Police are allowed to do any search, reasonable or otherwise, with a warrant. They have the warrant. Which means that, by definition, it's not the government breaking the law. it's the Court that issued the warrant.
That's kinda why the anti-NSA side keeps losing in Court. They think of this as the NSA breaking the law, when the NSA is doing precisely what it is supposed to do : gather all information for which they have a warrant.
And one can make a similar argument for the court that issues that warrant. They're issuing warrants on the basis of what facts the NSA gives them. It's easy to rationalize. But not so easy to bring any of them to justice when every aspect of the above process is secret.
The track record of businesses is much worse then the Feds on pretty much every issue. Generally the entire reason the feds got their current powers is because some businessman 40 years ago decided to oppress some private citizen.
I already gave the example of NSA tapping all internet traffic. And business can't pull the sort of frivolous rent seeking and jack booting that comes naturally to government such as creation of a tart cherry oligopoly. We also have the militarization of law enforcement (and not just in the US).
The Challenger accident. It would have been difficult to exploit an LAS with the normal Shuttle configuration. But if instead the Shuttle had been on top of the central oxygen tank rather than piggybacking, then an LAS would have been quite feasible - especially if NASA was using liquid fuel booster engines instead of solid fuel ones.
The TISA is classified so investment groups wouldn't take advantage of it before it went into effect, thus screwing you and I over.
No offense, but that's nonsense. All the investment group would have to do is bribe someone. Then they're in the loop. I'm leaning towards the interpretation that this was meant to hide it from the public. I don't at a glance see much that particularly dangerous aside from the US trying to force other countries to accept data processing outside their borders:
[US: Each Party shall allow a financial service supplier of another Party to transfer information in electronic or other form, into and out of its territory, for data processing where such processing is required in the financial service supplierâ(TM)s ordinary course of business.]
It's a whole lot easier to attack financial information when the data is in a place where you can get away with the attack.
Two space shuttles suffered catastrophic failures during ascent, it just took longer for the damage to Columbia to become apparent. It was doomed by the time it reached orbit.
By that reasoning, they both suffered from catastrophic design choices. It just took some time for the consequences to show. Thus, neither were vehicle operation failures at all.
I think it's reasonable instead to classify the failure by where it manifests even if the trigger events happen earlier. Among other things, it fits with any remedies that one could attempt. For example, launch aborts might have saved the Challenger crew, but wouldn't have done a thing for the Columbia crew.
3.6.1.2 The space system shall provide abort capability from the launch pad until Earth-orbit insertion to protect for the following ascent failure scenarios (minimum list):
a. Complete loss of ascent thrust/propulsion (Requirement 58613).
b. Loss of attitude or flight path control (Requirement 58614).
Rationale: Flying a spacecraft through the Earth's atmosphere to orbit entails inherent risk. Three crewed launch vehicles have suffered catastrophic failures during ascent or on the launch pad (one Space Shuttle and two Soyuz spacecraft). Both Soyuz crews survived the catastrophic failure due to a robust ascent abort system. Analysis, studies, and past experience all provide data supporting ascent abort as the best option for the crew to survive a catastrophic failure of the launch vehicle. Although not specifically stated, the ascent abort capability incorporates some type of vehicle monitoring to detect failures and, in some cases, impending failures.
It appears that a country has to be more or less third world (2001-2002 data for the most part) in order to have 35% tariff rates (under the WTO scheme). Most of the countries in the current negotiation already have tariff rates near or under 5% including the US, the EU, Australia, Japan, and probably South Korea and Switzerland. In the link above, China had tariffs a bit over 5% on most goods aside from a few entries (it may be better now since the report is ten years old). The worst at 40% was ethanol (good "220710" in the "Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System"). Looks like China has 35% tariffs on water heaters too (841911 and 841919) and 30% on mufflers and exhaust pipes (870892).
At a glance, I'd say the countries with the highest tariffs are probably Costa Rica and China. But maybe there's some high tariffs between individual members of the group in addition to the above list.
