The last 50 years of technological progress are impressive, but so were the previous 50 years: Some of the major developments between 1913 and 1963: - Mass produced cars - Widespread use of AC electric power - Widespread use of telephones - plastics - nuclear power - radio - television - significant air travel - vacuum tube computers - vaccinations - intravenous anesthetics
Ron Paul: How do you do, good lady? I am Ron, King of the Libertarians. Whose mansion is that? Woman: King of the who? Ron Paul: King of the Libertarians. Woman: Who are the Libertarians? Ron Paul: Well, we all are. We are all Libertarians. And I am your king. Woman: I didn't know we had a king. I thought we were a free republic. Dennis: You're fooling yourself! We're living in a dictatorship. A self-perpetuating bureaucracy in which the oppressive regulations... Woman: Oh, there you go bringing regulation into it again. Dennis: Well, that's what it's all about! If only people would... Ron Paul: Please, please, good people, I am in haste. Who lives in that mansion? Woman: No one lives there. Ron Paul: Then who is your landlord? Woman: We don't have a landlord. Dennis: I told you, we're an anarcho-capitalist agricultural corporation. There's a CEO who is nominally in charge... Ron Paul: Yes... Dennis:...but all the decisions of that CEO have to be ratified at a special bi-annual shareholders meeting... Ron Paul: Yes I see... Dennis:...by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs... Ron Paul: Be quiet! Dennis:...but by a two thirds majority in the case of... Ron Paul: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet! Woman: Order, eh? Who does he think he is?
In fact, most H1Bs are entry level, and only about 7% work at an advanced level.
In fact, 93% of statistics are made up on the spot. As far as the average quality of H1B holders, I've worked with some brilliant H1Bs, and some real idiot H1Bs. Just like among the native-born Americans, the idiots outnumber the geniuses.
You're right about the purpose of those visas, of course, but don't get mad at the H1Bs, who are leaving their home to work because that's the way they can earn as much as possible for their family back home. They're absolutely exploiting the difference between salaries in the US and salaries in other countries, but what they're doing isn't morally any different than someone from leaving Mississippi (average income $31K) and getting work in DC (average income $71K).
Well of course they were just re-elected. How could they not be?
Look at the recent complete non-scandal over a memo from the "Justice" Department that states that the President can decide to kill any American he wants to under any circumstances he wants to by accusing him of being a terrorist, without presenting a shred of evidence to anybody. The very next day, all the congressional leaders from both major parties made a public statement in support of that policy. The courts, when presented with a challenge to that policy by the father of someone known to be targeted by it, threw the case out of court by claiming that the only person with standing to file suit was the target, ignoring the argument that if the target had tried to enter the US for any reason he would have been shot on sight.
Ron Paul might have stopped the trend if he had won the presidency, but I'm not convinced that even he could do so with Congress, the bureaucracy, and the courts all trying to stop him. But neither the Republican Party as a whole nor the Democratic Party as a whole want to put any kind of stop to this, and the Republicans and Democrats will always cooperate to prevent any other party from gaining any kind of power.
It wouldn't take much arguing to convince me that the Federal Reserve is one of the most powerful institutions on the planet.
There's a major problem with your theory though: What does the Federal Reserve (or its employees) have to gain by coordinating an effort where a few major corporations defraud everyone else? In 2005, I worked for a brief while as a developer at a mortgage titling firm, and just from the paperwork crossing my desk I could tell that there was no way in hell that the mortgage business as it was structured then could last forever. If I could see it, presumably those smart guys at the Federal Reserve could see it. They'd also know full well that a dollar-denominated crash would lead to people looking for different currencies to store their money in, so logically they'd be able to predict that engineering this kind of thing would make the Federal Reserve less powerful.
My point was that a coordinated effort was hardly necessary: All it took was self-interested investment banks, self-interested ratings agencies, self-interested insurance salesmen, and self-interested regulators carefully not noticing the activities of the banks, ratings agencies, and insurance salesmen.
Slashdot Mirror
The issue both sides are arguing is whether the choice for women to appear in porn is or can be a free choice in a meaningful way.
The other issue that Dworkin in particular argues is that viewing pornography turns otherwise decent men into rapists. That sort of thing might well be amenable to scientific data, such as a survey of rapists to find out why they committed their crimes. If someone were to demonstrate that viewing particular kinds of porn led to rape or sexual assault or domestic violence, I'd at least take their position seriously, but right now there's simply fears about porn with no data of any kind to back it up.
Even among feminists, there's significant disagreement about whether porn is inherently exploitative of women, or whether it's fine if all the performers have consented to participate (if they haven't then it's sexual assault at least). And this debate has been going on for several decades at least, with some (e.g. Andrea Dworkin and Gloria Steinem) taking the anti-porn side, while others (e.g. Ellen Willis and Susie Bright) taking the view that women should be able to express their sexuality on film if they want. The key problem: There's no scientific data to support any position on the subject, so it's come down to gut feelings with various rationalizations on both sides.