The first laws passed by the First United States Congress after the ratification of the constitution were tariffs. People have a right to protect their homes. "free markets" are a scam for redistribution of wealth upward.
There are dozens of posters on Slashdot who have cognitive dissonance on political issues of the day to the degree that it probably causes them harm and hence, might be classifiable in its own right as a mental illness. Even among this motley, proud crew, you stand out.
Here, you're advocating an outrageously pro-corporate position, protectionism on the dubious theory that it'll somehow protect peoples' homes. One merely needs to look at developed world agricultural policies to see the end game for this. For example, the US has single-handedly driven up global food prices with its ethanol subsidies for corn. But it's great for ADM, which is what matters, amirite?
Or hell, look at the Fourth Amendment. You're concerned about a program that could (theoretically) be used to abuse millions of Americans. When asked to provide evidence that anyone has actualy been hurt you respond with a) abstract compalints about how bad you feel that the government knows whom you've been emailing, and b) claims that of course nobody has evidence of more then a handful of people being oppressed via NSA information because it's secret.
I haven't been so asked. But since you mentioned it, widespread contempt for the law is something that should be scourged from government at any level.
Sure, that's an abstract observation. But I don't see the need for anything more. Government routinely oversteps the bounds we attempt to put on it.
As to point b), that is a rather obvious argument. Notice that no corporation gets to protect its secrecy like that (unless of course, they're contractors for the US military or intelligence and can protect their inner workings with these secrecy laws).
Either increasing corporate power relative to the Feds is pro-freedom or it isn't.
Either the sky is green or it is purple. False dichotomy is false.
My view is that there is in the current situation some freedom to be gained from making business and the private world more powerful with respect to the federal government. I consider it an informal balance of power, much like the official ones between states and federal government or between the branches of the federal government.
Sure, I can see situations where increasing business power beyond a certain extent causes a decrease in personal freedom. But I think it's foolish to think we're in that sort of situation now.
Also, the NSA problem is notable because it gives lie to the common claim that the federal government is being run by corporate powers. Well, the supposedly obedient servant just cost its masters a lot of money (once again, I might add) and is likely to continue to do so for many years to come.
They have trouble with disputes with corporations because a) they don;t have a guy on-staff who instinctively understands all paperwork every corporation in the country issues, and b) very few private companies have a boss who fears Congressional hearings.
a) is irrelevant (and even if it weren't, you just need someone with some basic legal knowledge, not "instinctive" knowledge of each and every corporation's paperwork). And b) congresspeople can do a lot more than just have hearings. They have a lot of media and political contacts for starters. They can pass laws. It's not that hard for them to affect the bottom line.
Well, that's because globalization was the choice these days
The US was doing globalization since before there was a US.
I'm not ragging against globalization. I'm just pointing out the cause and effect.
And what is the connection between your alleged cause and your alleged effect? This doesn't explain the US's incompetent and expensive social programs, their intrusive spying, or humongous military-industrial complex. Other countries do globalization without those things.
Well, yea. But that stuff came from supernovae many billion years ago. We don't need space now to have semiconductors since that stuff, particular silicon won't go anywhere.
I suspect however that you are thinking that the US space program is responsible for semiconductors. That is nonsense. We would have them anyway even in the absence of contributions from any agency of the US including the Department of Defense (who was a far bigger contributor to IC R&D than NASA was by at least an order of magnitude). And the incentives to develop integrated circuits and CPUs would have resulted in pretty much what we have now, perhaps even further along since so the careers of so many intelligence,educated people were squandered on various white elephants between NASA and the US military.
Note that this is not a blind endorsement of government power. The number one tool my neighbors could use to oppress me (or I could use to oppress them), is the state government.
The federal government is the tool of choice these days. I don't go off of history when federal government power is at unprecedented levels of power and degree of intrusiveness. After all, it's not the state of California which is running the NSA (my example from before) or taking your coworker's money.
So you're arguing that, under a pro-corporate Constitutional reform, private for-profit corporations would be able to get police into using their powers to advance the interests of said private, for-profit corporations, and that this would be a good thing, because at least it wouldn;t be the FEDERAL government harassing people?
No. You made a claim about the Pinkertons. I showed how that claim was incorrect.
And how often have you heard of a Congressperson actually winning a dispute like that?
Not very much either way.
Your ignorance of how tax refunds work is showing.
The IRS won't send you your refund if any agency from a fairly long list (child support, Social Security, student loans, some state tax agencies, etc.) claims you owe them money. Disputing the matter with the IRS doesn't help because the IRS can't order these other agencies around.
I guess you just don't get it. Why should anything be on that list? I don't get to take your money in that way, why should anyone else get to via the agency of the IRS? As a US citizen, the federal government is in a unique position to control and seize your wealth.
here's your options:
--total freedom eventually leading to extinction
--some very mild controls that will improve health, boost the economy, create jobs, and possibly prevent extinction as well.
I see you're exercising your own freedom to be stupid. There is no "extinction" to be had from global warming. It doesn't follow from the actual climate research done (which predicts things such as modest increases in global mean temperature and sea levels) or the geological record (which records more extreme climate changes than what we see now and which we could survive readily though perhaps at a small fraction of our current population).
Now, I suppose climate changes could trigger a war using some novel technology which could drive the human race to extinction, but so could just existing (pretexts for war when you have superior firepower can be notoriously flimsy).
Finally, I think it's absurd to claim that the "controls" are "very mild". You're screwing with the energy infrastructure of the world and you'll have to force a bunch of unwilling people to go along (OPEC for starters). I also notice your last claim:
And I could build a decent case that that freedom (to be stupid) should be stricken because of hte burden you then place on everyone else.
What sort of "very mild controls" results in the "freedom to be stupid" getting stricken? That sounds more like totalitarian suppression of dissenting thought. But maybe getting jailed for having the wrong opinion is just a minor imposition. What do I know?
why do you think that? they work very well. They have even lead us to make new discoveries about the climate.
[...]
no, they doi not. Another baseless statement I suspect you have no clue how models work. in general, much less in any specific field.
So we have "new discoveries" and "baseless statements" based on your say-so only. Thanks for volunteering to be an example of the shit that the original poster was complaining about.
If you happen to know that sceinve is, please explain how adding more energy into the climate doesn't impact it.
How about you read the collected works of Marx first before you argue the taxonomy of butterflies? You are arguing a non sequitur. It doesn't make sense to argue that we should say, curb all human activity on Earth, because "adding more energy" "impacts" climate any more than a reading of Marx should be a prerequisite for studying butterflies.
Sure, if you change the energy budget of Earth, you will get some change in climate (maybe too minute to observe I might add). So what? You are still a long way from making a relevant argument to most of us. Sure, there are die-hards out there convinced that human activity can't cause measurable changes in climate. But your monkey poo won't change their minds.
Admit? No part of the argument is the existence of species. There's no "admission" here. it was never in contention. But a species is no longer the best level to consider evolution at.
This was never in contention by anyone. That includes you and me.
That you observe the outcomes of gene selection at the species level rather then the gene level is a function of what your senses are capable of perceiving not what is actually happening. You also may notice that iron goes rusty, and to you that means it turns from grey to reddish brown. But what's really happening is happening at the molecular level.
Just because an observation can be made at a different, finer scale doesn't mean the observed effects at the current scale don't happen. This is a particularly bizarre claim to make especially since you grant the macroscopic effects in question such as species or iron changing color. The speciation of terrestrial organisms and the changing of color of a visible mass of oxidizing iron are real things - they happen even if the effect is caused by small scale processes.
Correct. But the way those high level features continue is through selection of those genes individually. There is no other level that selection works at.
The obvious counterexample here, which we've been discussing for the past few days, is the existence of species. There is no gene you can point to which specifies what species you are or which you can change to become a different, viable species. It is a property of a higher scale than the single gene level and has survived a billion years or more of natural selection.