My own take: I'm not going to support passing laws to deal with purely theoretical problems. If the anti-porn side can demonstrate some actual documented harm, then I'll change my mind.
Which is just an extension of an older idea expressed best by Oscar Wilde: "If we were meant to be naked, we would've been born that way."
"Ending is better than mending. The more stitches, the less riches."
-Aldous Huxley
Of course a consumer society isn't supposed to have anything that can be repaired by a normal human being. If you want anything, you're supposed to cough up your hard-earned cash to your corporate overlords.
Also, there are reports of pasty-faced nerds emerging from the basements of the homes of respectable older couples, looking dazed by the sunlight.
In the US we won't face a lack of water but it'll get expensive and food prices are likely to double and could triple or more in adjusted dollars.
There have been areas of the US that have had to face water shortages already, actually: Los Angeles periodically has to ban watering of front lawns, for example. It's kind of interesting living where I do, less than 5 miles away from the world's largest supply of fresh water anywhere: there have been numerous attempts to convince the various governments that have access to it to divert as much of it as possible in various directions, thankfully none of them successful. Generally speaking, liberals want to protect the water for environmental reasons, while conservatives want to protect the water so that businesses that need the water will relocate to the area.
Nuclear power isn't carbon free, that's why, even though it's a far sight better than coal or oil.
Actually the big scare then was Global Cooling.
No, the big scare that was that the revolution in Iran in 1979 was cutting off the supplies of oil to the US, which was already causing gasoline shortages and other serious problems. Environmental concerns had nothing to do with it.
But aren't minimum wage increases one of the (albeit small) contributors to inflation?
Some economists think that average wage increases are the primary cause of inflation, some think that price increases in important commodities are the primary cause of inflation. If you're in the first camp, then the importance of a minimum wage increase depends on what percentage of workers make minimum wage, which in the US is about 1% of all workers. If you're in the second camp, then the minimum wage increase has no effect on prices.
And as such, wouldn't tying minimum wage increases to inflation create a circular reference of sorts?
Of sorts, but the effects would probably vary a lot based on what industries we're talking about. The risk is this: The increase in pay leads to an increase in the price of, say, hamburgers, which leads to inflation, which leads to an increase in pay, in a vicious cycle. The alternative is that the increase in pay leads to decreased profits for McDonalds Inc shareholders, which has no effects on inflation whatsoever.
Talk is cheap, and the State of the Union address is about pageantry and blowing hot air, not anything that will actually happen. Come back to me when you have a serious effort, which will probably involve legislation, a budget, an actual agency, probably some grant programs, and other tangible steps. Come back to me when thanks to some serious efforts and funding, we have solar or geothermal or hydro power that could handle the entire energy needs of the US. Come back to me when you have serious conservation efforts that make Americans not the most wasteful people on the planet.
You know, people made fun of Jimmy Carter suggesting things like turning down the thermostat and wearing a sweater, and for installing solar panels on the White House, but he was basically right about the necessary course of action.
Well, up to a point. As Neil deGrasse Tyson points out, from the Principia Mathematica:
"But is it not to be conceived that mere mechanical causes could give birth to so many regular motions."
- Isaac Newton
Newton, that crazy alchemist who revolutionized physics just for fun and invented calculus more-or-less on a lark, also invoked intelligent design. Ridiculously smart guy, and even he was hampered by his own religious beliefs.
And what is it that put America in the forefront of the nuclear nations? and what is it that will make it possible to spend 20 billion dollars of your money to put some clown on the moon? Well, it's good old American know-how, that's what, as provided by good old Americans like Dr. Wernher von Braun.
- Tom Lehrer
... we'll see that schools that teach hogwash will be less successful than schools that teach science.
What do you mean by "less successful"? There is, right now, a network of parents and private schools and churches and non-accredited "universities" and museums that have the specific goal of teaching what the reality-based community sees as hogwash. They make huge sums of money, have growing numbers of students, and show no signs of going away any time soon. Their goal is to prevent students from learning about evolution, the Big Bang, psychology, or anything else that would convince a student to reconsider the religious truth that their parents and Bible-thumping preachers have told them.
Actually, it really wasn't all that long of a run, in the grand scheme of things. I mean, Athens had a century or so as the center of learning, Alexandria lasted several centuries, Rome had a couple of really good centuries, Baghdad spent 3 centuries on top, Britain had a pretty impressive run from about the mid 1600's to the end of the Industrial Revolution, etc. And what all of those societies had in common was that they placed the highest value on knowledge and learning and not so much value on foolish religiousity. And the ruling class supported those scientific efforts for their own sake, not just because they were profitable.
Now, not only do I know never to post a profile on Dice.com and never search Dice.com for potential employees, I should also never ever accept a job offer from EMC. And probably should also avoid using their products if I can manage it, since they show all the signs of making their tech team work insane hours to churn out overpriced garbage.
Full-time programmers often sign an employment contract that assigns all IP to their employer for $1.