I suppose species are a somewhat unreliable emergent property of large numbers of genes experiencing selection. Thus, the existence of species disproves your assertion.
I'm puzzled what was supposed to be wrong with my assertion in the first place. I didn't advocate reading Darwin because he had the perfect model of evolution from the atomic level on up. That is just a red herring.
But having said that, his arguments hold up remarkably well. For all the talk here of modern genetics, blurring of the distinction of species, etc, it remains that most work since has just been a fleshing out of the biological mechanisms by which his theory applies and the collecting of a vast amount of supporting evidence.
And yet, a far milder jolt on their climate wiped up 95% of all life the likes of which the world took ages to recover from. The nature of any given climate is of academic interest; the problem is in how fast it changes...
So it doesn't matter if we end up with the climate of Venus or Mercury? We just need to take it real slow and we can adjust to arbitrarily huge climate changes? I don't buy it.
we've done in just 200 years what took a million then
There are two things to note. First, the CO2 content was at times around 2000 ppm which is five times current levels. So we haven't done in 200 years what took a million. We're still a millennium or two away from reaching those levels.
Second, the climate driver then was supposed to be volcanoes which are never known for their steady output. And we can't measure 250 million year old geological effects below a certain time scale resolution. So the above changes may have repeatedly happened over the course of days to a few years for hundreds of thousands or millions of years not a gradual change over a million years. But those spikes may be (and probably are) below the resolution of anything we can measure today.
After all, no volcano in the world today can really compare to the potential of that one.
I disagree. I can think of two, just in the US - the Long Valley caldera in eastern California and the Raton hotspot of New Mexico. Further, the largest volcanic eruption of the past 20 million years occurred at Lake Toba in Indonesia. What is special about that site (perhaps a large, geologically "rapidly" replenished reservoir of high viscosity, high volatile content magma?) may occur elsewhere in the Ring of Fire and other subduction zones.
You do realize we tried the stronger corporations/weaker government model during the late 19th/early 20th centuries, and the result was not an absolute utopia of freedom.
Yes. It wasn't that bad. It amazes me how much power people are willing to hand governments to avoid the possibility of "sweat shops", "child labor", and other obsolete 19th century dangers.
Government contracts for the Pinkertons dries up after the Civil War, but private contracts made up for it. They had more agents then the Army had troops in the 1890s. You're just making shit up on their relationship with law enforcement.
Read some history on how Pinkerton operated. They didn't go after outlaws or bush unions without law enforcement support. It might just be a token deputy riding with a bunch of Pinkertons, but they had their backside covered.
As I said she is fighting the Social Security Administration (not the IRS) through her Congressperson. That does not require money up-front, which means she can actually do it; whereas in any dispute with a private corporation she only has a theoretical right to fight.
But at least in the latter case, she can get her money back. She could also beg that congressperson for any private disputes as well. That option doesn't vanish merely because the problem is private.
And as to my "reading comprehension", I guess you should have written something other than:
Back in the real world, the IRS ruling hurts my poor coworker, but she wasn't depending on that money to pay her bills because you can't depend on tax refund money to do that. The Feds refuse to finalize the tax Code until the very last minute, so you never know what your refund is going to be until you do your return.
and
and the IRS took her whole refund because Social Security had changed it's mind
Your story completely undermines your claim that it was just a dispute with Social Security.
I see and hear about companies outsourcing( electronics, software ). I don't see the pricing for their products falling.
I infer from this that they do intend to sell at the higher prices, in line with higher wages.
Slashdot Mirror
Police are allowed to do any search, reasonable or otherwise, with a warrant. They have the warrant. Which means that, by definition, it's not the government breaking the law. it's the Court that issued the warrant.
That's kinda why the anti-NSA side keeps losing in Court. They think of this as the NSA breaking the law, when the NSA is doing precisely what it is supposed to do : gather all information for which they have a warrant.
And one can make a similar argument for the court that issues that warrant. They're issuing warrants on the basis of what facts the NSA gives them. It's easy to rationalize. But not so easy to bring any of them to justice when every aspect of the above process is secret.
The track record of businesses is much worse then the Feds on pretty much every issue. Generally the entire reason the feds got their current powers is because some businessman 40 years ago decided to oppress some private citizen.
I already gave the example of NSA tapping all internet traffic. And business can't pull the sort of frivolous rent seeking and jack booting that comes naturally to government such as creation of a tart cherry oligopoly. We also have the militarization of law enforcement (and not just in the US).
The Challenger accident. It would have been difficult to exploit an LAS with the normal Shuttle configuration. But if instead the Shuttle had been on top of the central oxygen tank rather than piggybacking, then an LAS would have been quite feasible - especially if NASA was using liquid fuel booster engines instead of solid fuel ones.
The TISA is classified so investment groups wouldn't take advantage of it before it went into effect, thus screwing you and I over.
No offense, but that's nonsense. All the investment group would have to do is bribe someone. Then they're in the loop. I'm leaning towards the interpretation that this was meant to hide it from the public. I don't at a glance see much that particularly dangerous aside from the US trying to force other countries to accept data processing outside their borders:
[US: Each Party shall allow a financial service supplier of another Party to transfer information in electronic or other form, into and out of its territory, for data processing where such processing is required in the financial service supplierâ(TM)s ordinary course of business.]
It's a whole lot easier to attack financial information when the data is in a place where you can get away with the attack.
Two space shuttles suffered catastrophic failures during ascent, it just took longer for the damage to Columbia to become apparent. It was doomed by the time it reached orbit.
By that reasoning, they both suffered from catastrophic design choices. It just took some time for the consequences to show. Thus, neither were vehicle operation failures at all.
I think it's reasonable instead to classify the failure by where it manifests even if the trigger events happen earlier. Among other things, it fits with any remedies that one could attempt. For example, launch aborts might have saved the Challenger crew, but wouldn't have done a thing for the Columbia crew.
Has no bearing on the man rating of shuttle.
It demonstrates that the Shuttle can't meet the only man-rating standard NASA has issued.
3.6.1.2 The space system shall provide abort capability from the launch pad until Earth-orbit insertion to protect for the following ascent failure scenarios (minimum list):
a. Complete loss of ascent thrust/propulsion (Requirement 58613).
b. Loss of attitude or flight path control (Requirement 58614).
Rationale: Flying a spacecraft through the Earth's atmosphere to orbit entails inherent risk. Three crewed launch vehicles have suffered catastrophic failures during ascent or on the launch pad (one Space Shuttle and two Soyuz spacecraft). Both Soyuz crews survived the catastrophic failure due to a robust ascent abort system. Analysis, studies, and past experience all provide data supporting ascent abort as the best option for the crew to survive a catastrophic failure of the launch vehicle. Although not specifically stated, the ascent abort capability incorporates some type of vehicle monitoring to detect failures and, in some cases, impending failures.
Yes it was.
No, it wasn't. Man-rated would mean, for example, having abort options at every stage of launch from the ground to orbit. Shuttle couldn't do that.
It appears that a country has to be more or less third world (2001-2002 data for the most part) in order to have 35% tariff rates (under the WTO scheme). Most of the countries in the current negotiation already have tariff rates near or under 5% including the US, the EU, Australia, Japan, and probably South Korea and Switzerland. In the link above, China had tariffs a bit over 5% on most goods aside from a few entries (it may be better now since the report is ten years old). The worst at 40% was ethanol (good "220710" in the "Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System"). Looks like China has 35% tariffs on water heaters too (841911 and 841919) and 30% on mufflers and exhaust pipes (870892).
At a glance, I'd say the countries with the highest tariffs are probably Costa Rica and China. But maybe there's some high tariffs between individual members of the group in addition to the above list.
The first laws passed by the First United States Congress after the ratification of the constitution were tariffs. People have a right to protect their homes. "free markets" are a scam for redistribution of wealth upward.