I've never, ever, signed an agreement that says that stuff done on my own time belongs to my employer. And in fact that's one of the things I specifically ask about during interviews, along with any expectations of non-compete, non-disclosure, and attempts to influence my non-work life.
And long-term gets shorter all the time. We've made more technological progress in the last 50 years than we did in the 100 before that, or the 200 before those, or the 500 before.
So logically, we're going to asymptote and know everything about everything and do anything we want to in 2063. Or so the singularity believers claim.
The trouble is, it's based on a phony idea. The last 50 years of technological progress are impressive, but so were the previous 50 years: Some of the major developments between 1913 and 1963:
- Mass produced cars
- Widespread use of AC electric power
- Widespread use of telephones
- plastics
- nuclear power
- radio
- television
- significant air travel
- vacuum tube computers
- vaccinations
- intravenous anesthetics
Dijkstra has been very vocal on this topic throughout his whole life. And you can hardly get more CS-y than him.
Donald Knuth might be more CS-y than Dijkstra, but he doesn't even use email!
Actually, I'd make the other one Tyson, because Neil Degrasse Tyson was instrumental in making Pluto no longer a planet.
I vote for creative taxidermy, but that's just me.
Wait, how could you tell the difference?
Ron Paul: How do you do, good lady? I am Ron, King of the Libertarians. Whose mansion is that? ... ... ...but all the decisions of that CEO have to be ratified at a special bi-annual shareholders meeting... ...by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs... ...but by a two thirds majority in the case of...
Woman: King of the who?
Ron Paul: King of the Libertarians.
Woman: Who are the Libertarians?
Ron Paul: Well, we all are. We are all Libertarians. And I am your king.
Woman: I didn't know we had a king. I thought we were a free republic.
Dennis: You're fooling yourself! We're living in a dictatorship. A self-perpetuating bureaucracy in which the oppressive regulations
Woman: Oh, there you go bringing regulation into it again.
Dennis: Well, that's what it's all about! If only people would...
Ron Paul: Please, please, good people, I am in haste. Who lives in that mansion?
Woman: No one lives there.
Ron Paul: Then who is your landlord?
Woman: We don't have a landlord.
Dennis: I told you, we're an anarcho-capitalist agricultural corporation. There's a CEO who is nominally in charge
Ron Paul: Yes...
Dennis:
Ron Paul: Yes I see...
Dennis:
Ron Paul: Be quiet!
Dennis:
Ron Paul: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet!
Woman: Order, eh? Who does he think he is?
In fact, most H1Bs are entry level, and only about 7% work at an advanced level.
In fact, 93% of statistics are made up on the spot. As far as the average quality of H1B holders, I've worked with some brilliant H1Bs, and some real idiot H1Bs. Just like among the native-born Americans, the idiots outnumber the geniuses.
You're right about the purpose of those visas, of course, but don't get mad at the H1Bs, who are leaving their home to work because that's the way they can earn as much as possible for their family back home. They're absolutely exploiting the difference between salaries in the US and salaries in other countries, but what they're doing isn't morally any different than someone from leaving Mississippi (average income $31K) and getting work in DC (average income $71K).
Maybe GP is running on a big-endian machine?
Well of course they were just re-elected. How could they not be?
Look at the recent complete non-scandal over a memo from the "Justice" Department that states that the President can decide to kill any American he wants to under any circumstances he wants to by accusing him of being a terrorist, without presenting a shred of evidence to anybody. The very next day, all the congressional leaders from both major parties made a public statement in support of that policy. The courts, when presented with a challenge to that policy by the father of someone known to be targeted by it, threw the case out of court by claiming that the only person with standing to file suit was the target, ignoring the argument that if the target had tried to enter the US for any reason he would have been shot on sight.
Ron Paul might have stopped the trend if he had won the presidency, but I'm not convinced that even he could do so with Congress, the bureaucracy, and the courts all trying to stop him. But neither the Republican Party as a whole nor the Democratic Party as a whole want to put any kind of stop to this, and the Republicans and Democrats will always cooperate to prevent any other party from gaining any kind of power.
It wouldn't take much arguing to convince me that the Federal Reserve is one of the most powerful institutions on the planet.
There's a major problem with your theory though: What does the Federal Reserve (or its employees) have to gain by coordinating an effort where a few major corporations defraud everyone else? In 2005, I worked for a brief while as a developer at a mortgage titling firm, and just from the paperwork crossing my desk I could tell that there was no way in hell that the mortgage business as it was structured then could last forever. If I could see it, presumably those smart guys at the Federal Reserve could see it. They'd also know full well that a dollar-denominated crash would lead to people looking for different currencies to store their money in, so logically they'd be able to predict that engineering this kind of thing would make the Federal Reserve less powerful.
My point was that a coordinated effort was hardly necessary: All it took was self-interested investment banks, self-interested ratings agencies, self-interested insurance salesmen, and self-interested regulators carefully not noticing the activities of the banks, ratings agencies, and insurance salesmen.