There are dozens of posters on Slashdot who have cognitive dissonance on political issues of the day to the degree that it probably causes them harm and hence, might be classifiable in its own right as a mental illness. Even among this motley, proud crew, you stand out.
Here, you're advocating an outrageously pro-corporate position, protectionism on the dubious theory that it'll somehow protect peoples' homes. One merely needs to look at developed world agricultural policies to see the end game for this. For example, the US has single-handedly driven up global food prices with its ethanol subsidies for corn. But it's great for ADM, which is what matters, amirite?
If Google wants tot do business in France they should obey the laws of France, not frustrate the lawmakers. That is just not professional.
They are obeying the law. They're charging for shipping just as the unprofessional law in question requires them to do.
Or hell, look at the Fourth Amendment. You're concerned about a program that could (theoretically) be used to abuse millions of Americans. When asked to provide evidence that anyone has actualy been hurt you respond with a) abstract compalints about how bad you feel that the government knows whom you've been emailing, and b) claims that of course nobody has evidence of more then a handful of people being oppressed via NSA information because it's secret.
I haven't been so asked. But since you mentioned it, widespread contempt for the law is something that should be scourged from government at any level.
Sure, that's an abstract observation. But I don't see the need for anything more. Government routinely oversteps the bounds we attempt to put on it.
As to point b), that is a rather obvious argument. Notice that no corporation gets to protect its secrecy like that (unless of course, they're contractors for the US military or intelligence and can protect their inner workings with these secrecy laws).
Either increasing corporate power relative to the Feds is pro-freedom or it isn't.
Either the sky is green or it is purple. False dichotomy is false.
My view is that there is in the current situation some freedom to be gained from making business and the private world more powerful with respect to the federal government. I consider it an informal balance of power, much like the official ones between states and federal government or between the branches of the federal government.
Sure, I can see situations where increasing business power beyond a certain extent causes a decrease in personal freedom. But I think it's foolish to think we're in that sort of situation now.
Also, the NSA problem is notable because it gives lie to the common claim that the federal government is being run by corporate powers. Well, the supposedly obedient servant just cost its masters a lot of money (once again, I might add) and is likely to continue to do so for many years to come.
They have trouble with disputes with corporations because a) they don;t have a guy on-staff who instinctively understands all paperwork every corporation in the country issues, and b) very few private companies have a boss who fears Congressional hearings.
a) is irrelevant (and even if it weren't, you just need someone with some basic legal knowledge, not "instinctive" knowledge of each and every corporation's paperwork). And b) congresspeople can do a lot more than just have hearings. They have a lot of media and political contacts for starters. They can pass laws. It's not that hard for them to affect the bottom line.
Well, that's because globalization was the choice these days
The US was doing globalization since before there was a US.
I'm not ragging against globalization. I'm just pointing out the cause and effect.
And what is the connection between your alleged cause and your alleged effect? This doesn't explain the US's incompetent and expensive social programs, their intrusive spying, or humongous military-industrial complex. Other countries do globalization without those things.
We only have semiconductors because of space.
Well, yea. But that stuff came from supernovae many billion years ago. We don't need space now to have semiconductors since that stuff, particular silicon won't go anywhere.
I suspect however that you are thinking that the US space program is responsible for semiconductors. That is nonsense. We would have them anyway even in the absence of contributions from any agency of the US including the Department of Defense (who was a far bigger contributor to IC R&D than NASA was by at least an order of magnitude). And the incentives to develop integrated circuits and CPUs would have resulted in pretty much what we have now, perhaps even further along since so the careers of so many intelligence,educated people were squandered on various white elephants between NASA and the US military.
How long term? More than a few decades, I hope. It's where I keep my stuff.
The machine's designers must not be able to explain how their original code led to this new program
That is a flatly ludicrous requirement
Why do you think that? I guess we need actual examples.
Note that this is not a blind endorsement of government power. The number one tool my neighbors could use to oppress me (or I could use to oppress them), is the state government.
The federal government is the tool of choice these days. I don't go off of history when federal government power is at unprecedented levels of power and degree of intrusiveness. After all, it's not the state of California which is running the NSA (my example from before) or taking your coworker's money.
So you're arguing that, under a pro-corporate Constitutional reform, private for-profit corporations would be able to get police into using their powers to advance the interests of said private, for-profit corporations, and that this would be a good thing, because at least it wouldn;t be the FEDERAL government harassing people?
No. You made a claim about the Pinkertons. I showed how that claim was incorrect.
And how often have you heard of a Congressperson actually winning a dispute like that?
Not very much either way.
Your ignorance of how tax refunds work is showing.
The IRS won't send you your refund if any agency from a fairly long list (child support, Social Security, student loans, some state tax agencies, etc.) claims you owe them money. Disputing the matter with the IRS doesn't help because the IRS can't order these other agencies around.
I guess you just don't get it. Why should anything be on that list? I don't get to take your money in that way, why should anyone else get to via the agency of the IRS? As a US citizen, the federal government is in a unique position to control and seize your wealth.
Earth is already a permanent space colony.
here's your options:
--total freedom eventually leading to extinction
--some very mild controls that will improve health, boost the economy, create jobs, and possibly prevent extinction as well.
I see you're exercising your own freedom to be stupid. There is no "extinction" to be had from global warming. It doesn't follow from the actual climate research done (which predicts things such as modest increases in global mean temperature and sea levels) or the geological record (which records more extreme climate changes than what we see now and which we could survive readily though perhaps at a small fraction of our current population).
Now, I suppose climate changes could trigger a war using some novel technology which could drive the human race to extinction, but so could just existing (pretexts for war when you have superior firepower can be notoriously flimsy).
Finally, I think it's absurd to claim that the "controls" are "very mild". You're screwing with the energy infrastructure of the world and you'll have to force a bunch of unwilling people to go along (OPEC for starters). I also notice your last claim:
And I could build a decent case that that freedom (to be stupid) should be stricken because of hte burden you then place on everyone else.
What sort of "very mild controls" results in the "freedom to be stupid" getting stricken? That sounds more like totalitarian suppression of dissenting thought. But maybe getting jailed for having the wrong opinion is just a minor imposition. What do I know?
why do you think that? they work very well. They have even lead us to make new discoveries about the climate.
[...]
no, they doi not. Another baseless statement I suspect you have no clue how models work. in general, much less in any specific field.
So we have "new discoveries" and "baseless statements" based on your say-so only. Thanks for volunteering to be an example of the shit that the original poster was complaining about.
If you happen to know that sceinve is, please explain how adding more energy into the climate doesn't impact it.
How about you read the collected works of Marx first before you argue the taxonomy of butterflies? You are arguing a non sequitur. It doesn't make sense to argue that we should say, curb all human activity on Earth, because "adding more energy" "impacts" climate any more than a reading of Marx should be a prerequisite for studying butterflies.
Sure, if you change the energy budget of Earth, you will get some change in climate (maybe too minute to observe I might add). So what? You are still a long way from making a relevant argument to most of us. Sure, there are die-hards out there convinced that human activity can't cause measurable changes in climate. But your monkey poo won't change their minds.
Admit? No part of the argument is the existence of species. There's no "admission" here. it was never in contention. But a species is no longer the best level to consider evolution at.
This was never in contention by anyone. That includes you and me.
That you observe the outcomes of gene selection at the species level rather then the gene level is a function of what your senses are capable of perceiving not what is actually happening. You also may notice that iron goes rusty, and to you that means it turns from grey to reddish brown. But what's really happening is happening at the molecular level.
Just because an observation can be made at a different, finer scale doesn't mean the observed effects at the current scale don't happen. This is a particularly bizarre claim to make especially since you grant the macroscopic effects in question such as species or iron changing color. The speciation of terrestrial organisms and the changing of color of a visible mass of oxidizing iron are real things - they happen even if the effect is caused by small scale processes.
Correct. But the way those high level features continue is through selection of those genes individually. There is no other level that selection works at.
The obvious counterexample here, which we've been discussing for the past few days, is the existence of species. There is no gene you can point to which specifies what species you are or which you can change to become a different, viable species. It is a property of a higher scale than the single gene level and has survived a billion years or more of natural selection.
I suppose species are a somewhat unreliable emergent property of large numbers of genes experiencing selection. Thus, the existence of species disproves your assertion.
I'm puzzled what was supposed to be wrong with my assertion in the first place. I didn't advocate reading Darwin because he had the perfect model of evolution from the atomic level on up. That is just a red herring.
But having said that, his arguments hold up remarkably well. For all the talk here of modern genetics, blurring of the distinction of species, etc, it remains that most work since has just been a fleshing out of the biological mechanisms by which his theory applies and the collecting of a vast amount of supporting evidence.
And yet, a far milder jolt on their climate wiped up 95% of all life the likes of which the world took ages to recover from. The nature of any given climate is of academic interest; the problem is in how fast it changes...
So it doesn't matter if we end up with the climate of Venus or Mercury? We just need to take it real slow and we can adjust to arbitrarily huge climate changes? I don't buy it.
we've done in just 200 years what took a million then
There are two things to note. First, the CO2 content was at times around 2000 ppm which is five times current levels. So we haven't done in 200 years what took a million. We're still a millennium or two away from reaching those levels.
Second, the climate driver then was supposed to be volcanoes which are never known for their steady output. And we can't measure 250 million year old geological effects below a certain time scale resolution. So the above changes may have repeatedly happened over the course of days to a few years for hundreds of thousands or millions of years not a gradual change over a million years. But those spikes may be (and probably are) below the resolution of anything we can measure today.
Sorry, I meant currently active volcano. Unless I missed a major geological event, I'm presuming there aren't any currently active supervolcanoes.
I'm not sure about the Raton hotspot, but the rest is currently active. Just not active on human timescales.
After all, no volcano in the world today can really compare to the potential of that one.
I disagree. I can think of two, just in the US - the Long Valley caldera in eastern California and the Raton hotspot of New Mexico. Further, the largest volcanic eruption of the past 20 million years occurred at Lake Toba in Indonesia. What is special about that site (perhaps a large, geologically "rapidly" replenished reservoir of high viscosity, high volatile content magma?) may occur elsewhere in the Ring of Fire and other subduction zones.
You do realize we tried the stronger corporations/weaker government model during the late 19th/early 20th centuries, and the result was not an absolute utopia of freedom.
Yes. It wasn't that bad. It amazes me how much power people are willing to hand governments to avoid the possibility of "sweat shops", "child labor", and other obsolete 19th century dangers.
Government contracts for the Pinkertons dries up after the Civil War, but private contracts made up for it. They had more agents then the Army had troops in the 1890s. You're just making shit up on their relationship with law enforcement.
Read some history on how Pinkerton operated. They didn't go after outlaws or bush unions without law enforcement support. It might just be a token deputy riding with a bunch of Pinkertons, but they had their backside covered.
As I said she is fighting the Social Security Administration (not the IRS) through her Congressperson. That does not require money up-front, which means she can actually do it; whereas in any dispute with a private corporation she only has a theoretical right to fight.
But at least in the latter case, she can get her money back. She could also beg that congressperson for any private disputes as well. That option doesn't vanish merely because the problem is private.
And as to my "reading comprehension", I guess you should have written something other than:
Back in the real world, the IRS ruling hurts my poor coworker, but she wasn't depending on that money to pay her bills because you can't depend on tax refund money to do that. The Feds refuse to finalize the tax Code until the very last minute, so you never know what your refund is going to be until you do your return.
and
and the IRS took her whole refund because Social Security had changed it's mind
Your story completely undermines your claim that it was just a dispute with Social Security.
I see and hear about companies outsourcing( electronics, software ). I don't see the pricing for their products falling. I infer from this that they do intend to sell at the higher prices, in line with higher wages.
Sounds like it's working for them then.